This article by Corey McDonald was first published in The Citizen on Dec. 14.
Williston is asking Hinesburg and Richmond for help in funding the Williston Community Justice Center, a regional group that provides restorative services to resolve civil disputes in local communities that is expected to see its workload climb as its state funding potentially drops.
In a memo to the two towns, Williston Town Manager Erik Wells asked if they could provide a fiscal year 2025 budget allocation for the justice center. Since its inception, the center has been primarily funded through grants from the Vermont Department of Corrections, with some funds provided by the town of Williston, the grantee.
The center serves the towns of Williston, Richmond, Hinesburg, Huntington, Bolton and St. George, as well as parts of Shelburne, Charlotte, Jericho and Underhill — specifically for school referrals.
But in recent years, Wells said, “the future of the grant funding from the DOC has become uncertain, and in the forthcoming legislature session changes may occur for the future of the funding model.”
Cristalee McSweeney is the executive director for the center and is currently its only full-time employee. The center also has dozens of volunteers but has three part-time staffers that work an equivalent of one 40-hour-a-week position.
One former restorative justice specialist left in November 2022, and the center has been working with a temporary staff ever since, Wells said.
With the growing number of cases, and “the growing complexities of cases that we have,” McSweeney said it became “apparent that Williston couldn’t handle the full financial responsibility and that we really were looking for some extra financial contributions from the towns that do receive quite a bit of our services.”
“This is driven by community support. I have 65 volunteers who spend their time caring for their communities, wanting to be a part of their communities and be a part of the solution, which I think is just a beautiful thing,” she said. “But we need to have funding for staff so that everything we’re doing is sustainable, and we’re not experiencing staff burnout.”
There are 18 community justice centers in Vermont, and each county in the state has access to one. Both Hinesburg and Richmond’s police departments — which are now both overseen by Hinesburg police chief Anthony Cambridge — have memorandum of understanding agreements with Williston’s justice center.
Hinesburg, town officials said, used to have its own community justice center that was grant funded, but that money stopped, so the town joined the regional entity.
“I do think the town does get a benefit out of it. We should contribute something. What that contribution is I don’t know,” Hinesburg town manager Todd Odit said at a selectboard meeting. “But over time this is going to grow. I think the state support is going to decline and it’s going to become more on the communities to fund these.”
Instead of sending minor crimes to the court system, police departments and other law enforcement agencies like prosecutors — as well as agencies like school districts and the Department of Children and Families — can send referrals to a community justice center, where victims can meet with the person who committed a crime against them.
A person caught graffitiing a public building, for example, or someone caught shoplifting, may be referred to a community justice center.
From there, staff and volunteers from the community conduct an in-depth intake and try to learn what underlying factors may have contributed to the criminal act, be it socioeconomic or social struggles. After the intake, the person will be set up in a restorative circle or restorative panel in front of staff and community members, and oftentimes come face to face with the victims of the act.
“Our role is to help set them up for success and not to fail,” McSweeney said. “We want to make sure that the people that we’re bringing into the program, number one, have a willingness to accept responsibility, and a willingness to be held accountable, and a willingness to work with people who have been impacted by their behavior.”
While the Williston Community Justice Center has seen 200 cases per year on average, according to McSweeney, that caseload is expected to grow following the Legislature’s passage of Act 11 in July, which clears the way for survivors of sexual and domestic violence to take their cases to justice centers rather than the court system.
“Our caseloads as you can imagine will grow exponentially,” McSweeney said. The job is already a lot of work that “falls to my shoulders, and with a growing caseload of direct referrals … my phone rings 24 hours a day for needs for our communities.”
Wells said in his memo that grant funding for the center will continue for the 2025 fiscal year at least but the town is expecting a $20,000 drop in grant funding from the previous year to $123,000. Williston in fiscal year 2024 contributed $52,000 as well as in-kind services.
Wells said the bottom line for funding in 2025 will be $195,000. “After backing out of the anticipated grant award it leaves $72,000 in operating revenue required for the program.”
The thought, Wells said, was to use the population of their communities as a starting point for a possible cost-share program — a method used by Colchester to help fund the Essex Community Justice Center.
In that model, Richmond could potentially contribute $15,840 annually while Hinesburg would provide $18,000, based on a $100,000 total contribution.
In discussing the proposal, Hinesburg town officials indicated that they would prefer a model based on service usage.
“They do lots of things that sound great, but they’re not all happening in Hinesburg,” selectboard member Maggie Gordon said. “So, finding a means of figuring out a percentage of what we should pay needs to be based on services we’re actually receiving.”
