Transcription
Good morning, guys. Beautiful Lake Champlain in downtown Burlington, Vermont. A small city of roughly 45,000 people, but the biggest city in the state that has undergone quite a few changes in recent years. And this one hits a bit close to home because I was born here and I grew up 45 minutes south of the city, and I have great memories of this place. And from my understanding, it's not really like what it was downtown. So let's go down there, get a better understanding of what's going on. Let's do this.
(relaxed music)
Growing up here, if you wanted any urban environment in the state, basically, it was here. And now for anyone from a big city, you're like, "Okay, that's a small town." But, yeah, it's all perspective. It was always the place of social activity and excitement and concerts and events. And here's the bike shop I worked at, the Skirack, and the owner, Spike, brought me in under his wing and got me into bike racing, and that's really what got me out of Vermont at a young age. I saw all of these other places and my world expanded, but it was all because of Spike. Well, and my mom too, and others, but Spike had a big role in my life. He's since passed, but we had a huge bike race up here, I think it still goes on, Burlington Crit.
(bells ringing)
Church Street. All Vermonters know of this street. This is the place for shopping and being around people and a nice pedestrian street. Great memories here, walking down this street with my mom in the winter, and the snow falling, and the lights, and the activity. So we're just gonna get into it. First impressions, doesn't look so bad, but looks can be deceiving. And what is it like a layer or two layers deeper? A tourist like me wouldn't understand that.
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"Your friend said, isn't Homeport where they-"
"Yeah."
"What did she say? What?"
"Homeport hate homeless people?"
"And I was like, no."
"I don't think so."
"That's on the record. You hate homeless people here? Is that what you're saying? Or humans all together?"
"Well, apparently, I don't know, you know? It depends whether you believe what you read in the press."
"Okay, so that's what they marked you with when you wrote a letter talking about the situation."
"The reverb was these businesses wanna criminalize homelessness."
"[Peter] Okay, and what did you really want?"
"Some meaningful consequences for misbehavior. Not, in fact, imprisonment, but you know, maybe a trespass or something for a little while or something."
"[Peter] Okay, can we step out? 'Cause I wanna see your beautiful store."
"Yeah, yeah, sure."
"[Peter] How long have you owned this?"
"We've owned the business for 40 years."
"Oh wow, that's huge success. That's hard to do."
"I mean, we have a family, you know, it's a family business. So we are here in the store and it helps."
"And it was Pier One back in the day."
"Back in the day."
"I remember going in, yeah."
"Yeah."
"Okay, so someone's coming in into your store, let's go into your store, is that cool?"
"Absolutely."
"[Peter] Okay, so someone's gonna come in and steal something, say your security's on lunch break."
"Exactly."
"Say I catch 'em somewhere in the store, I see them put something in their bag or in their pocket. If I suspect you, but I'm uncertain, you haven't broken the rules in my eyes. Suspicion is not stealing. I have to see you pocket or bag an item."
"[Peter] Okay, so good thieves are gonna steal here all day."
"They could, but often, we are onto it. We see somebody pocket something, we see them make their way to the door. And I try to block the door here."
"You get in front?"
"I don't really, I'll say, you know, because I try to be respectful of people and so, I'll say, you know, 'Hey, is there something you'd like to, you know, you forgot to pay for or something like that?' I always give people the benefit of the doubt, right to the bitter end. I've been doing this all my life, I've been doing this for 40 years in this business and I've been in other retail business as well. I've stopped a lot of thieves at the door. Up until three years ago, to a person, everyone's gone, 'Ha, you caught me.' You know, they may say, 'No, I didn't.' And I, 'Come on, I saw you,' and they go, 'All right, you got me.' They give the stuff back or they go pay for it or they cry or they do, you know? About three years ago for the first time, I got pushed through that door."
"[Peter] Right here?"
"Right here."
"[Peter] Oh."
"Just, 'You, you know, go to hell.' I said, 'Hey, you know I'm gonna call the cops.' Oh no, it's, 'What are you gonna do?' 'I'm gonna call the cops.' 'What are they gonna do? They're not coming.' I'm like, 'Give it, you know, you can't steal from here, get outta here, you're not welcome back,' and that was the end of that instance. We've gotten a little, like, I didn't know what to do in the moment, I've never had anybody do that."
"[Peter] Right."
"Right?"
"So we've refined our approach now. I'll hang onto a bag, I won't touch a human being, I won't grab you by the arm or anything, but if I know you got my goods in the bag, I'm hanging onto that bag and you're gonna have to drag me through that door."
"Okay, how much theft, what dollar amount of theft do you think you deal with a year, rough estimate?"
"Rough estimate, I think it's gone down since we've hired security. However, before that, it was probably about $75,000."
"[Peter] Brutal."
"Brutal."
"[Peter] Because, businesses like these, with all this inventory, are super easy to run, I heard."
"Yes."
"Insurances, getting employees."
"It's all profit. We have a big, big pot of gold in the back."
"You're an owner, you just sit back and relax?"
"I just gaze over my kingdom."
"[Peter] Because this is pretty easy, can we walk through?"
"[Mark] Yeah, sure."
"[Peter] Yeah, so you got everything here, you got cards."
"[Mark] Lot of stuff."
"[Peter] Very cool cards, all the way to spices and hot sauces."
"[Mark] Yeah, it's a department store."
"Cooking pans."
"And there's toys and furniture upstairs, there's candles and bath up on the mezzanine level."
"So a place like this is super important for the community, you're gonna say that obviously 'cause it's your store."
"Sure, sure."
"But as an outsider, it is, like, you can come here."
"I mean, we feel, listen, we feel really symbiotic with the community. I mean, we've been here a long time, right?"
"[Peter] Yeah."
"So like at the end of COVID, this community came and supported the hell out of us. And I think they did that because they feel that we add value to their community, have felt that over the, you know, previous 38 years or whatever, that we had added value to their community 'cause they really did, they came out in a time when retail really needed their help."
"[Peter] Yep."
"And kept us going."
"[Peter] Nice old building here."
"It's an old Montgomery Ward."
"[Peter] Oh, is that an old department store?"
"Yeah, they've got buildings like this that look identical to this all over the country."
"[Peter] Okay."
"There's one in Newport that looks almost identical."
"How many tags do you have here, like 15 million?"
"(laughs) There's about 47,000 items on my inventory list."
"[Peter] Oh my God."
"And I probably have about 70% of that in stock at any time."
"[Peter] So you're a bit insane, fair to say, a little bit?"
"It's a nutty business, it's not for everyone, but you know, it's a family, like, I grew up in this, so my dad's been doing it for years."
"Okay."
"My son's here with me."
"Cool."
"Get my grandson in pricing on the-"
"That's awesome."
"On the weekends and during the holidays. So it really is a family, and my wife works here, it's a family business."
"That's awesome, it's good to see small businesses thriving."
"I mean, we enjoy what we do."
"It's important."
"We love our community, we love our business, and you're right, it is crazy business. And that is in fact what makes it hard to compete with. All those skews, all the differences, you know, Amazon can compete with us, but you never make a friend at Amazon."
"Can't have this experience, yeah."
"You don't support your community at Amazon, you don't come in and get to see a friendly face. Like, we believe in the 3D world where people interact with each other."
"[Peter] Agreed."
"And our customers do too."
"[Peter] Cool store, huh?"
"It's great, it's exactly what I need. I have to bring my roommate here. It's my first time though, but."
"[Mark] Welcome."
"[Student] I'm just moving into UVM."
"Oh, are you?"
"I am."
"[Mark] Where from? Where's home?"
"I'm from Miami."
"[Mark] Oh, no kidding."
"Yeah."
"[Peter] Are you okay? I'm filming a video on the place."
"Yeah, no problem."
"Okay, cool."
"Hey squad, what's up? Getting this for my dorm. Isn't she cute? I'll take name suggestions."
"[Peter] So Betty, this is your mother?"
"Yeah."
"[Peter] And what do you do here, Betty?"
"I do the accounting."
"[Peter] Okay, how's that going for ya?"
"Buying some greeting cards, I love it."
"[Peter] You love crunching the numbers?"
"Oh, she buys the cards."
"I love crunching the numbers."
"[Peter] And this is your wife, Mark?"
"This is my wife."
"Okay."
"She looks after the lower level here, which is garden and that kind of stuff."
"Yes."
"[Peter] Okay, so you're all one big family, but y'all have your specific tasks?"
"We got our areas, domains of interest."
"It works very, very well."
"There's a lot of harmony."
"Oh, absolutely."
"Absolutely."
"Yeah."
"This business, because it exists, has taken care of you guys first, then us, then also our kids and their family. This is the life we got."
"We need, we go to school, we get, you know, go to college when we need, like this has provided for the whole show."
"Yeah, this is it."
"Wow, wow."
"And the lives of so many of our employees, you know?"
"The ones who come back after a couple decades to run our sidewalk sale every year. Terry, who's been here for 40 years, since before we opened our doors, to have long-term, hate to say employees because they're more than that, they are, they become family."
"[Mark] After 40 years, sure."
"[Peter] And so, you never ask age, but what year were you born, if you don't mind me asking?"
"1943."
"[Peter] Oh wow."
"From a family of retailers."
"And I grew up under the racks in retail."
"[Peter] Okay, so this is the last iteration. Is that what this is here? The end of the DNA?"
"It's the next."
"His son is 14."
"No, his son is the one that comes in and works with us."
"It's true."
"Yeah."
"[Peter] Okay, one, two, three, four generations."
"[Both] Yeah."
"That's beautiful."
"40 years, 40 years more."
"Yeah, now you're talking."
"Yeah, do another 40."
"Yeah."
"Thank you, appreciate it."
"Yeah, my pleasure."
"Good luck with everything."
"Oh, thank you so much."
"My goal is to come back here in a couple years and we talk about, oh remember 2023-24, that rocky bottom."
"My goal is to make it a distant memory too."
"(Mark chuckling)"
"[Peter] Homeport, and you do stuff online too?"
"We do."
"[Peter] Okay, so if someone's not in Burlington?"
"HomeportOnline.com."
"[Peter] HomeportOnline.com, take care."
"Cheers."
So awesome seeing a family business like that. Four generations, that's something special, something that should be cherished. So when you see it happening, it's really cool. Ben & Jerry's from Vermont, and I believe it was two July 4ths ago, they said on Twitter, "It was time to give all our land back to the natives." And in something like that, I forget the exact words, and I wonder if Ben & Jerry's, the ownership, that being Ben or Jerry, if you're out there, I would love to get an answer, or even the business, have given their land back. 'Cause I know Ben & Jerry have done very well, extremely well, they sold out to the big Unilever, I forget the amount, but quite a bit. And wow, Americans have been buying their ice cream for decades, great ice cream. But I'm curious, you know, have they given their land back? If they have, then, hey, stake the claim and your argument and at least you believe what you say. I would be interested to know if that's taken place.
(car engine rumbling)
"All day long, they're on the steps. They go to the bathroom on the walls of the church. They shoot their drugs. I just saw one last week, a guy, there was a girl standing next to him, it was his friend, he shot her in the neck with a needle. I never seen anything like this. It's all day long, they fight, they beat each other up, they leave trash all over the place. The ambulance comes in, the police comes up, they disperse 'em, they go across the street. Two days later, they're back. They go behind the parking garage right here all day long. I mean, this is constant."
"[Peter] This is your business?"
"Right here? Yeah."
"Okay, how long have you been here?"
"Since 1970."
"Okay, is this the worst you've seen it in Burlington?"
"Listen, I've been here most of my life. Never, ever, ever seen Burlington like this. I mean, I got people don't even wanna come downtown, to go to downtown, you know? I used to work on a lot of people, their cars, they say, 'Where you located?' 'Downtown.' 'No, I don't wanna come downtown.' Nobody wants to come downtown anymore, they're scaring all the customers, all the shoppers."
"[Peter] Right."
"All the visitors, I mean, they're on every corner. If you really want to see something, come in between six and nine o'clock in the morning, that's when I come open the store across the street."
"Yeah."
"They're all over. They come in, they're drugged up out of their mind, they steal stuff from the store. I mean, it's all day long."
"[Peter] What needs to happen?"
"What need to happen? I've been telling this to everybody. They need to get the police back downtown again and they need to enforce the laws, okay? Let me tell you. Three, four years ago, you couldn't smoke on Church Street. If you smoked on Church Street or you'd ride your bike, you would get a ticket."
"[Peter] Cigarettes?"
"Cigarettes, correct, cigarettes. Now they use drugs on Church Street, they ride bicycles on Church Street, they smashed all the windows on Church Street. Nothing happens."
"Where are you from originally?"
"I'm from Lebanon."
"Okay, so you know a different world, you can compare and contrast."
"Never seen it like this in Burlington, Vermont. Listen, this is my home, okay?"
"Yep."
"I've been here all my life and I'm not moving any place."
"Okay, why are so many people so scared to speak?"
"Because if you say something, you're probably gonna get attacked by other people, say, 'No, you shouldn't be talking like that.' But you know what? If you deal with these, with people like this all day long, every day, every day, 12 hours a day, at the point, there's a break point."
"You're there."
"I'm there. I mean, you just, it's tough, it's constantly all day long. It's like, you know, I get a lot of them, I help, I see the homeless guys, they're really old, they need help. I have no problem. We had homeless people here before, we help them out, we take care of 'em, they never caused any problems, you know, they just had a problem. You know what? We all got problems. And I don't mind helping people like that, and I do, but when we get to the point, they're violent, you know, they have mental stuff that I can't control and I can't help 'em, and they're on the street, they don't get fed well, okay? They don't get their medication right, they just go from one corner to the other."
"If you had a teenage son or daughter, would you let them downtown here on their own?"
"Absolutely not, absolutely not, I'll be afraid."
"Okay, that's the difference of when I grew up."
"Me too."
"You could walk down here, no problem."
"You know what? I used to leave the cars unlocked and no problems."
"Right here? And that wouldn't be a good idea. There's something going on here, right? These guys are hopped up probably."
"Yeah."
"Oh man, I'm sorry."
"We need to bring downtown back the way it was, we're losing businesses. I'm talking to a lot of business owners downtown, most of 'em say that business is down, nobody wants to come down and shop. They have to ask the people to move first thing in the morning, they're laying in front of the door to get in the store. I mean, when this is gonna stop?"
"When is it gonna stop is when the policies change."
"That's right, that's right, the policies-"
"But it takes a lot of people to speak up and then call out the BS because it's BS."
"Let me ask you this. Most of these people are young people. They're healthy."
"Yeah."
"They're strong. Everyone looking for people to work, why don't we get somebody from the Howard Center to talk to these folks, find them jobs? Wouldn't that be better to go out and work and work hard, make money, get an apartment?"
"Yeah, of course, it would. Logically speaking, but people on drugs, they're covering something up most likely in their lives. You're not dealing with, you know, people in a great place, so somehow I agree with you, you have to give it your all. I think through job training, through rehab, through medical. And if people don't wanna correct themselves, then there's nothing you can do, but you can't let 'em be down here. The younger the better."
"But somebody gotta help 'em. What's gonna happen every day you take drugs, every day, every day, every day? What's gonna happen at the end? Two things, either you're gonna die, all right? Or you're gonna overdose and something is gonna go bad, then you're never gonna come back. You see, there's gotta be an answer to this. By giving them what they need, that's fine, it's a temporary fix, but not long-term fix."
"[Peter] No."
"They need help, they need somebody, they need therapy, they need to go right to rehab, they need to do something."
"And I'll tell you what, if you allow it here and make it easier to do here, you'll attract those people from the surrounding region and go the path of least resistance, and that's why Burlington's one of those hubs right now. Brattleboro too, I was down there."
"Yeah."
"You go over to the border to Keene, New Hampshire, I'm sure there are problems, but it looks fine, you could take your kids down there, there'd be no issues."
"That's right. You know, I went to Plattsburgh, there was no issues. Here, what's happening? I saw some new people that just pulled in."
"[Peter] Yeah."
"Today, and asked them, 'Where you guys from?' 'Bennington.' I said, 'How did you get here?' 'We took the bus over here, they told us here it's easier to live with our problem.' I said, 'Really?' Yeah, I mean, so you see, it's exactly what's happening, they're coming from the surrounding area. When you got 250, what are you gonna do? You're overpopulated, how are you gonna feed them? How are they gonna eat? Where are they gonna go to the bathroom? Where they gonna sleep?"
"I think you should pay more taxes."
"Me?"
"Yeah."
"My taxes just increased."
"I'm just being a smart-"
"I'm just telling you, my taxes increased."
"How much?"
"Well, we have a bunch of properties, you know, that we own a lot of properties in the city of Burlington, and that's why we invest in Burlington because we like Burlington."
"Yep."
"We probably paid, if I tell you, I don't want, over a million dollars in taxes. What do I get out of it? I can't get any police protection, the street, I gotta clean it every morning, I go out and clean the garbage from all over here."
"[Resident] You get nothing."
"What do I get out of it? Just tell me what I'm getting out."
"You get the good feeling of knowing you paid for some pensions, you paid for some pensions, you feel good about that?"
"You know what? Pension is good. Like I said, I don't mind helping these people, but they gotta try helping themself a little bit so I can help 'em more. But the way they're doing it, they're just not taking care of the problem. The problem is the drugs. Take a picture across the street, you told me this is normal when you got 40 people sitting on the church, that's not normal."
"I'm a business owner in Burlington, I've been a resident of Vermont for 37 and a half years. I came out of New York City, I had a drug problem, okay? And I came up here to change my life around and it worked out for me, so I'm fortunate. But the experiences in Burlington right now that I've noticed since COVID, we've really gone downhill. On a scale from one to 10, I look at Burlington as a two right now. And what's unfortunate about it is that I don't see any fix. I see people walking around the problem that are getting paid to help fix the problems. I don't see them active doing anything, other than relying on other people to put out the fire, put up money, put up housing. There are plenty of rich people, this is one of the richest college communities in the country, and nobody is letting these people, they're walking around on the street, pick them up, give 'em some warmth, put 'em in a camp on King Johnson like they did for COVID. Give 'em some shelter for at least 30 days."
"Yeah, but AC-"
"30 days rehab."
"Yeah, ACLU."
"I don't know, you know, I'm not a politician."
"Yeah, I know, but it's unsustainable."
"You know, I just pray that, I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon. But I'm willing to participate if I can help the city because I have a very good business. I'm in the cannabis business and we're doing very well. I'm handing the state 51,000 to 60,000 a month, I'm collecting taxes for the state, okay? And the municipality, and a lot of people are getting these funds, where are they going? I'd rather put my funds right into where I work, right around here within a 500-foot radius. I'm willing. I've had people in my alleyway right here in Burlington, ODing, dying in front of me, people bleeding, okay? And then they're walking to City Hall and they're walking around it. I couldn't go to work knowing there's a guy on the ground. No, no way. So I don't know what they're trying to do. Are we trying to scare people out of Burlington and build up South Burlington? Is that the new biggest city in Vermont? South Burlington is in Williston."
"The money's going there right now?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
"Yes, the money's going there. The $11 million bridge that crosses 89 that they're putting in to go to the gateway of South Burlington, put the $11 million back here. Are you trying to chase out the people to come down here? They're trying to kill Burlington."
"[Peter] Who's they?"
"I think that the progressives in Burlington are trying to not help us. Bernie keeps talking about it, his whole, David Zuckerman, but I don't see anything really getting done. They're parading around the state, looking for votes, but they're not working down here."
"[Peter] Well, you think this would be the place? 'Cause all the people live here."
"This was, listen, I came here because this was a beautiful, cosmopolitan city with police protection and oversight for the kids, I felt safe here. Now I don't feel safe here. I have to buy a commuting car, okay? To come to work because it's unsafe, because I've been, in fact, there's a gentleman in the paper today that approached the city with an ax and he was arrested, he smashed me in the face in my alley, I never even called the cops, a young kid, I'm not gonna start a fight, I'm 73 years old. Well, guess what? Six months later, he's got an ax, okay? He's on the front page of the papers today, Jason somebody, okay? So it's unfortunate, I don't know really what to say. I'm leaving work now because I don't wanna be around here later on, it gets dangerous."
"You're really worried about being down here at night?"
"Oh yeah. And I grew up in Eastern New York, Brooklyn, you know where that is?"
"Yeah, of course, East New York."
"You ever hear of 'Goodfellas'? Okay, that's a true story about what kind of bad bit neighborhoods can get, so. What you've got right around here are a lot of poverty pimps, okay? You got a lot of people here that have duplexes, teachers, professionals, Airbnb-ing their apartments out for $2-300 a day. Why aren't they helping these people? Why don't one of 'em donate two, three houses, okay? They're not donating nothing. They're knocking that down over there to put up an $11 million building that the city raised money for. What are they gonna do? Let the rest of the buildings deteriorate? They're gonna move one? You've been to East New York, okay, you've been to projects, you understand. What do they wanna burn down the neighborhood?"
"[Peter] I mean, that's-"
"It almost makes more sense, honestly, if you think like they're trying to move development to another area because it's so logical what needs to happen here."
"San Francisco."
"So basic, I lived there, I moved out of there three years ago."
"So you know what's going on, are the homeless gone?"
"No."
"They moved a lot out."
"Homeless industrial complex, as you're talking about, there's a lot of money to be made, it's endless."
"Listen, I like you."
"The is endless."
"I used to, yeah, turn that off."
"All right."
"This is called the tunnel. Has anybody told you that yet?"
"[Peter] Well, yeah, the parking garage?"
"No, that thing, that brick thing."
"[Peter] Oh, that's where the stairs are."
"[Resident] That's called the tunnel."
"[Peter] Okay, what's that mean?"
"That's a word on the street, that if you need drugs, you go to the tunnel and you go to each fight and you could buy all your drugs."
"[Peter] Okay, great, so you can't go down the stairs now in the parking garage."
"I don't know, I don't know. On weekends, it's very bad here. I had a customer walk in and out, she got robbed out of her pocketbook the other day, she came in crying. We've had a lot of things that are happening because the police won't respond to a nonviolent altercation, I guess."
"I gotta stick up for the cops a little bit."
"I love the cops."
"Here's why. They were totally put under the bus four years ago."
"I agree with this."
"And then, like, would you wanna show up to your job and do the dirty work of society?"
"I'd give them the medal of honor?"
"Yeah, yeah, me too. We need good cops, and I'm sure there are a lot of good cops there, I'm sure there are a few bad ones, right? That's just how it goes in anything."
"In anything, nothing, it's not a perfect world."
"But we need better cops and we need to raise them up because they're doing the dirty work. Cops aren't here, this thing falls apart in 24 hours, all of it."
"If it was up to me right now."
"Yeah."
"I would pay to have the National Guard come here, okay? You understand? You understand that? On a Friday night, you know these college kids, what's gonna really happen in Vermont? Are they waiting for the college kids to really get hurt? In that parking garage, last year, there were two kids that were assaulted and shot at, okay? Right in there, they walked home from the bar, from Red Square to the parking lot, a guy tried to rob him, they jumped the guy, he shot, you know, it's bad."
"[Peter] So the university isn't feeling the effects of this yet?"
"Oh yeah, they're telling their students, 'Don't even come down here with more than one kid,' okay? Don't ever come downtown Burlington, no. I mean, my walks of life, right? I hear people go, 'We will never drive down to Burlington.' My business model is strictly high residential, right around here. Customers will rather spend $30, $40 on a product and go to Essex before they come here. They don't care about it. Burlington is now really, unfortunately, a ghetto. You see, every town has an uptown and a downtown, okay? Our downtown is all downtown, there's no upbeat at all left, none, strictly gone. It really got hurt bad when they took away the farmer's market, that camaraderie and smorgasbord. They blamed it on the trees were old. What, are you kidding me? You ruined the vibrance of the city, okay? You ruined it, and they won't even bring it back. All these buildings are empty. Listen, we need help, if you can help us."
"[Peter] Well, I'm doing it with a video, that's what I can do."
"Please."
"You know, it takes courage to tell the truth, but at least you're telling the truth."
"And that's why I got the shirts."
"I didn't even see that."
"Seek the Truth 'cause it's hard to find."
"I've had this idea."
"You gotta seek it."
"I'm gonna go see Charlie now."
"All right, boss. Guys, Seek the Truth, new merch line."
(car engine roaring)
Something happening outta that truck, a group up here. And then everyone doing their drugs on the front steps of the church. Got a bunch of people looking at me from behind. So I'm gonna move through here somewhat quickly, but that's what we've got. I can't imagine the churchgoers being too happy about this. And who wants to go to this church now? That is wild. We've got a mini Kensington, Philadelphia back there where I just did a video recently where they allow open-air drug usage, open-air drug market, and it is absolutely horrific. I've been to Karachi, Pakistan in the slums there, a place called Lyari, pretty hard-hitting, and the slums of India, and Kensington had the hardest feel pretty much of any place I've been on this planet. And while it's not that bad here, it's not going in the right direction. An open-air drug usage is, in my opinion, an absolutely terrible idea. And for those that feel otherwise, go to Kensington, walk the streets, check it out. All right, back to Church Street, let's talk to like one more business, just get another opinion, see if it's uniform or any different.
"Every time I try to get in touch with the governor, I can't. And I wanted to ask the governor, 'cause I've heard different things about the safe injection site and that they're gonna give us money for it, okay? And that we'll build something for that purpose. I'm confused because just down the street is the empty Department of Health building, which could serve as a safe site injection."
"[Peter] Do you want that?"
"Well, I want something, because, my driveway, my front steps and my backyard and my front yard at my house are not safe, not safe."
"[Peter] How long have you lived here?"
"September 25th, I'll be 73."
"So from the beginning?"
"All my life."
"[Peter] Okay."
"I am a dug-in Vermonter."
"[Peter] So tell us, what are your thoughts?"
"Well, I'll tell you what bothers me, okay?"
"[Peter] Yeah."
"Not too long ago, a would-be customer was gonna come in the store and saw me interacting with homeless drug addicts that had shot up in the driveway and one of them was defecating in the driveway. And so, I got a little hot, he described it on Google that I was yelling at him and he'd never come to my store. I'd love to have him come to my store to understand, this is 24/7 here, this isn't just once in a while, this is every single day. It's on the church lawns, it's in our parking garage."
"It's right behind you."
"It's right in back of me. And sometimes, this is no kidding, I come from my home in Burlington and I don't know what I'm gonna expect when I pull in my driveway, okay? I go from my work to my home, which is just up near the hospital, and I don't know what I'm gonna find on my front porch. I've had people sleep in my yard, sleep on my porch. And when I wake them, it's my problem."
"You're the bad person in that equation?"
"I'm the bad person in this, okay?"
"Well, you need eight hours of sleep, didn't you know that? It's a joke, it's a joke."
"Yeah, that's a real joke 'cause I wake up every couple hours, you know? And some of the stuff that go by my house at night or early in the morning, the abusive language we hear on a regular basis. These folks don't have soft voices downtown, they're yelling blocks away at each other for either a bad drug deal or you owe 'em money or this or that. I mean, a few years back, we witnessed a man get stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors by the shoe shop, by another homeless man 'cause he owed him $20. He died, he bled out right here. They tried to revive him, they couldn't. I saved the same person out in back of our building with Narcan and she was mad at me for doing it. I spoiled her high, and the words out of her mouth were, 'I'm gonna have to go do another trick for that.' What do you think that trick was? A man taking advantage of her, probably."
"[Peter] In your opinion, when did it really start going downhill?"
"You want my true opinion?"
"[Peter] Yeah."
"When there was no law and order in Washington D.C. on January 6th, the world went to hell in a hen basket, okay? When George Floyd and the Black movement and Black Lives Matter, I think some people took advantage of that, the loss of his life and a couple police officers that didn't do the right thing. And I think there's no law and order here, it's a show, criminals have more rights than we do. And it is time to end the show. It's sad, I mean, there are people out there that will tell you with the Burlington businesses, 'Oh, it's gonna pass, it's okay.' No, it's not. We have to stop feeding the animals, we have to say no. If you want us to feed you, you need to do something for the community. I don't care if you're high or not, once you come off your high, you could go around and help us pick up trash, get our city back to what we want. We're paying taxes for this."
"[Peter] What about city government? Why aren't they changing? It's all policies, right, at the end of the day?"
"Yeah, policies, yes. But there's a lot of people out there breaking the ordinances, the city ordinances, the things that they put on, you know, in books of what our city ordinances are. Don't block my driveway, pay your tickets, pay your meters, clean up after for your dog. Don't throw trash on my sidewalk, it's littering, it's a $200 fine. People don't wanna press this. They cite 'em, they go to court, they let 'em home or homeless. What are you gonna do? You know the democratic caucus is talking about joy, you know, Trump and his cronies are talking about all these things that they're gonna put back. I don't wanna go back to Trump, Trump needs to go in a trunk, I'm sorry, it's just like I shoot straight from the hip and I'm not loaded with a weapon, okay? Our voices are our most important weapons and we need to use them."
"And why do you think so many people are scared to speak out?"
"For retaliation. They find out who you are, where you live, people do strange things, you know?"
"So it's that lawless here right now?"
"Kind of sort of feel that way."
"But if people don't speak up then, nothing changes."
"Right. And it's not that I'm not a compassionate person, you have to understand."
"No, you don't even have to explain it, this is basic logic and common sense."
"It is."
"We all agreed on 10 years ago, 10 years ago, it wasn't a question any of this stuff."
"Right, exactly."
"People have mental health issues, they need help."
"And there's a vacant building that the Department of Health left vacant. The state of Vermont opens it, they'd rather sell it, and who knows what will go in there when they've got a building they can put to use. So what is wrong with people? Let's make our state and our city government accountable for what we're suffering."
"Is there any unity? I've talked to some great people today, you being one of 'em, is there any unity? Are you guys getting together and doing anything? Because one voice at a time is awesome, but, like, where's the movement?"
"Well, we have the app that businesses have that they can, when something's going on downtown, we can find out and help one another."
"[Peter] But that's between you guys."
"That's our community, our downtown community, it's not the-"
"[Peter] Like, how do you get as organized as BLM? They were very effective, like, how do you get that movement?"
"Fear."
"[Peter] People are just scared."
"I think so, I think so. There used to be one homeless shelter in this town and it may have at times been full to capacity, you know, but the homeless folks that I recall being on our street, they weren't shooting up out in broad daylight, they were just holding a tall one, an open container, okay?"
"[Peter] The good old days."
"The good old days, but they knew the businesses and they knew what businesses would help them. And we had regular people that would come in and let us know they made it through the weekend, and these guys were awesome guys, you know? They knew to say, you know, 'Stay away from that alley, you know, that's private property. Be nice to that person, she helps us,' you know? And the word gets out that we're not nice people, that's not true."
"[Peter] Right."
"You know, we're tired of being taken advantage of and something's gotta give."
"Well, that's the strategy, to shut you down, if you are a compassionate person, like you don't want to be called racist, homophobic."
"Right."
"Sexist, any of these other words."
"And I'm not."
"Of course, but you don't have to defend that."
"No."
"The way it is, like, those are the words used because they're the worst things to be called, right? And so it quiets people down, they're not used to being called that. Now I'm online, I've been called everything, at this point, I don't care 'cause they're empty words. I know I'm not those things, so I don't care."
"Well, I've been called-"
"And then once you get over that, but once you get over that hump."
"Yeah."
"Someone says, 'Hey, you're a neo-Nazi,' I'm like, that's the dumbest thing, okay, whatever."
"Yeah."
"And I think a lot of people have to get over that like uncomfortable moment, and once you get over that, you realize, oh, there's sort of a lot of empty suits behind that message and that mission. And it's only working through fear, it's not through dialogue, it's not through debate, it's not through."
"I've tried to have quiet conversations with some of these folks. You can't have a quiet conversation with some of these folks."
"Of course."
"Okay? It's kind of like college kids. 10% of them will get drunk, throw up on your lawn, and they give the 90% the bad rap. So it's kind of sort of the same thing."
(car engine chugging)
"What happened to Boves? Went downhill? Okay, that is an old school, from my recollection, Italian restaurant. Don't know how long it's been like that. Here we just have mattress and couches, random things. See a lot of these buildings here with fences and walls, and that's just so people don't go use drugs and hang out there. Gonna go down to the police station, which I don't expect to be able to talk to any police officers, but we'll try, let's see what's going on there."
(cars whooshing)
"All right. 'The lobby is not staffed and we will not know you are here unless you call first.' Yeah, may I speak with an officer please?"
"[Operator] Okay, what is it regarding?"
"It's regarding the overall situation with what's going on in the city right now. I'm a video maker, I work with all sorts of law enforcement across the country and I just wanna talk with someone here at BVT."
"(operator speaking indistinctly)"
"Yeah, you know, they don't have to say anything on camera or anything, but I would really love to. I grew up here my first 18 years and I've come back and I've seen something quite different and I'm doing my best to support law enforcement."
"[Operator] Can I ask your name?"
"Yeah, Peter Santenello."
"(operator speaking indistinctly)"
"Okay, I'll be here, thanks, bye."
(door clicking)
"It's like a ghost town in here. No trophies or whatever was in there. Authorized personnel. Med return, no needles. I wanna rip off a few stats for you guys here. Okay, so currently there are 68 or 69 police officers. They're allowed to have 87. Pre-2020, there were 98 to 104. So there's a reduction. And the reason there's 68, 69 and don't have 87 is, from my understanding, no one wants to sign up. They're having a hard time with enrollment, like many places. If you're from Burlington in law enforcement, let us know the exact numbers, if I got that wrong, I think I got that right. Whoa, there you go, Burlington Police Department. Yeah, so that didn't really work, I got the call back and they're like, 'Yeah, we're really busy right now,' and so that's the case with most police departments to get them to speak on camera is I've only had luck with one, Glendale, Arizona. Thank you, Glendale, because you brought me in, let me shoot how I shoot and let me show your story, so. It's too bad because they have a story and a perspective, I'd love to get it."
"Okay, so what'd you see, the park across the street?"
"Yeah, there was a younger guy over there that apparently beat up some woman with brass knuckles and then stabbed another guy in the neck, like, it was like random attacks, people get drunk over there all the time, do their drugs. It's a crazy, crazy scene over there. It's just, I don't even-"
know.
- [Peter] So things aren't going well?
- No, the cops are doing everything they can, arresting them, whatever, goes to the court system and they throw it out. Happens all the time, that's why it's getting so bad out here because the court system is messed up, everybody's just throwing back out in the streets.
- They can only charge them and then it's up to the courts for whether or not they're gonna be able to be prosecuted or get actually charged.
- Yeah.
- Everything gets dropped.
- Yeah, they'll hold 'em for a day or two and then they're back on the street.
- [Peter] So how are the locals feeling about this?
- They're not liking it at all. Everybody's making sure all their windows and doors are locked at all times.
- [Peter] It's not like the Burlington of-
- No.
- [Peter] Five years ago.
- Oh no.
- [Peter] What about the politicians? Why do people keep voting these people in if they?
- I have no clue.
- [Peter] Wow, what are you knitting over there?
- Oh, I'm making a blanket for his soon to be baby.
- [Peter] Oh, congrats, how's business for you?
- Business is pretty good, sell a lot of beer. (laughs)
- [Peter] Okay, so this is City Market.
- [Security] A very popular grocery store.
- [Peter] Okay.
- It's very small but a lot of traffic.
- A day like today, what's been going on?
- So we have shoplifting and then also people trying to steal cars.
- So multiple experiences today?
- Yeah, just one only when someone tried to steal a car, but then you'll have like two or three people shoplifting and then some failed shoplifting.
- [Peter] Okay, so you always have security here in front of the grocery store?
- Yeah, and that's, hello? Oh sorry, they're trying to use the credit union. Yeah, we're around. There's a full-time security team.
- [Peter] Okay.
- And I work for Chocolate Thunder Security, so I'm like a substitute teacher for security here. I'm just helping out extra.
- [Peter] That's crazy, we need security in front of a grocery store these days.
- Yeah, it's not something that would've been like a few years ago. Like, I grew up in Burlington and we didn't have security at the grocery store, yeah.
- [Peter] You think it's coming around at all?
- No.
- [Peter] Not at all?
- I don't think so. I think it's kind of hit rock bottom at this point. I don't really think it could get worse, yeah. (car engine rumbling)
All right, guys, City Hall there again, the very south side of Church Street. Looks like they're extending it perhaps, and I have a little story for you here. Back in the day, this was called Club Toast, and the scar on my lip, I think I was 18 in there and some guy was giving this woman a hard time, and I said, "Dude, leave her alone." And he's like, "I'm from Ireland, lad, just trying to have a good time." And he went away, and then I got the sucker punch from around the side. I just remember hosing everyone in that nightclub on the dance floor with blood. And when I went into the bathroom, we were all cleaning my blood off each other. You know, memory lane, Club Toast.
Just got some intel on an apartment building going through all sorts of difficulties. Let's try to check that out. All right, guys, this is the tallest building in Vermont. Yeah, I know, most people say, "Wow, that's not that tall." Vermont is a rural state.
- What's up, Andrew?
- [Peter] How you doing sir?
- Okay.
- I wanna show you the observatory before they use it.
- [Peter] Okay, okay, so.
- You guys getting on this elevator or take the next one?
- We'll wait, we don't wanna overwhelm it.
- We'll be only two minutes.
- If it gets stuck, we'll come save you.
- All right, Kathy, you're in charge of this building. Is that the story?
- I am the head of our resident council, but I'm just a resident here, just like anybody else.
- Who's living here?
- There's 160 apartments.
- Okay.
- 150 of 'em are full right now. They're purposely keeping some of the apartments open because the ones that are open were drug dealers that were evicted and they're trying to give us a little bit of time to recover from all the activity that was happening because of them.
- [Peter] Okay, so you're gonna bring us into that, what's been happening here?
- Right.
- [Peter] Okay.
- This is the observatory. This is supposed to be open for the residents to use. But what this became, when I first moved here in December of 2022, you couldn't even come up to this room at night because it was full of homeless people, drug dealers and drug users, and they would lock the door from the inside and only let their clan of people in here.
- So how would they get in here, past the front door and everything?
- Well, we have the key cards.
- Okay, okay.
- But they just surf in behind people because of the bulk of the population here, 62% are elderly, 62 and older.
- [Peter] Okay.
- And they just push their way by 'em. I mean, if you're a 30-year-old man, you know, it's not much of a difficult to get in with a 70-year-old lady, you know? And they will.
- [Peter] So you have a lot of the elderly here?
- We have 62% of the building is elderly, 32% is people with disabilities, who are younger than 62. And then we have 8% of people who are transitioning from prison. We have had zero problem with anybody who has ever transitioned out of prison back into here.
- [Peter] Okay.
- They're not an issue at all. I wanted to show you this because this was a place, 'cause there's a bathroom there, that the homeless people will come in here, they'll shower, you know, and so we've had to, in the last six months, this had to been locked. So the residents don't have the use of this, and this is supposed to be for the residents. So what we've done with Mike, we've formed a resident council, we're kind of taking control of the building and we started a neighborhood watch.
- [Peter] Okay.
- And we've kind of not done much with the neighborhood watch, but by forming that, what it did was it forced Burlington Housing Authority to get serious, and they did put in guards here and the guards roaming patrols at night, and then now we have a guard from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM.
- [Peter] So things are getting better here?
- Well, they're better now because it's the summer and you know, people are all in the encampments down there by the lake, there's three encampments around Burlington-
- Right down there?
- [Kathy] With about 250, no, they'd be right down there, you see where the building is with the green roof?
- [Peter] Okay, yep, yep.
- If you go just north of that, all told, there's about 250 homeless people around Burlington that are living outdoors right now. Of those people, some of them will go to the shelters, but a large percentage of 'em, like we had anywhere between 50 and 80 a night.
- Okay.
- During the winter time, living in our stairways, shooting up drugs, the ones that come here don't wanna go to the shelters 'cause they don't wanna follow the rules of the shelters. They can't use alcohol, they can't use drugs, and then the other thing, come on out, I'll show you.
- But, yeah, we still have the drugs and the thieves though, as well as people, who were, basically, we had a full thing had set up where they knew one person to sell this, one person sell that. And they had a box truck and everything to sell all this stuff.
- One of the attractions of this building to the people who are using drugs is every floor has free Narcan. So they know that, if they overdose, there's Narcan here available. And as residents, we oppose this, but Burlington Housing, in a humanitarian thing, wants to have it here for 'em.
- [Peter] But you oppose it?
- We oppose it because it's an attraction to bring the drug users into this building. Here's one of the trash rooms right here. And on this trash room, they will live in here, and they lock this, they will lock the door behind them. So they go into the trash rooms at night, they go into the laundry rooms so they can shut the door and shoot up.
- So a lot of things have come through my head today, I've taken in a lot, learned a lot. So the city runs this building?
- No, the city doesn't run it. So Burlington Housing Authority is chartered by the city of Burlington, they're partners. But the Burlington Housing Authority does operate independently.
- Isn't it their responsibility to take care of all these problems?
- It is, they're totally unprepared for it. They don't know how to take of the problem, quite honestly. Under our lease and the handbook, it says, "We are guaranteed the right to peaceful enjoyment." We're the elderly, I'm 68 years old. Yeah, yeah, I spent 18 and a half years in the Marine Corps-
- Oh wow.
- I shouldn't be fighting drug dealers when I'm 68 years old. I should be having some peaceful enjoyment in my life, and Mike and I.
- Yeah.
- Spend the majority of our time, you know, fighting drug dealers.
- I often spend eight hours a night, basically, walking around, patrolling, like, gathering information, I'm out front quite often.
- [Peter] You fix stuff.
- Yes, I do lots of odd jobs.
- And you know things.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so what else can we check out here?
- Yeah, let's walk down through the stairways. Last year, the homeless people as more and more came in, at first, it would just be the second and third floors were the primary things. And as more and more people came, they moved all the way here to the 11th floor. One night, there was an extension cord running out of this door, plugged into that wall, and they had one of those electric fireplaces in the stairway here to keep warm.
- Oh wow, oh my God.
- And these stairways, although, they painted some of them this summer and cleaned them up, these stairways would be full of garbage, piss and, needles.
- So did the city know about this?
- Oh absolutely.
- Okay.
- Every one of the city counselors came here.
- Okay.
- And visited and toured. You can see right now, I mean, it really looks good.
- [Peter] Yeah.
- But if you look at the pictures and we can give you other pictures of the graffiti that would be all over the walls, this has all been repainted because Burlington Housing has done a good job trying to get this cleaned up, they brought in SERVPRO cleanup people, they washed all these stairways down. There was literally piss and all over the walls in these stairways. You could not walk, you couldn't walk down and touch the railings because you would get MRSA or something like that. And we had several cases of MRSA in the building from these people coming in with open sores. So we're on the eighth floor right now and this is one of the larger trash rooms. So this is a room where they would actually live.
- [Peter] How many?
- In the winter, sometimes many as three. But they would come in here and shoot up and they had to put cages on all of the telecommunications equipment 'cause the people were coming in and stealing the routers just to sell 'em for so they could get 20 bucks for one hit of crack.
- So through your experience and what you've seen, do you feel like most homeless are on drugs?
- No, no, I wouldn't say that.
- Okay.
- I would say what we've had is, of probably the 70 or 80 people we had on a nightly basis, I would say half of them were regular drug users.
- Half, okay.
- And probably a third of them would be what we would categorize as regular troublemakers.
- Okay.
- The same people over and over again. Every other floor has laundry in it for the residents. What they were doing all through the winter is tearing off this part of the washing machine, they'd just rip it right off or rip this door off so they could get the quarters out so they could rob the machines and they would shoot up. So every day, you would see that you couldn't come in here because the machines were broken. And then, we can give you pictures of all the hot wiring the dryers, so that they could have heat. And this is on every other floor.
- [Peter] Is it free to live here if you qualify?
- It's not free, but if you're here with financial assistance, you pay only 30% of your income.
- Okay.
- [Mike] 'Cause that's when the coin ops.
- Oh yeah, that looks like fun.
- I've been all over the world in the 18 years I was in the Marines, and when I came here, honestly, this is the most dangerous place in the world that I have ever been, because as soon as we formed a group of people and started fighting back to take the building back away from these people, of course, we got targeted. And at the time, when I first got here and the problems, there were 11 drug dealers in the building. And we targeted them and got with Burlington Housing and Burlington Housing did a good job working to evict them. But it takes several months to get people out to do that. But it really put a target on us to the point where they made three attempts at beating me up. When it first happened, I said, "Well, I better get pepper spray." (laughs) And then, after the second time, I said, "Well, I better get a stun gun." And then, after two Philadelphia gang drug members caught me in the elevator and said, "We're gonna shoot you 'cause you're disrupting our business," I started carrying a pistol.
- [Peter] So you have a lot of out of Vermont drug dealers coming up here and?
- So the drugs that come into this building come from Springfield, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and New York City.
- [Peter] Okay, and they just know Burlington's a great market?
- They know it's a good market. And if you research, like, last fall, there were eight murders in Vermont, all drug related, almost every one of those murders was related to the Springfield, Massachusetts drug gang.
So, Peter, this is our community room where we hold dinners, monthly meetings, and people can come in here for recreation. We now have locks on all the windows and we have alarms on the doors.
- Okay.
- But the homeless people were coming in and literally cutting the screens and unlocking and climbing in through the windows, even after these doors are locked at nine o'clock at night. And then, they would set those doors so that they looked like they were closed, but they were just barely shut so they could open them and they weren't actually locked. So now there's alarms on the doors.
- Right, oh yeah, you can see.
- [Mike] It's somebody's firsthand.
- [Peter] Yeah, literally, you can see where the hands were.
- [Mike] Yeah, like I said, this one as well, like I said, you can see where the hands were when they tried to push it up.
- [Peter] Are they still defacing the pool?
- Yes, I think cut it.
- Yeah.
- When I first got here, one of the things that was a real problem for the residents were homeless people were just walking in the front door and all of the packages from the post office, FedEx, UPS, were all being left on a table out front. They would just literally walk in the door and fill duffle bags and take everything out of there. The other thing that was happening, they were coming in here with shopping carts full of stolen goods, hundreds of dollars at a time, and fencing it through residents that lived in this building.
- [Peter] Oh.
- Who are now gone.
- [Peter] So the stuff that's getting stolen off Church Street could come down here?
- Come here, and they would fence it to someone that was living in this building who would then sell it, and he'd give 'em the money, they could buy their drugs, and then he was reselling. Some of them would just resell it themselves, they would go into that community room and lay it out like it was a flea market or something and people would come in and buy their stuff at 25% of what the tag price was.
- [Peter] Geez.
- So what we did is we created a plan, presented it to Burlington Housing, they bought the cage. But you can see the sign, it's completely run by the residents. We come down every day, UPS and FedEx, all of their packages get locked up in here and they're very cooperative with the program.
- [Peter] Okay.
- And we pass out the packages every day to the residents, and we've stopped most of the theft.
- [Peter] And you made the paper, look at this. (Kathy chuckles) Fight for Decker Towers. So how many drug dealers do you think are in the building now?
- Six. And then, the one that is maybe the worst drug dealer in the building right now, beat the eviction because they do it by trying to take away their subsidy and making 'em fall behind on rent 'cause these are all low level drug dealers, it's the people from Philadelphia and Springfield, New York City that are making the money.
- [Peter] Okay.
- And in fact-
- [Peter] These are their operatives.
- And in fact, right, there was a major crack dealer out in New York City who had a meth lab on the fourth floor and he was busted back in March or April. And then the person whose apartment he was using is now in jail on federal drug charges. Since those people have moved out, they've taken advantage of other drug users and now have infiltrated into some of their apartments. I would say that we have three drug dealers in the building, but we have six apartments that are suspected of drug activity, running the drugs, being the intermediaries for the people coming from out of town into here. So there's still a lot of drug activity here. And that's the other attraction for these homeless people that are using the drugs. Again, they don't wanna go to the shelters where they have to follow the rules, you know, no drugs, no alcohol. They can come here, use their drugs, use their alcohol, there's a very vulnerable population. We had three documented armed robberies at gunpoint in our stairwells last year and two rapes of these people, you know?
- [Peter] Geez.
- So residents were at the point where they're afraid to come out of their apartment for fear of whatever's gonna happen to 'em.
- Ugh, that's terrible. So you have old retirees and-
- Right.
- You know, people not in the prime of their youth having to deal with all the crime and they feel threatened here.
- Absolutely, and a lot of the elderly people here are not only elderly, but they also, some of them have, you know, mental disabilities or vulnerabilities, things, PTSD, traumatic experiences from other aspects of their life. And so, it's a very difficult environment for them, and that's one of the things that, when I came here, I thought this was just gonna be a temporary kind of transition area for me.
- Right.
- And once I got here, I saw the people that were here and that they're people who are vulnerable and don't really know how to advocate for themselves that are kind of beaten down from so much of the, well, for lack of a better term, institutionalized.
- Mm-hm.
- Into this kind of public housing and always being told, "You're a second class citizen." So what myself and Mike and a group of other people have tried to get the message to 'em, "You're not a second class citizen, you can't let people treat you like a second class citizen, start taking some pride in your own home and yourself." And we've really kind of turned the building around, I think.
- Cool.
- We've made a lot of changes and people are feeling better about themselves and people are willing to fight back. This building was the drug hub of Burlington, Vermont, and we're getting it turned around, but we know winter's coming and they're coming back. So what we're doing right now, as residents, we're creating a plan, a security plan, we're going to present that to Burlington Housing next week and to the mayor's office and to the city counselors and try to get everybody together at the table to talk about, use our plan as a baseline to start talking about a real plan to stop these people so we don't return to what we had last year. (footsteps tapping) (intriguing music) (people chattering)
All right, guys, full circle back to beautiful Lake Champlain. What an interesting day, and I wanna thank all of those who spoke up today on camera because, for every one of the people you saw, there were many more that had a strong opinion, wanted to say something, but were scared of the power button. And my advice to you would be, don't be scared, there are more people that feel that this is not sustainable or acceptable than you'd think. Policies equal realities, and, yes, this is a super complex situation, there's no easy fix. But what currently exists doesn't work in the long run. So I feel like Burlington's on sort of a knife's edge, it's down pretty low right now. It can either come around with some of the momentum we saw today, some of the compassioned citizens that wanna make this place better, or it could continue going down further. That's up to the people here, you know, speaking up, what policies they vote for. And in Vermont, it's always been a very community-driven place, and I feel there's nothing that this place, as cheesy as that sounds, can't overcome. Dig into the policies, dig into the people behind those policies, dig into where the money comes from, and usually, you'll find an interesting story. All right guys, thanks for coming along on that journey, until the next one. (cool music)