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View ProfilesPublished May 17, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
May 5 was a beautiful day in Burlington, especially for anyone visiting the city's 520 acres of parks and open space. But not everyone was thrilled.
In the late morning, Neil Preston, Burlington's lead urban park ranger, was summoned to Pomeroy Park in the city's Old North End, where a parkgoer was "very upset" by the behavior of another. Preston summarized the caller's request: "There is a person who is unstable and on drugs spinning out in this space. There's a kids' playground. There are kids there. Help. What do we do?"
Preston is used to this kind of call. As one of two full-time urban park rangers in Burlington, he divides his workdays between the city's 37 parks, cemeteries and conservation areas, helping to educate parkgoers on ordinances and make sure the areas are used appropriately.
These green spaces are meant to be shared by everyone, but Vermont's dual crises related to opioids and housing have increased friction. Since Burlington launched the urban park ranger program last year, a major part of the rangers' job has been mediating conflicts.
Preston headed to Pomeroy Park and greeted the person whose behavior was in question. He realized they'd already met and knew some of the same people in the city's unhoused community. Based on Preston's experience a year into the job, he determined that the man, who was also unhoused, wasn't a hazard to others or in personal danger.
"We moved from him lying on the ground and being in an uncomfortable place to having a good conversation on the park bench to 'Hey, man, like, what's the rest of your day plan, and do you need a ride?'" Preston said.
Ultimately, Preston's team drove the man to his next destination in a department vehicle.
"It was the best resolution that I could possibly ask for," Preston said. "He was out of the space where he was making people uncomfortable. He's safer, and the other people who were feeling discomfort are no longer [feeling that way], even though they were never in any danger at all."
This kind of interaction is typical for Preston and Andrew Romano, the city's other full-time urban park ranger. The city is currently advertising for up to six seasonal rangers for the summer. There are plenty of perks to a job that allows them to be outdoors and near Lake Champlain all summer, but there are hard parts, too.
"I am outside all day," Preston said. "I work in a beautiful space. I get to ride on an e-bike a fair amount of the time. Those things are all accurate and super fun. I just also might be riding to a crisis."
Burlington's natural beauty and proximity to nature are draws for visitors and locals alike. Though it is Vermont's most populous city, about half of it is considered green space. When Cindi Wight took over as director of Burlington Parks, Recreation & Waterfront in 2017, she saw a need for better stewardship of the city's park system. For years, residents have complained about off-leash dogs, broken glass, and illegal fireworks and campfires in the parks — relatively low-level infractions that the city's police force didn't always have the bandwidth to address in a timely manner.
Wight had seen enough evidence from urban park ranger programs in other regions, including a successful one in Johnson County, Kansas, to believe that establishing something similar in Burlington might help alleviate some issues. The pandemic delayed the launch of the program — funded by the City of Burlington — until May 2022. By then, its goal had expanded to account for new challenges.
The Burlington Police Department had lost several officers, and the number of people experiencing homelessness in Chittenden County surged from 309 in 2019 to 758 in 2023, according to the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance. Things hit a low point last summer, particularly in City Hall Park.
"Last year was sort of out of control ... drugs and alcohol, fights, ODs," said Alex Beers, who has been working as a City Hall Park maintenance worker for the past year and a half. "It was pretty much just the Wild West out here."
The park was the site of an execution-style killing last September, and a gun was fired during a fight there just last week. No one was shot in that incident.
The park rangers are not police officers, and they work days, not nights. But their presence, Beers said in an interview before the latest incident, helps stop problems before they start. The rangers encourage visitors to learn and follow park rules that ensure everyone can enjoy the space. They also provide a tether to social services for people who don't have a place to stay or are abusing substances.
"The [police] department isn't in a place to be able to actually do the enforcement around quality-of-life issues because ... we don't have the people," said Lacey-Ann Smith, community support supervisor for the City of Burlington, working out of the police department. "But the need is still there. The urban park ranger was created essentially to fill that gap."
Preston's background includes stints as a ski patroller and an academic coach at Champlain College; he cited these as "really great preparation in social justice and conversation with people that you don't know."
Seven Days joined Preston on May 5 for an e-bike ride-along from Leddy Park in the New North End to City Hall Park downtown. Wearing a dark green polo and matching windbreaker emblazoned with the city's logo and his title — Burlington Urban Park Ranger — he was outfitted with a baseball cap, a bike helmet, a backpack and not much else.
Romano, dressed similarly as he departed Leddy for North Beach, commented wryly: "I've got no power. I just have a smile."
On that sunny afternoon, Preston checked in with a resident in a tent just past the Andy A_Dog Williams Skatepark, offering water, chocolate and reminders of other support resources. He hailed another person at Waterfront Park and asked them to leash their dog.
At City Hall Park, he greeted dozens of parkgoers soaking up the sunshine. He asked some to walk their bikes through the crowded thoroughfare, or to abstain from drinking or smoking, or to leash their dogs. One smoker rounded back to blow smoke in Preston's face and curse at him before eventually leaving the park. Another smoker was in a group playing hacky sack, and Preston joined them.
"I said, 'Hey, I'm really glad you're here. I want you to stay. Could you mind not smoking in the park?'" Preston said. "And I brought chocolate."
Preston also reconnected with a man who goes by Toby, who requested that Seven Days not print his full name due to safety concerns. Earlier this year, Preston helped Toby move from an encampment to a newly launched, city-funded "shelter pod" community on Elmwood Avenue in the Old North End. Now that Toby is getting back on his feet, he's taking a part-time maintenance job with the parks department.
"He used to evict me out of camps," Toby joked about Preston. "The [rangers] do a good job. They should get a raise."
Sarah K. Russell, the special assistant to end homelessness with the City of Burlington's Community & Economic Development Office, also praised the rangers. Preston "has trust with people," she said, "and has been able to facilitate connections that we may not otherwise have been able to make."
Romano related the story of another man who's had an experience similar to Toby's. He was "chronically homeless for a number of years" and used to live at Oakledge Park, Romano said. The rangers encouraged him to apply for an Elmwood Avenue pod. "He did it, and [now] he's working a full-time job," Romano said.
Back when the man was at Oakledge, a woman who lived nearby asked Preston and Romano why the rangers let him camp there. The woman was "angry, at the core, out of fear, specifically about tents and drugs," Preston said. "She had the overwhelming feeling that one tent would become 300."
"We tried to say, 'Hey, we know this person. He doesn't abuse any substances,'" Romano said. "'He's just somebody who's down on his luck and takes cares of these places. He's probably picked up more trash than you ever have.'"
The man came out of his tent and introduced himself, and the woman had a change of heart.
"It was an amazing encounter, and it definitely sticks with me," Romano said. "I think about it a lot. I was ... a witness, but also I'm actively trying to move that mentality forward for everybody."
Romano is also broadening perspectives in other ways. In January, he teamed up with two community groups, the Unlikely Riders — a nonprofit working to remove barriers to snow sports for BIPOC Vermonters — and the Vermont Professionals of Color Network, to help coordinate a BIPOC Winter Community Day. The event invited BIPOC folks to try winter sports such as cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, sledding and ice skating at Leddy Park.
In part, the job of the rangers is to help everyone learn to respect each other's humanity. Smith, of the city's community support team, works closely with the rangers to facilitate social services support, particularly for those in need of housing.
"The end goal is to move somebody along from a park ... where they shouldn't be camping," she said. Camping is prohibited in all city parks, with the exception of paid sites at North Beach Campground. "But we're giving people the dignity and the respect that they deserve as houseless individuals — to not underestimate how hard it is to pick up and move every single day."
She added: "It'd be different if there was ... a place for people to go."
The rangers and the community support liaison team work with a network of government and nonprofit organizations to help unhoused people. But everyone stressed the equal importance of shifting perspectives among members of the city's housed community.
"An unhoused person has everything with them, and they may take up a lot of space," Wight said. "A mom with her baby spreading out a blanket takes up the same amount of space. They are both welcome. The rangers are there to make parks welcoming to everybody."
The original print version of this article was headlined "Park Patrol | Burlington's urban park rangers steward green spaces and educate the people who share them"
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