During their meeting this week, Burlington, Vermont city councilors approved a draft project proposal to create an Overdose Prevention Center in the city.
In 2024, the Vermont Legislature passed Act 178, allowing the state’s largest city to create an Overdose Prevention Center pilot program. The program is intended to be a supervised location for drug users where they can also receive harm reduction services.
Burlington must submit a plan to the Department of Health that meets or exceeds guidelines stipulated in Act 178.
Burlington Special Assistant on OPC Implementation Theresa Vezina noted there had been a work session two weeks ago and no councilors requested changes to the draft. She outlined what the next steps would be if councilors approved the project proposal and compliance plan.
“After tonight’s vote we would submit this proposal to the Health Department. We then anticipate being in contract development and negotiations with the state. We have learned it takes about 6 weeks for the review of the proposal and then get through the contract negotiations and agreements. So we’re anticipating that to be happening in May and June, coming back to the city council to get council approval on the state contracts and for the acceptance of the grant funds from the opioid settlement funds. We would then move forward with subcontracting so that we could begin this project in earnest,” Vezina reported.
Councilors voted unanimously to approve the plan and forward it to the state Health Department.
Ward 7 Democrat Evan Litwin said Burlington needs the proposed center.
“We need something. I know that there are skeptics out there and many of your concerns are valid. Equally doing nothing is not going to address the substance use crisis. It’s not going to help get people into recovery tracks and is certainly not going to save lives or deal with the copious amounts of syringe litter," Litwin said. "It’s going to help create pathways, in my mind, for folks to make the hard change to kind of make that shift in their life and they’re going to have hopefully trusted relationships there that they can rely on.”
Central District Progressive Melo Grant said the city has been slow to look at new ideas and is pleased that the city is closer to opening an Overdose Prevention Center.
“I do know and I have heard continued concerns that quite frankly are fear based. They’re not fact based. We have a crisis that is out of control. We have a crisis that needs to be attacked on several fronts," Grant noted. "We cannot arrest away substance use disorder. We have to have that part that is harm reduction. We do need to arrest people who are trafficking in our community.”
North District Democrat Mark Barlow said he supports planning for the center and feels its location must be a critical consideration.
“My concerns aren’t fear based. They’re really based on the experiences we’ve had in placing other services in our downtown, in our central business district and the collateral effects we’ve seen specifically around the needle exchange and around the pod shelter community," Barlow explained. "Those neighborhoods had issues and so I hope that as we stand up an OPC that we wouldn’t have these issues. It’s going to be really important where we put this.”
Councilor Litwin said the project won’t work unless it’s in the downtown area.
“It’s not going to work if it’s in an area that isn’t accessible and near the folks who need the services," Litwin said. "And on top of that the money that we’re getting from the overdose prevention fund is certainly not enough to build a brand new building. We only have so many buildings that we can retrofit. And there are only so many locations in the city that we will be able to look to. We do need to be mindful of not locating it maybe across the street from a school, but being mindful that it’s somewhere that makes sense.”
