Sex offender draws town's concerns
Toolbox
By David Delcore TIMES ARGUS STAFF - Published: October 21, 2009
WILLIAMSTOWN – Simmering concern over a registered sex offender who recently moved into a rental property across the street from a local ball field has some residents and town officials wondering what if anything they can do about it.
The answer appears to be nothing, based on a brief, but public, discussion that was triggered by Selectman Christopher Peloquin's aborted request to consider the matter in executive session Monday night.
Peloquin was perturbed that the closed door meeting he'd asked for last week was not included on the agenda for Monday's meeting. However, Board Chairman Stanley Corneille said he concluded discussing residents' concerns about a sex offender who recently moved into their neighborhood was not reason enough to ignore Vermont's Open Meeting Law.
"I made the decision it was completely inappropriate to go into executive session to talk about something we had no business talking about (privately)," Corneille explained.
Peloquin apparently caught board members by surprise when he first raised the issue during an executive session he asked for to discuss a "legal matter" two weeks ago.
Peloquin's latest request – a brief e-mail to Town Manager Garrett Earls – suggested an executive session might be warned Monday to discuss "personnel or legal" matters and indicated his desire to explore the apparent lack of neighborhood notification that occurred before Lester Plant, 59, moved into a Beckett Street apartment house. Peloquin indicated in his e-mail that town officials might have had advance notice of Plant's arrival, but done nothing with that information.
Corneille said a subsequent e-mail received from Sheri Englert, coordinator of the Vermont's Sex Offender Registry, indicated that towns typically have no role in the notification process. That, Englert explained, is left to the discretion of the state Department of Corrections, or the appropriate law enforcement agency.
"'… Town government officials are not obligated to do community notifications regarding sex offenders," Englert wrote in an e-mail that was read aloud by Corneille Monday night. "'The statute around notifications does not indicate that town officials are even allowed to do notifications."
Englert inquired how officials in Williamstown received advance notification while reminding them it was not their role to do anything with such information.
"… It is important to remember that this kind of information should be coming from area law enforcement, the Department of Corrections, or this office only," she wrote.
Assistant Town Clerk Barbara Graham, whose husband, Rodney, serves on the selectboard, confirmed Tuesday she was aware that Plant, who was recently released from jail following a sexual assault conviction, was expected to move into the residential neighborhood that is located across the street from both a ball field and a church.
According to Graham, corrections officials inquired about the neighborhood and any families with children that might live there back in July. She said she assumed the information collected was used to notify neighbors and was surprised to learn Plant moved into the apartment weeks before the first neighbor – a single mother with three young children – was ever notified.
"I couldn't believe that," said Graham, who contacted the woman, Brandy Todd, to share her concern after learning of the development.
Todd said she received a call from Plant's probation officer at the end of September – nearly a month after the registered sex offender moved into one of the apartments located in the building next door.
"I was pretty shocked when I heard he (Plant) had been moved in next door before I ever got a call," said Todd, a paralegal, who subsequently met with the probation officer and shared the names of other neighbors she believed should be notified.
To the best of her knowledge, Todd said, those neighbors were never contacted, raising questions about the notification process, as well as the decision to permit Plant to move into a neighborhood that is home to several children – including three of her own – as well as a church and a ball field. Equally troubling, she said, is the fact that it took well over a month for Plant to appear on the state's on-line sex offender registry.
"I'm floored that the ball has been dropped at so many levels here," she said.
Todd noted that Plant is one of a half-dozen registered sex offenders living in Williamstown and while he isn't considered high-risk by the state he has gotten the attention of her neighbors and her family.
"We have a very close-knit community that really watches out for each other, but now we're feeling we need to be … more on our toes than we have been before because of this guy," she said. "To see my daughter locking the deadbolt makes my heart sink."
Todd said she shared her concerns with Peloquin earlier this month and he promised to bring it to the selectboard that night. That apparently occurred behind closed doors, though it is unclear how seriously the matter was discussed given Corneille's insistence it simply is not an appropriate topic for executive session.
Although Peloquin asked why the issue wasn't warned as a regular agenda item given Corneille's reluctance to discuss it privately, Corneille said he hadn't considered that, but, in retrospect, probably should have. One resident described it as a "miscommunication."
In any event, Corneille said he believed the town would benefit by accepting Englert's offer to host a "community education forum."
"Maybe we need to take her (Englert) up on that," he said. "That's what I think the selectboard can do – notify these agencies that there might be a problem and there is concern from residents about this."
Christopher Eaton, a father of four young boys, said he followed Barre's troubles with an overturned ordinance that sought to restrict where convicted sex offenders can live, and understood the board had limited authority. However, as a taxpaying resident of the neighborhood, he is troubled that the town is so powerless.
"I just don't see how somebody like that has more rights than I do as a taxpayer when they're not paying any taxes to this town, they're paying rent, and they have a serious issue and they've lived in this town for a number of years now and I've had to put up with them," he said. "It's frustrating."
david.delcore@timesargus.com
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