Rutland Mayor Chris Louras has risked his political career on a controversial proposal to welcome 100 Syrian refugees to his long-struggling city, and spent most of the past year beating back fierce opposition and nativist rhetoric from his critics.

Despite president-elect Donald Trump's victory after a campaign in which he vowed to bar Muslim immigrants from entering America, Louras said he and his allies are proceeding apace.

Louras is coordinating with the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program and a local volunteer group, Rutland Welcomes, to prepare for the initial wave of refugees from war-torn Syria. They are expected to arrive in mid-December or January. The bulk of the refugees are expected in the spring and summer, Louras said.

"All of us are continuing as if there's been no change," Louras, a Republican-turned-independent, said. "We've got no indications that the New Americans will not be arriving. We're absolutely cognizant of the fact that things could change, but it's not impacting things [now]."

Updated November 15, 2016, at 12:14 a.m.

Vermont’s Senate Democratic caucus unanimously nominated Sen. Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) to serve as president pro tempore Monday evening, all but ensuring his election in January as the next leader of the state Senate.

WCAX-TV is losing some of its top talent, according to news director Anson Tebbetts.

The departures include morning show host Gina Bullard, reporter Alex Apple, reporter Eliza Larson and producer Kristen Tripodi. According to Tebbetts, all the departures are voluntary and all of the positions will be filled.

Through much of Lt. Gov. Phil Scott's gubernatorial campaign, Democrats tried to tag him as a tool of the Republican Governors Association.

The Washington, D.C., party organization, after all, spent more than $3 million on television advertisements selling his candidacy and knocking his Democratic rival, Sue Minter. Less than two weeks before the election, corporate lobbyists affiliated with the RGA held an $18,000 fundraiser for Scott's campaign in Washington.

Minter and the Vermont Democratic Party repeatedly noted that the RGA's top donor this year has been Koch Industries, owned by billionaire bogeymen Charles and David Koch.

The attacks clearly fell short (perhaps, in part, because Minter herself benefited from more than $1.4 million worth of Democratic Governors Association advertising). Scott defeated Minter on Tuesday by more than 8 percentage points.

Now, the governor-elect is preparing for his first out-of-state trip since winning the election: to an RGA conference in Orlando, Fla. According to Scott spokesman Ethan Latour, Scott will take part in a two-day retreat next Tuesday and Wednesday with fellow Republican governors at the Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek resort.

The message in Imam Islam Hassan's sermon during Friday's midday prayer at the Islamic Society of Vermont's mosque in Colchester was unequivocal.

"Do not leave your country out of fear of someone so insignificant," he told his multiethnic congregation days after Donald Trump won the presidential election. Instead, he said, turn to Allah and continue to be productive and contributing citizens.

"Brothers and sisters, this is the time we get together and excel in everything you are doing," the community leader said.

Once Donald Trump becomes president, Chris Hudson said, she’ll have a target on her back.

The 34-year-old artist is a transgender woman and a lesbian small-business owner. She lives in rural Isle La Motte, where Trump tallied (four) more votes than Democrat Hillary Clinton. Oh, and her wife, Shelly Hail, is a permanent resident from Israel whose visa is up for review next year.

Trump, in other words, stands opposed to her sexuality and lifestyle in more ways than one, she said.

On Friday, Hudson stood in front of a crowd in Burlington’s City Hall Park and led a diverse group of some 200 people in a raucous chant of “Love Trumps Hate!”

Burlington School Board member David Kirk did not violate board policy with posts on his Facebook page that many city residents said were racially insensitive and belittling of women and immigrants.

That's the finding of a legal review of the posts, according to school board vice chair Stephanie Seguino. The decision was announced  Thursday night at a board meeting during which the board also released a resolution denouncing and disavowing Kirk's posts.

Kirk did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment and has said little publicly since issuing an apology for the posts last month. The board resolution stated that the Facebook reposting "of racially/gender/and ethnically offensive materials by a member of this board is at fundamental variance with the standards of conduct and example desired by the board for its members."

Speaking Wednesday in the foyer of the Vermont Statehouse, Republican governor-elect Phil Scott called his 8.6 percentage point victory over Democrat Sue Minter a "mandate" for his agenda of fiscal moderation.

There can be no doubt that Scott won a mandate to govern. Unofficial results from the Secretary of State's Office show that he defeated Minter by a resounding 27,555 votes — or 52 to 43.4 percent. A town-by-town analysis conducted by Seven Days demonstrates that his victory cut across nearly every corner of the state: He won 11 out of 14 counties and 193 of 246 towns and cities.

But the message from the electorate appears more nuanced than Scott would have it. The same voters who sent a moderate conservative to the governor's office also dispatched a liberal activist, Sen. David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden), to the lieutenant governor's office — and wholeheartedly embraced the rest of the Democratic slate. In the legislature, Democrats held on to their near-supermajority status in the Vermont House and picked up two additional seats in the Vermont Senate, leaving Republicans with just seven out of 30 positions in the upper chamber.

If anything, the results of the 2016 election demonstrate that Vermonters, as always, are perfectly willing to split their tickets.

Sen. Bill Doyle (R-Washington), who fell 191 votes shy of reelection Tuesday after 48 years in office, is asking for a recount.

The 90-year-old Doyle, also a political science professor at Johnson State College, has held the Senate seat since 1969.

Unofficial Election Day results show Doyle came in fourth for three Washington County Senate seats.

Sens. Ann Cummings, a Democrat, and Anthony Pollina, a Progressive/Democrat, won reelection. Democrat Francis Brooks, a former state representative and Statehouse sergeant-at-arms, finished just ahead of the nonagenarian Doyle.

“It’s pretty close,” Doyle said Thursday. “I just think that in general a recount is worth going through.”

On Thursday morning Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger announced a citywide effort to create a comprehensive, data-driven response to the opiate crisis.

Speaking to the press at Burlington City Hall, Weinberger announced the hiring of opioid policy coordinator Jackie Corbally, who will fill a new position working as a public health adviser for the Burlington Police Department and managing opiate-response efforts across departments and organizations.

The announcement followed a gathering of more than 40 government officials, nonprofit leaders and medical workers in the first meeting of a new initiative called CommunityStat. The model will emphasize data collection, coordinated approach and rapid follow-up. Weinberger called the initiative a "a new front in the city's response to the opiate challenge that is gripping the city."

Later, Seven Days met with Corbally in her office in the Burlington Police Department to discuss the details and challenges of her work. The conversation was edited for clarity and brevity.

Seven Days: How does your background qualify you for this position?
Jackie Corbally: First and foremost, I'm a social worker. And I've been a social worker for 30 years. Social work is about community change and it's about teaming and it's about working with various partners. I've worked at Spectrum. I've worked at the Baird Center. I've done internships with the state hospital; I've worked for Women Helping Battered Women. I feel like my career has been really varied. I worked for the Health Department's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program for 10 years. [Most recently] I went back and was a clinician on the ground because I had to get back to my roots and have some really real conversations with the people who were in the throes of addiction.

SD: What are the initial steps you'll take as opioid policy coordinator?
JC: I think we started today, by bringing community partners around the table [and] beginning to have some really hard and honest conversation about what we're doing well and what we're not doing well and recognizing where the barriers are and how we need to knock those down. Secondarily, working with the police department ... providing education and support to the department.

SD: What is the data you'll be collecting and how do you plan to apply that to your work?
JC: When we demonstrated the data we had today ... it was clear there were holes. What we're hoping is that the data will show where we're having success in the city and where we're not. Are people able to get housing in a timely manner? Are people able to get treatment? One thing we know about addiction is, when the person's ready to make the life change, you have got to be there to offer the services. If you delay, there's the potential you're going to lose them.

SD: What kind of on-the-ground changes can the public expect to see, in terms of the police department's response and the city's approach?
JC: The police department's response is tying folks into assessments. Folks might come in and we hook them up with somebody who can give them an assessment within 24 hours to move them along their treatment path. Someone who has been arrested, someone who just comes to the police department and needs help. We're just in the beginning and this is going to evolve.

When we do this, when we get to a place where we're operating at full capacity, this will be a really vibrant place where the community can access treatment, can access the prevention that they need. If we're doing it the right way, there won't be any silos. The systems will be talking to each other as one and be able to augment the services in a timely fashion.

SD: How will you determine your metrics for success?
JC: We are just deciding that. Today was the first conversation with the community partners around what are the data elements that they're collecting in their agencies; where are the gaps. Now we're taking it back and doing a debrief next week and then we'll make a measure of that.

SD: Holistic opiate treatment involves a lot of different components including health care, housing, et cetera. What impact do you see this initiative having on the community as a whole or in other areas long-term?
JC: I think first and foremost, we look at this disease as a chronic health disease. Meaning that you just don't go and get treatment for six weeks and then you're better. Another thing is to recognize that this disease is based in shame and humiliation. Having a level of understanding that you don't choose this.

When we talk about opiate addiction, it's more than just someone committing crime, or somebody losing their children. It's a chronic health disease. It changes the brain structure, and it takes time when somebody engages in recovery to get to a place where they're fully functioning.

SD: What have you seen as the biggest gap in the cooperation or coordination in the programs across Burlington?
JC: The system is really stretched right now. It really is, when you have a 50-person caseload, and you have a person who has done criminal behavior ... You've also got someone who's suicidal and kids who are being taken away. These folks are just really overwhelmed. Part of it is just how can we alleviate that burden.

We need to norm the data. I can promise you that the people in the community are like, 'I'm dealing with people right now, I don't have time for that.' What we're trying to do ... is to shift the lens. Data can be a fantastic tool, but you've got to invest in it.