Williston Observer

By Kim Howard
Observer staff

As residents and emergency officials debate the merits of an upcoming vote to expand Williston emergency services, the new fire and rescue station is moving quickly toward completion.

Construction of Williston’s new station will be largely complete by the end of April, according to Dan Heath, job site superintendent with Bread Loaf Corp.

“It’s going to be a sharp-looking building,” Heath said at the end of a 30-minute tour with a reporter on Monday.

The 23,000-square-foot building is located at the corner of U.S. Route 2 and Talcott Rd. A new 13,000-square-foot police station also is being constructed adjacent to Town Hall on U.S. Route 2.

The combined $8 million project costs homeowners roughly $50 per $100,000 of a home’s assessed value. For a $300,000 house, that’s $150 a year.

The late arrival of cold weather this winter enabled crews to get more exterior work done on the fire station earlier than expected, Heath said, allowing his crew to focus on interior work through winter. By spring, Heath said some landscaping and sidewalk work will still need to be done outside.

“About the time that happens, inside here we’ll be right down the punch list wrapping little odds and ends up,” Heath said.

The east side of the new fire and emergency medical services station includes two large truck garage bays, a smaller back garage, a gear room and training areas above the bays. The far side of that area has a partial certification of occupancy to allow some fire vehicles to be stored there during the winter.

The west side of the building includes four offices, two conference/work rooms, a fitness center, five dorm rooms, two locker rooms, three bathrooms, storage rooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a laundry room and a common living room.

Heath’s counterpart in charge of the new police station construction is on vacation this week. Heath, who’s in charge in the meantime, said the police station is likely to be ready within a few weeks after the fire and rescue station.

“He’s got a little more exterior site work to do, but it’s a lot smaller site so it should go quick,” Heath said.

The police station includes a secured garage called a “sallyport,” an evidence garage, a 40-person training room, two interview rooms, two conference rooms, a fitness center, six offices, storage areas, locker rooms and detective work space.

Construction costs are on budget, according to both Tom Barden, overall project manager, and Williston Town Manager Rick McGuire.

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March 6 vote: More career or volunteer?

By Kim Howard
Observer staff

Editor’s note: This week the Observer looks at fire services in Williston. Last week we looked at the town’s Emergency Medical Services.

Once the call came in on the evening of Dec. 13 that a Chapman Lane house was on fire, by national standards the Williston Fire Department took a long time to get there.

Chief Ken Morton said he arrived at the Moon house within five minutes. Within 10 minutes, Morton said three others had arrived – two of whom were not qualified to enter a burning building, if it had been needed. Within 15 minutes, three more firefighters were at the scene.

“All engines should be there within eight minutes,” said Carl Peterson, assistant director of the National Fire Protection Association Fire Protection Division , referring to ideal response time. “The first one should be there within four minutes, carrying four people.”

If the call had come in earlier – when a full-time staff was on – or had Williston had full-time staff working nights, a crew of four could have been there faster, Morton said.

Volunteer staff “can live anywhere from a mile and a quarter to six miles from the firehouse,” Morton said. Clearing a car of snow and driving into the station “can chew up (to) the first seven minutes of the call.”

Because there is no guarantee that enough trained people will show up at the scene of a fire in Williston on nights and weekends, and because the number of calls has grown, Morton said, Williston needs to consider relying more heavily on career firefighters.

On March 6, Williston voters will decide if they approve of adding six full-time firefighters/emergency medical technicians to the town payroll to cover nights and weekends. The proposal includes the creation of a town-run ambulance, staffed by the same firefighters/EMTs. Approval of Article 9 would mean at least three full-time staff covering fire and emergency medical calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

A five-year $621,000 federal SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) grant would pay all of the salaries for the first two years, and part of the salaries in years three to five. The remainder of the initiative would be paid for by ambulance service revenue and property taxes. In the initiative’s most expensive year, town officials estimate it will cost homeowners $20 per $100,000 of a home’s assessed value.

Few structure fires, calls increasing

Between 2001 and 2005 – Williston’s peak call year to date – fire calls in town increased 142 percent. Emergency medical calls in that time increased 49 percent.

Of the 773 fire calls in 2005 reported in the department’s federal SAFER grant application, more than 50 percent were false alarms and service/good intent calls (for example, someone sees a car on the side of the road and calls it in). One-third of calls were for hazardous conditions like a downed electrical wire or icy roads. Fires included 12 structural fires, 10 vehicle fires, and nine vegetation fires.

Safety in numbers

Williston currently employs four full-time firefighter/EMTs in addition to Chief Morton. Those staff members cover fire and first-response emergency medical calls Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., the time Morton says the majority of calls are made.

On nights and weekends, fire calls are covered by a network of about 20 on-call volunteers. Though they are paid for each call made, they are “volunteer” because they are not required to respond to any given call in the same way as full-time staff.

Of Williston’s 12 structure fires in 2005, the department assembled the minimum number of firefighters in compliance with National Fire Protection Association standards only six times, according to the department’s application for a federal grant.

“The numbers have been down,” on-call firefighter Earl Davies said. “A lot of times we go out of the station with only two or three (people) on an engine which shouldn’t (happen). There should be at least four.”

Those four people represent what is called the “two-in, two-out” standard, as outlined by the National Fire Protection Association and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. For their own safety, firefighters should only enter a burning building in pairs, and only when there is at least one pair outside the building to monitor them and if necessary initiate rescue and call for backup. The two-in, two-out requirement is waived under OSHA standards when a life is in jeopardy. State and local government employees are not governed by those OSHA standards, though they are the common sense standards in firefighting circles.

If the March 6 proposal passes, three full-time firefighters/EMTs would be on staff nights and weekends, Morton said, still requiring at least one on-call firefighter for each shift.

On-call firefighter Geoff Elder, who said he responds to about 70 percent of all fire calls days and nights, concurred with Davies’ assessment that fewer on-call firefighters seem to be responding to calls. Volunteer firefighters have other significant commitments like jobs and families.

“You don’t know what the call is until you get there,” Elder said. For a faulty alarm system, he acknowledged you don’t need many people responding. He added, however, that “if it’s something more serious and you only have three or four people, you’re starting off behind.”

Mixed qualifications

The State of Vermont has no minimum qualifications for a volunteer firefighter, according to Vermont Fire Academy Chief of Training Jim Litevich. Many volunteers, though, do try to get all the training they can, he said.

Williston’s four full-time firefighters are certified at both the Firefighter 1 and Firefighter 2 levels, the latter a more advanced training than the basic Firefighter 1 curriculum.

Williston’s on-call staff training is mixed, according to Morton. Fifty percent (11) do not hold current certifications – their certifications have lapsed or they became volunteers under an older training curriculum. The other 50 percent are certified at either the Firefighter 1 (5 volunteers) or Firefighter 2 (4 volunteers) level. Two new recruits will complete Firefighter 1 certification this spring.

“The reason for recertification is to keep them fresh and up to speed in case they haven’t used some of those skills,” Litevich said. Lapsed certifications do not mean incompetence, he said; they can still do the job.

“If they’ve taken a course and passed it, they still have a lot of that knowledge base,” he said.

Morton said he highly values the work on-call firefighters do, which is why they’ll continue to be integral to fire call response staffing. On the lapsed certifications, he noted that it’s already hard to get volunteers who can commit the number of hours required to not only get certified, but maintain that certification, and train on the department’s wide range of equipment.

“If I squeezed on call (staff) and forced them to get certification, we’d lose more of them,” he said.

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Homes may fill need for entry-level workers

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

Affordable housing advocates want to build homes behind Williston Town Hall that can be purchased by people now priced out of the market.

The Burlington-based Champlain Housing Trust and the Williston Interfaith Affordable Housing Task Force seek to construct as many as 20 units on the town-owned property. The groups hope the town will donate land for the project.

Members of the groups spoke with the Selectboard last week about the proposal for the 8-acre parcel called the Lyon property. The Champlain Housing Trust seeks grants to fund a study of the site, but the town must be the grant applicant.

The groups “have concluded that the town-owned Lyon property may offer a suitable location to create new and permanently affordable homes that could be sold to town employees, as a priority, and to others who live, work or have grown up in Williston but cannot afford to purchase a home here,” wrote Liz Curry, project developer for the Champlain Housing Trust, in a letter to the town.

Ruth Painter, a member of the Williston Interfaith Affordable Housing Task Force, said the goal is to build single-family homes priced between $160,000 and $180,000. That would be roughly half what the average Williston home sold for in 2006.

“We want to have houses in town that will be affordable for people with entry-level jobs,” Painter said. “We don’t just want to have a town for people who are wealthy.”

The proposal would have to navigate an extensive planning and approval process, so it is too soon to determine the precise number and price of the homes, Curry said in an interview.

The prices would in part depend on how many homes can be built at the site, as determined by the study. Curry said the project would include both market-rate and lower-priced homes.

Painter said some of the homes could be reserved for town employees, particularly firefighters, police officers and teachers earning entry-level salaries. That would create a “win-win” situation for the town, she said, providing nearby homes for municipal workers and potentially reducing employee turnover.

Starter homes are in increasingly short supply in Williston. Though prices recently leveled off, home values have seen annual double-digit percentage increases over the past several years.

Jan Lawson, a veteran real estate agent who works for RE/MAX North Professionals, said recent Multiple Listing Service data indicate homes in Williston sold for an average of $353,000 in 2006. The Web site www.housingdata.org shows the median sale price for single-family homes in town was $306,000 in 2005, still out of reach for many.

“There’s an awful lot of people who have lived in Williston for a long time who wouldn’t be able to afford the house they live in now,” Lawson said.

The Williston Interfaith Affordable Housing Task Force grew out of a small group formed at Williston Federation Church a few years ago. During monthly discussions, group members learned that none of their children could afford a home in Williston, Painter said.

The group set out to change that. Group member George Gerecke sent out letters to each property owner with more than 10 acres asking them to donate, or offer at a reduced price, land where affordable homes could be built.

There were some responses, but nothing concrete came of the effort. Then the group looked at town-owned land and found the Lyon property.

Over the years, the town has considered several proposals for the land, including an agricultural museum. Most recently, residents suggested a community center be built at the location.

A group has been formed to study that proposal. Town Manager Rick McGuire said the study is still in its early stages and the group has yet to determine if a community center should be built, let alone its location.

But even if a community center is built at the site, he said it would not preclude affordable housing.

“This use is not inconsistent with what the housing group has proposed,” McGuire said. “They might even complement each other.”

He said no matter what happens, a study will be helpful because it will allow the town to find out how much of the land can be developed.

Curry said Williston residents will have ample opportunity to learn more about and comment on the affordable housing proposal. If the project is deemed feasible, it would be subject to the town’s development review process.

A public hearing on the proposal will be held Monday, March 12 at Williston Town Hall. The hearing begins at 8 p.m.

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By Marianne Apfelbaum
Observer staff

A former employee of Roadside Marine in Williston was arrested on Tuesday afternoon after allegedly embezzling more than $27,000 from the company.

Sara Slattery, 26, of Essex, was arrested by Williston Police as she was returning from her lunch break at Lang Associates in Burlington, where she had been working as a receptionist for the past week.

Police say Slattery was recently “let go” from her bookkeeping position at Roadside Marine because she wasn’t showing up for work. The company’s owner, Tony Brisson, was subsequently “reviewing his books” police say, when he discovered that a $5,000 check had been made out to Slattery.

Brisson did not return a phone call from the Observer seeking comment.

Police say Brisson notified them six weeks ago about the check, and asked that they investigate. Officer Randall Tucker said police “had to wait for an inquest subpoena” before they could review her bank records, which took about three weeks.

Police received the records Tuesday, and Tucker said they discovered Slattery had written more than $27,000 in checks to herself in less than 6 months.

“In August alone, she wrote over $16,500 in checks,” Tucker said.

Police determined that Slattery was working at Lang Associates, and called her to ask her to come into the station for questioning. Tucker said she agreed to come to the station at 1 p.m., but didn’t show up. She called at 1:40 p.m., and told police she was “busy at work but had called her former boss and they had agreed to work things out.”

Police called Brisson, who denied having spoken with Slattery. Police went to Lang Associates and waited for Slattery to return from lunch. She was arrested in the parking lot and brought to the Williston Police station for processing, Tucker said.

Tom Heney, Vice President of Operations for Lang, said Slattery was hired as a receptionist and had “been with us about a week.” Heney said she “disappeared at the lunch hour,” and he didn’t know why she had been arrested. “We don’t have any formal comment,” he said.

Slattery, who police said “has a previous history of fraud,” was taken to the Chittenden County Regional Correctional Facility on $5,000 bail after being charged with embezzlement and uttering a forged instrument. The latter charge stemmed from Slattery writing checks and signing Brisson’s name without authorization, according to Tucker.

Slattery was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday to face the charges.

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By Ben Moger-Williams
Observer staff

A young girl’s seizure, a man’s bloodied leg through a glass table, and a woman’s broken shinbone piercing through her skin were all recent Williston emergencies.

The three Williston residents involved in these incidents spoke at the public hearing on the town budget last week. They said that their emergencies would have been better handled if the town had its own ambulance service, one of the items that could come before voters in March.

Williston Fire Chief Ken Morton hopes voters this year will authorize the purchase of two ambulances and the hiring of six more full time firefighter/emergency medical technicians to staff an ambulance service for the town. The town has commissioned a study on the cost and feasibility of the ambulance service. Morton said the study will be complete Jan. 22. The Selectboard will then decide whether to put funding for the ambulance service and staff in the town budget, or have residents vote on it as a separate ballot item at town meeting.

Currently Williston uses St. Michael’s Rescue for ambulance service. Morton said having a town ambulance service could cut the response time from an average of 11-14 minutes to within 3-4 minutes. The increased demand for ambulance services in Williston has made the need for a town ambulance service a matter of some urgency, according to Morton.

The residents who showed up to speak echoed Morton’s sentiment.

“My sense is that we as a community have an opportunity to upgrade what is already a fine service,” said Katherine Stamper, a resident since 1992. Stamper said she once had to call 911 for her daughter’s friend who had a seizure. She said that while the first responder service was excellent, the ambulance response time could have been better.

Fourteen-year Williston resident Danny Bulger agreed. Bulger said a month ago his wife fell in his driveway and suffered a compound fracture in her leg, with the bone breaking the skin. He called 911, he said, but had to wait too long for an ambulance to arrive.

“Seeing your wife lying in the driveway out in the cold, with a compound fracture for half an hour is very frustrating,” Bulger said.

Ted Marcy, a physician at Fletcher Allen Health Care, said he had to call an ambulance after he accidentally put his foot through a glass table.

“In certain situations first responders have limited abilities to act on things,” Marcy said. “I would encourage the Selectboard to put this proposal to a vote.”

At the hearing, Morton also read a letter from Joseph Haddock, medical director of the Thomas Chittenden Health Center in Williston.

“The physicians of the Thomas Chittenden Health Center strongly support the development of a Williston ambulance service,” the letter read. “Whether patients are at home, work, shopping, or at our facility, the response time would be much better than the present situation where they are dependent on local first response crews or rescue squads from neighboring towns.”

If approved, the cost of the additional six full-time firefighter/EMTs needed to staff the ambulance would be covered for the first five years by a $621,000 federal grant the department won in November. The ambulances (a new one and a used one for backup) would likely cost about $250,000, which could be bonded by the town.

The Selectboard will meet again Jan. 11, at 7 p.m., to discuss the budget.

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