RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – Drug addiction, homelessness, and crime are issues many Vermont communities are grappling with, and community leaders in Rutland continue to envision a better way to address them.
“I remember being in high school and the first Project Vision iteration coming and speaking to my homeroom and talking about the reduction in crime through community policing,” said Kiana McClure, who now serves as Project VISION’s co-chair.
The coalition of over 300 area organizations has the mission of turning the Marble City into one of the safest places in the state and country. Rutland Mayor Mike Doenges says the idea was originally pitched as community policing but has evolved into something bigger. “It’s about connecting community resources for those that are the most in need in our community. And instead of just sending a police officer to go deal with a challenge, you’re sending community resource officers, you’re having a community saying, I know where need is, and meeting that need,” he said.
Public health issues like homelessness, theft, and drug addiction are a focus of the effort. It comes as the rate of opioid overdose deaths in 2022 among Rutland County residents was the highest in the state, according to the Vermont Department of Health,
The line between public safety and public health is very blurry if not there at all,” McClure said. “Mental health and substance abuse are both needs that need to be met from a public health perspective. But also these individual’s safety, as well as the safety of neighborhoods that they live in and are spending time in, are equally as important.”
Project VISION has also expanded its efforts beyond Rutland City and into adjacent areas. “We do not have problems that are exclusively ours,” McClure said. “We need to have collaborative strategies and collaborative organizations working hard to make sure we are all combating the same struggles that our communities are facing.”
Despite these efforts, leaders admit there is still a long way to go from where they started a decade ago.
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