VT- Buffer zone sends wrong message

7-30-2008 Vermont:

First let me apologize for not being able to rearrange my schedule to attend Tuesday night's City Council meeting where the Child Protection Ordinance was passed.

I believe the article should have been titled "Sex Offenders: Coming To A Neighborhood Near You" (in my best movie announcement voice), This was a rash decision — and no clear thought to the ramifications was put into it.

Here is what we are now stuck with in Barre City: A sex offender can not live at Central Hotel or one of the smaller, less-expensive, efficiency style apartments located in "downtown."

However, they can live near Highgate Apartments and Green Acres Apartments, where families have moved due to being lower income Vermonters — perhaps single parents or a person with a disability, the most vulnerable residents of the city, and a place with the highest concentration of children within the city.

We have now told them that doesn't matter because we are keeping the sex offenders away from City Park? Think of why you moved into the neighborhood you did. I chose mine due to the quiet residential atmosphere, the fact that we saw several boys playing in the streets — it was a perfect fit for our family.

If we are not in the "buffer zone," are we to expect that our neighborhood will rapidly fill up with sex offenders, as their options are now quite limited?

Are we going to have "dark" parts of town that everyone is warned to stay away from? So much for Barre coming together as a community.

Who will Thom Lauzon target next as someone he doesn't want in the city? Perhaps overweight people will no longer be allowed to live within 1.000 feet of a store — ya know — for their safety? ..News Source.. by Renita Marshall, Barre City


Barre, Vermont Ordinance 2008-03 is here: