Gov. Phil Scott and Secretary of Administration Sarah Clark defended the state’s decision to install speakers that play recorded bird calls outside the Pavilion Building in Montpelier, telling reporters Wednesday that the alternative was arresting people.
“The other solution would be to make arrests, and that’s not what we’re trying to do,” Scott said. “We’re just trying to get people to act appropriately when they’re in this community — the capital of the state — and misusing some of the state resources and buildings.”
The Pavilion houses the governor’s office, the treasurer, the attorney general, the Supreme Court, and, on the ground floor, the Vermont History Museum. The devices are speakers mounted at the building that play amplified bird calls on a timer overnight. The Department of Buildings and General Services installed them this summer. Their existence became public Tuesday through reporting by Vermont Public and VTDigger.
What the state says it tried first
Clark, who oversees Buildings and General Services, described a sequence stretching back months.
“The decision to install the birding noise device came after a long process and trying many different mechanisms to address some of the activity that we were seeing in that area,” she said. The activity, by her account:
altercations breaking out in the area
defecation, with the results left on the porch and in the lawn
used needles
a fire on the porch
broken windows
Before the speakers, she said, the state tried gradual approaches — including a porta-potty placed in the area and cleaned regularly, and signs asking people to please use it. The defecation continued.
“I personally witnessed one day a group of children playing hide and go seek in that area,” Clark said. “And not only children, but we all kind of recreate and visit this area.”
The speakers came after that. “We took a further step, after trying more gradual approaches, to address some of the — I would say it was probably illegal activity — that wasn’t curtailing,” she said. She put the operating hours at “I think between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.”
“This is not a decision that happened lightly or overnight,” Clark said. “It was building over months of trying to meet people and their needs in that area that ultimately were not successful.”
The rationale Scott gave Wednesday matches what the department said before the story broke. The deputy commissioner of Buildings and General Services told Vermont Public last week that the speakers were an alternative to heavier-handed approaches like law enforcement or fencing. Two officials, in two different months, gave the same reason: the state had the enforcement option and declined it.
The civil offense question
Asked what people at the building were doing wrong, Scott listed the conduct and added one more item.
“Starting fires and having fights and altercations and so forth,” he said, “and even sleeping on the grounds is a civil offense.”
The rules that govern conduct on the Pavilion grounds are the state’s own. Buildings and General Services adopted its State Facilities Rules under 29 V.S.A. § 152(14), and they apply to all state land and buildings under the commissioner’s jurisdiction. Read start to finish, they do not name sleeping as prohibited conduct. They bar improperly disposing of rubbish, damaging state property, creating hazards, breaching the peace, panhandling, and consuming alcohol or controlled substances.
What the rules do say is that state facilities — a term the rules define to include grounds — are closed to the public outside posted access hours of 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., except by permission of the commissioner. Someone asleep on the Pavilion porch at 2 a.m. is on closed grounds.
Whether that is a civil offense, as Scott put it, is less clear. Two other provisions could apply, and they are not civil:
Unlawful trespass, 13 V.S.A. § 3705, is a criminal charge.
Overnight camping, 19 V.S.A. § 1106, bars using public land not designated for the purpose as an overnight camping area, and carries a fine of up to $50 for each day of violation. It sits in the highways title, in the chapter on protecting highways.
Clark hedged where Scott didn’t. She called the conduct “probably illegal.” He called sleeping a civil offense. The administration did not specify which provision the governor was referring to.
What the department said in June
The public explanation of what the speakers are for has shifted, and the shift is documented.
Late June, as the state ordered the devices, the deputy commissioner of Buildings and General Services wrote in an email obtained by Vermont Public that the hope was to reduce the nighttime occupancy of the spaces.
Last week, the same official told Vermont Public the devices were not meant to address people sleeping there, but the activity associated with it.
Wednesday, the governor named sleeping on the grounds among the things people were doing wrong.
No one at the press conference put the June email to either official.
The city that wasn’t asked
A reporter asked whether Buildings and General Services had engaged Montpelier’s homelessness task force, or the city, about additional resources.
“I would say that BGS engages with the city of Montpelier regularly on many issues,” Clark said. “I can’t speak specifically to the issue of homeless.”
She said she and the department had talked with the Agency of Human Services about bringing services “to some of the individuals that we see not only on state property in Montpelier, but around the city.”
The chair of Montpelier’s homelessness committee, Zack Hughes, told Vermont Public that 61 people were counted living outdoors in the city last month. Montpelier’s only year-round shelter has 18 beds, and it was running about three-quarters full.
Where it stands
The speakers have not emptied the porch. Vermont Public reported that people were found sleeping outside the Pavilion on July 30, and that someone overdosed next to the building on Aug. 12. The department says the waste problem has improved. It has not pointed to records supporting that; the improvement rests on its own account.
Residents nearby reported on Front Porch Forum that they thought a real bird was in distress somewhere downtown.
The State Facilities Rules that govern what people may and may not do on the Pavilion grounds were last revised in December 1999 and took effect in February 2000.