FECES EVERYWHERE — never true.
The Brattleboro “health officer” Charles Keirr came to our camp February knowing what he wanted to prove. See the video at right. He walks to the south end of the property looking for feces, and when he doesn’t see any he asks. It’s in the video: Daims tells him three times that the “tenants” (wrong word for the homeless guests) use the toilet around the corner at Groundworks. Then the officer sees some frozen material in a plastic bag in the trash. He doesn’t examine it or take a sample. And he says they’re going to call it feces.
Then in his reports he says feces is everywhere — “throughout the yard”, “throughout the property”, and “exterior to the property”, as if it’s overflowing onto our neighbors. This fabricated evidence is the centerpiece of the Town’s case. At trial he said he saw human feces and could be certain it was human feces and not dog feces because he had been a Boy Scout.
IMMEDIATE FIRE HAZARD: also never true.
The “health officer” met our master electrician,
Steve Werbin, at the inspection and said that the RV’s are dangerous because Steve was licensed in New Jersey. Electricians work under the National Electrical Code, same in Jersey as in Vermont. But the “health officer” uses that technicality to distort the truth and fabricate an “immediate fire hazard”.
At the end of his inspection he says it’s safer to sleep in the snow than in our RV’s. It’s wintertime, remember. Temps had been 17 below zero.
A man died in Brattleboro without heat two weeks later. That man would have survived the winter in our heated RVs
The “health officer” is under-educated.
See the State Health Board licensing image below. He has no electrician license, no plumbing license. See the State Board of Health bylaws: the health officer position requires no special training or education. He knows what he wants, and he makes his reports to suit what he wants.
This image shows where Mr. Keir would be listed if he had any license.
Another good electrician who has worked on the site is Charles Chandler. He has a license and is shown in the registry.
One hand doesn’t know . . . .
BCS invited town officials several times since June, 2022 to help with the permitting process for this unusual project. Some officials were helpful. The zoning administrator commended the project, citing the emergency. On October 13, 2022 he waived the fees and told us to delay the permitting.
In February the lawsuits started.
Others, like select-woman Elizabeth McLoughlin DENIED there was a housing emergency (see the February hearing).
Besides their outrageous lies about feces and immediate fire hazard, the town says that crimes against humanity are FACTS at the shelter: not accusations, but facts, as if there had been a trial and a conviction.
Town officials did their best to spread rumors.
Comments were written on “complaint ” forms, but are not really complaints.
The Town is overboard with its vendetta against us. This “Interrogatory” is their way of intimidating people who help us.
We refused, and the Town may be looking for another way.
The Town is threatening us with $3 million fines — $10,000 per day.
At our “trial” February 21 selectwoman Elizabeth McLoughlin objected to the chairperson referring to the housing emergency. She said BCS (Daims) was the only one declaring it that. BTW the housing crisis was already a national issue. The only deniers were on the Brattleboro selectboard. (The selectboard is the health board). See Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjZ282hGs2Q&t=3669s
At that same “trial” selectman Tim Wessel proposes closing the shelter “immediately”. That meant kicking people out in the street at 9PM on a winter night. Look how eager he is. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjZ282hGs2Q&t=4235s (starts at 1:10:35)
One person called in to say she saw our online ad for new rentals in RVs. This was for a related project that ended months before the Town got involved. She had no way of knowing there was any rent. This was evidence of an advertisement, but the Town told other judges that it had this evidence of rent.
Goodnow says it’s all clear, no need to deliberate. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjZ282hGs2Q&t=3646s (starts at 1:00:46)
Chairperson Goodnow praised our noble intentions, but Selectperson McLoughlin objects, saying there was no housing emergency “I just take exception to your use of the word, uh, ‘housing emergency’ in the state of Vermont. We have not declared it as such. Only Mr. Daims has declared it as such.” (We didn’t. Everyone was already talking about it.) See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjZ282hGs2Q&t=3675s (starts at 1:01:15)
Here is an E-mail from one nice lady saying she reported what someone else told her, because she couldn’t see from her house.
And on top of that the health order, issued the next day, lists as “FACT” that there were corroborating witnesses about crimes against humanity, feces, immediate fire danger, and there were not such comments. Comments were about whether the matter concerned BCS the corporation, whether to accept BCS written testimony, whether there were rental arrangements. One person who probably didn’t have X-ray vision and had never been in the RVs confirmed all the claims about inside the RVs. He said that his baby — 18 months old –had reported someone going to the bathroom outside the RVs.
Ms. Freeman. Forgive me for overlooking your comment. Do you have a home now ?
Ms. King. (I tried to respond to you directly, but your email didn’t work.)
The shelter is a project of a corporate charity. The RVs never were my property. People have jobs with the charity, and I’ve been told that distributing cards was not my job although I like doing it.
There were perfectly innocent personal reasons for me not to attend the hearing.
There is nothing wrong with sending our electrician to submit our testimony on paper.
A paper document was appropriate for rebutting the many technical claims.
The evidence that the town had presented was false. No witness claimed to have seen any poop. One man SAID that his baby daughter SAID she had seen it. Her father said it, not her. The truth is, nobody here was defecating in the yard. Kevin and Stacey didn’t. They were staying here and volunteered to speak in their own defense. Wouldn’t you ?
Yes we had spoken with town officers many times before we actually had the RVs here. The zoning officer said in email that it was an emergency and we shouldn’t let the permitting process delay the project. We, too, felt it was an emergency, and you might agree if you had been sleeping in the snow. I can forward his email to you, if you like.
I just watched the Feb. 21, 2023 select board meeting and what mystifies me is WHY the board seems to have zero grasp of the reality of getting the list remedied in 10 days — and now as I am hearing it, 5 days??? – And $25,000 doesn’t even scratch the surface as financial aid to meet the requirements on 3 RVS… presuming all 3 require the same remediation in all aspects. No one addressed that point. That kind of money is an insult to anyone who needs much more financial aid, which unfortunately is the way government works.
Why is 10 days the magic number? Is this to mitigate the harm on the renters who must find somewhere else to live for 10 days?
They are not interested either in researching other resources for the displaced renters. They also ignore the fact that these are adults, they already know how to live in something like an RV. They ignore the reality of RVs in that they are self-contained, you can’t just go in and remove materials that are integral to the RV such as wallcoverings, whatever came with the RV out of the factory.
In short, this select board is willing to expose these renters to even greater risk in the dead of winter, in the name of making them “safe” and “secure.” If any of these renters were living in their OWN RV on their OWN land, no one would bat an eye.
It also seems that the landowner is being ignored in terms of his commitment to singlehandedly resolve the housing crisis for 3 households, using his own property. He is not giving up on them, period. Again, they are adults, they know how to live under the housing conditions.
My read is that the select board is giving excessive weight to neighbors. One man was sitting in the back row, having given testimony, but nodding, grimacing and obviously trying to influence the board decisions using body language. As for his 18-month-old daughter observing “several” instances of people relieving themselves in public, that rings absolutely incredible, a lie made to sway opinions his way.
Where is the cooperation with agencies who could place
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Hi Julia,
Did you actually watch the video or are you a chat bot? If you had watched the hearing, you would have seen that Kurt Daims couldn’t be bothered to show up to his own DRB meeting. He had his unhoused tenants come and testify in his place, which was probably quite traumatizing for them. Stacey was so nervous she could hardly read the letter she wrote. It was just like the way Kurt made one of his first tenants, a woman escaping an abusive relationship, go door to door in the neighborhood to talk about and promote HIS project, instead of Kurt taking the responsibility of doing it himself. What a guy! In the video, and in other court documents, it is expressed that Kurt knew that he was permitted to have an RV as an accessory dwelling unit on his property in the town of Brattleboro as long as it was hooked up properly to sewer and electric. He failed to do this, and was given another chance even before this hearing. The hearing was in Feb, he placed the RVs in November so he had that much time to hook them up to sewer and electric but he didn’t. It actually took him that long to put a fire extinguisher in the RV’s which is pathetic. He was never allowed to have 3 on his property and he knew this but did it anyway. It is a high density area and poses a health and safety risk. There was a health inspection to follow up on the multiple complaints and yes, human feces were found in the yard and in bags in the trash. Neighbors abutting the rear of his property and to the side witnessed people urinating and defecting in his backyard. Tennants in the RV’s said it was disgusting. It is unacceptable. Go ahead and write that “furious” letter to the Reformer. I would suggest doing a little more research before you paint him as some kind of saint, or the neighbors, who have serious concerns for the occupants of the RV’s and their own health and safety, as a bunch of NIMBYs.
This is extremely dismaying and frustrating, but unfortunately it does not surprise me. I am drafting a lengthy comment to send to the Reformer… Vermont is fast revealing an ugly trend that has been imported by people who share the same supercilious mindset. Could you perhaps take it to the Vermont Supreme Court?
I was homeless in vermont during covid and im still traumatized by the experience.