Tuesday, August 31, 2021
He noted that he was speaking unmasked in a large auditorium with fewer than 20 people and colleagues who had been vaccinated.
“Like we’ve been saying all along, you should assess your own risk,” Levine said. “The room is spacious and well ventilated. Very different than if I was giving a talk here, attended by the general public, and it was a full house.”
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Monday, August 30, 2021
That incident, which was included in a recent police use-of-force summary report, prompted someone to complain to the Burlington Police Commission. The city council's Public Safety Committee is scheduled to discuss the fire department's new protocol at its meeting on Thursday.
According to records obtained by Seven Days, the Burlington Fire Department has administered ketamine — an anesthetic used to "restrain" patients and manage pain — to 86 patients since 2016. But the department only recorded the subject's race four times in those five years, data show. All of those patients were white and between 35 and 74 years old.
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About 140 Twinfield Union School students in grades K-6 are learning from home on Monday after multiple students contracted the coronavirus just days after school opened for the year.
School officials said they learned late last week that a sixth-grade student had tested positive for COVID-19 after having close contact with a daycare employee who contracted the disease after attending a wedding the previous weekend. Since then, four other students — three kindergarteners and a second-grader, all connected to the daycare — have tested positive, Twinfield Union principal Mark Mooney said.
Mark Tucker, superintendent of the Caledonia Central Supervisory Union, said the district is keeping students in kindergarten through sixth grade home "out of an abundance of caution."
"I was really hoping that we could let the dust sit on some of these procedures, but we didn't even get through the first day of school," Tucker said. Classes started last Thursday; pre-schoolers start class on September 1.
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The Vermont Department of Corrections has not officially deemed the situation an "outbreak" pending results from more testing on Monday, a spokesperson said. But a majority of the new cases were found in a unit where four other infections were recently discovered.
That unit, which currently houses 71 people, is now being treated as a "surge unit," meaning anyone who becomes positive will not be sent elsewhere to isolate. Everyone confined in the unit is either infected or has been deemed a close contact of someone who is, spokesperson Rachel Feldman said.
The prison now has at least 32 cases: 25 among incarcerated people and seven among employees.
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Friday, August 27, 2021
Local law enforcement reportedly once gave Michael A. Gonzalez the nickname following an unfortunate 2018 encounter in which he was arrested after confusing a uniformed cop for a pizza delivery driver.
But over the course of the following years, the Colchester man pulled off a series of heists of Tesla electric cars worth a combined $607,000, according to a federal indictment unsealed Friday.
One of the vehicles involved ended up a fireball on the frozen surface of Lake Champlain in winter 2019 in a mysterious incident.
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Burlington Aviation Director Gene Richards said he will not resign, even though Mayor Miro Weinberger asked him on Friday to step down from running the Burlington International Airport.
Richards has been on leave since June 30 over allegations that were previously undisclosed. On Friday evening, Weinberger released a seven-page investigative report that concluded Richards violated city policy by regularly “yelling, screaming, name-calling, and using profanity” at employees.
The mayor says he no longer has confidence in Richards and has suspended him without pay. By city charter, the mayor can’t unilaterally fire Richards, so he plans to call a special “termination hearing” at the next city council meeting on September 9.
“The mistreatment of City employees documented in this investigation is unacceptable and Mr. Richards can no longer serve the City in a leadership role, despite his many past accomplishments,” Weinberger wrote.
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Edmunds Elementary and Middle School on Main Street in Burlington were closed Friday after a staff member found a bullet hole in a window on campus.
The Burlington School District is working with the city police department to investigate the incident, Superintendent Tom Flanagan wrote in an email to the school community on Friday morning.
A staff member discovered the damaged window before school opened, and the district believes the incident happened in the overnight hours when no one was in the building, district spokesperson Russ Elek said. A Seven Days reporter photographed what appeared to be the bullet hole, in a third floor window of the middle school building on the side facing South Union Street.
In a press release later Friday, Burlington police described the bullet as a "small-caliber round" that was discovered inside the classroom.
Instead, the department believes the shot was likely fired from somewhere near the intersection of South Winooski Avenue and Main Street, about 700 feet from the school.
Officers later learned that multiple witnesses heard several gunshots early Friday but did not call police.
"I want to assure you that safety is our top priority and we are all working closely to ensure all students are safe," Flanagan wrote. He said that students in need of support can contact their building principals to be connected to school and community resources.
Courtney Lamdin contributed reporting.
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Thursday, August 26, 2021
Travia Childs, who is also a member of the city's school board, took to Facebook on Thursday to call out the district for failing to protect her son, who is Black, from racial harassment. In a subsequent interview with Seven Days, Childs said she made the allegations public because the teacher “got away with it” while her son suffered.
The teacher “retired as a leader in the community and the school, and no one knew,” Childs said. “It was just time.”
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Several more people who work or are confined in Vermont prisons have tested positive for COVID-19, leading the Department of Corrections to reimpose a systemwide mask mandate.
The department also suspended outside visits to prisons with active cases, which currently includes five of six state facilities.
Tags: Vermont Department of Corrections , COVID-19 , mask mandate , Gov. Phil Scott , Northern State Correctional Facility , Web Only , Image
Vermont health officials received a rare rebuke from their own staff Thursday for failing to do enough to combat the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.
The critique by 91 rank-and-file members of the Health Department follows similar pressure by lawmakers for Gov. Phil Scott to do more to address the surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the state.
The extraordinary letter to Health Commissioner Mark Levine and his leadership team expressed “deep concern” with the “lack of adequate COVID-19 prevention guidance.”