This story by Matthew Thomas was first published in The Montpelier Bridge on Aug. 19, 2025.
At a time when Montpelier is overwhelmed by increasing numbers of people experiencing homelessness — and President Donald Trump has decreed that homeless people be removed from public spaces — the Montpelier City Council discussed amendments to the city’s public camping policy at Wednesday’s city council meeting.
The amended policy proposed by the City Manager’s Office passed along with two amendments during the meeting: one, proposed by Councilor Pelin Kohn, stipulated that the policy be reviewed again in six months; the other, by Councilor Cary Brown, removed the language from the city manager’s amendment designating all city parks as “High-Sensitivity Areas,” passing with help from the mayor’s tie-breaking vote.
“The city’s approach to camping in the city has not changed, and we’re not suggesting it would at this time,” said Acting City Manager Kelly Murphy. Murphy added that while the city does not allow public camping, it is also not looking to roust those who camp who aren’t causing a disturbance. So long as they are not doing so in “High-Sensitivity Areas,” a hot topic during discussion of proposed amendments to the city’s encampment policy.
Among the particulars of the amended policy are removing the Montpelier Police Department from tasks such as triaging the city’s response to moving an encampment. The Fire, EMS and Parks departments will now be part of the group notified by the City Manager’s Office of an encampment. The city manager will now coordinate the response, relieving the beleaguered police department from such responsibility.
Murphy said that her proposed amendments were not intended to be transformative. Rather, she said, they sought to bring the policy in line with de-facto city practice and also to account for current staff capacity. For example, Murphy cited the current practice of storing items cleared out of unattended encampments for 90 days; her office proposed the time limit be amended to 30 days so as to line up with the city’s actual storage capacity.
Councilor Adrienne Gil said she’s not interested in talking about changes until the city’s partners have also reviewed current policy and had a chance to offer input. “We need guidance in enforcement,” Murphy said in response. To which Gil replied, “We need an emergency meeting with our partners to go through this policy to have an understanding about what we want in our community. … Just having one side of the story, updating a policy, is not sufficient.”
Councilor Cary Brown agreed with Gil. “If we’re going to review this policy, it does need to be with everyone involved,” she said. “I think it’s a good idea to pull this policy out, to dust it off, take a look at it, because we went through a lot to put it in place.”
Brown did take issue with one of the proposals, which she deemed an “extremely substantive change,” a line in the notification letter affixed to the policy, which was amended to designate all city parks as “high-sensitivity areas,” and, therefore, subjecting any encampments within them to removal. According to Brown, this change negates the spirit and meaning of the entire original policy.
Contained in Murphy’s response was the paradox that has flummoxed the city for years and would return throughout the meeting: If public spaces are increasingly off limits to camping, where are unhoused people supposed to go?
Councilor Sal Alfano said the policy has “many inconsistencies” and suggested the whole thing be scrapped and the city start over. As an example, he noted where the policy states that shelter will be offered when moving campers out of prohibited areas. The problem is that the city has no shelter space to offer.
Members of the public weighed in as well.
Richard Sheir, of Montpelier, suggested that matters related to the parks fall under the jurisdiction of the elected Parks Commission, and perhaps not the city council.
Montpelier resident David Kitchen spoke about the encampments by the river near where he lives, and said he has instructed his son to no longer ride his bicycle on the bike path near the transit station but instead ride in traffic, as it’s “safer,” according to Kitchen.
“I rode through there the other day,” Kitchen said, “and two individuals blocked the path and they could tell I wasn’t going to stop. They split. One guy gives me the ‘finger gun,’ pulling his trigger. The other guy mentions something about ‘destruction,’ that he’s going to ‘destroy’ me.”
Montpelier residents Stan Brinkerhoff and TJ Poor both said that they do not allow their children to use the bike path by themselves. Poor said his daughter is afraid of using the bike path, and when she is downtown often crosses the street many times to avoid confrontation.
Bonnie Robertson, a 30-year resident of Montpelier, described her experience of using the bike path, citing broken glass on the ground, litter down by the river, fighting, and “half-naked” people relieving themselves by the river, among other examples of disorder. While noting that she does not want to see people moved, Robertson said “I would like to see the law being enforced,” a sentiment that was echoed throughout the meeting.
“I don’t have a solution for homelessness,” Robertson said. “But I don’t see why we can’t enforce the laws that are already on the books.”
Multiple residents, while expressing empathy for the unhoused, also registered their discontent with what they characterized as lawlessness by some members of the city’s homeless encampments, prohibiting use of public spaces by the larger public. Poor said the problem is bigger than Montpelier and should be tackled by the state.
“The empathy and compassion that was well intentioned with the policy has really enabled entitlement,” Poor said. “Entitlement that these public places belong only to a small portion of those who are unhoused, really, and not to the rest of the community. We’re making a choice without policy. We’ve devoted our priority. We’ve done it away from our children, done it away from the economic vitality of the community, and that really needs to change. Our town is unwelcoming now.”
