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Taunton teens question city councilors on marijuana licenses, mental health, gasification

Taunton Daily Gazette - 4/11/2021

Apr. 11—TAUNTON — As the election season for Taunton City Council gets going, Taunton Diversity Network gave Taunton's youth a chance to have their concerns addressed by current city councilors.

During a question and answer session over Zoom Councilors Barry Sanders, Phil Duarte and David Pottier fielded questions ranging from explaining why the City Council recently raised the number of retail marijuana licenses it can give out, to their thoughts on the controversial proposed Aries Clean Technologies gasification plant.

The first two questions, posed by Taunton teen Charlotte Post, at the event Wednesday night were about vaping — a public health issue that was prominent before the pandemic — and what the city is doing to combat it, as well as why the City Council voted to raise the number of retail marijuana licenses.

Pottier began by saying the city itself hasn't done anything to directly combat vaping recently, but that the state has.

"They're doing things against flavored vaping in general and total," he said.

"They do it under the guise of protecting kids, which is certainly fine and a noble effort. But that then prevents adults from using what was otherwise a legal product, which is a challenge and a concern that I have."

As for raising the number of retail marijuana licenses, Pottier laid out his rationale for voting for the increase. First, he said, five was the minimum Taunton had to give out, and other communities around Taunton have decided not to give out any retail marijuana licenses.

Second, he said, other communities in Massachusetts that are smaller than Taunton are allowing numbers of retail marijuana licenses in the teens or twenties, so eight did not seem like a high maximum to him.

Lastly, Pottier said, he doesn't think all the applicants before the Council will actually make it to opening for one reason or another.

"It's a delicate balance. People always want more money for roads, more money for public safety, more money for our public buildings, more money for our schools, which is a noble use and a noble goal. But they don't really want to pay for these things," he said.

"I like to think of myself as a realist. We have to derive revenue to the city somehow. If it's not gonna come from taxes...it's gonna have to come from other revenue sources. And something like marijuana usage fees that have to be implemented, I think, will help fill that gap without being an undue burden on some of our residents."

Sanders stepped in next, agreeing with Pottier that Taunton hasn't done much on vaping, but saying that the Opiate Task Force, which he is on, is still meeting and doing good work.

Sanders voted against raising the number of retail marijuana licenses, and said he did so to make sure social equity applicants the Council has already approved have a fighting chance.

"I'm very interested in supporting social equity businesses...They're basically the little guy. Often, people from minority backgrounds whose communities have been unduly impacted by the War on Drugs, you want to give them fertile ground to get an opportunity to now benefit from this change in law," he said.

"There are a lot of Black and brown kids who are still in jail today for doing exactly what a lot of rich people are going to be able to do and make tons of money. This social equity piece of legislation really is about helping to correct that, to give the community an opportunity to get into what is now a legal industry."

Duarte said he believes the city talked about enacting a vaping ordinance but decided it wasn't necessary because they felt the state's laws were adequate.

Duarte also addressed part of the original question that the others hadn't, about the issue of youth having space to do recreational activities instead of drugs.

He said he founded the Pathways Committee that is working on a bike path, though it has been slowed down by the pandemic. He also pointed out the current work the city is doing to renovate Memorial Park and the Hopewell Park pool.

Duarte agreed with Sanders's rationale for voting against raising the number of marijuana licenses, saying he wants to support minority businesses.

"At a certain point, the revenue to the city does not increase because you just have more people taking a bite at the same apple. And so the revenue effect levels off," he said.

The next question was from Taunton High School senior Aidan Scully, who pointed out that more and more of his peers have joined the voting population, and wanted to know what the councilors felt they have done to earn their votes, especially those of minority youth.

Duarte, who is 24 himself, said he had sent a mailer to all the youth in Taunton who had become eligible to vote in 2018 and 2019 during his last election cycle urging them to vote.

He also said that he would be in favor of reinstating the Taunton Youth Commission, which has gone defunct, and making efforts to include more youth on boards and commissions in the city to make sure their voices are heard.

Pottier said he has been encouraging young people to run for office, offering help to young City Council candidates like Trevor Costa and Timothy Silvia regardless of their political leanings. He also said he supports reinstating the Youth Commission.

"We need more diverse voices in the city, and the youth are definitely part of that," he said.

Sanders said he puts a lot of effort into reaching out to young people, including meeting with the African-American Club and the Gay-Straight Alliance at Taunton High School. He also reached out to Taunton High and Bristol County Agricultural High School to offer them a voice on the Agricultural Commission.

Sanders emphasized that elected officials have to take responsibility for making sure youth voices get heard.

"We don't do the same things on Friday nights or Saturday afternoons, so my opportunities to interact with you have to be deliberate," he said.

Taunton teen Jenna Hastie asked the next two questions, asking if more Taunton police officers could be trained to handle mental health crisis situations, and whether emotional support animals could be brought in to help.

Sanders started by pointing out that he is a social worker with 30 years of experience in the mental health field.

"The mental health crisis in our community is becoming more and more significant," he said. "Pandemic aside, we know that people are more anxious than they ever have been. Suicide is at a critical rate for young people and for veterans."

Sanders also said that working to better respond to mental health crises is something he has been working on with Taunton Police Chief Edward Walsh for over a year now, and that so far, the department has brought in a social worker to help out once a week and that officers are getting more de-escalation training.

"Our police are often called to come and deal with situations that they are not trained for. And in many cases, it's not their fault," he said. "So they go in with a certain mindset, they have a set of tools, they're just not really well suited to dealing with a mental health crisis."

Duarte added that as a result of recent state police reform legislation, citizens will see mental health care providers responding to these types of police calls more and more.

"I think that is key, not only to the actual situations themselves and how they're handled, but to the overall goal of reducing the stigma around mental health issues," he said.

Pottier said he would speak to the Police Department about training more officers to respond to mental health crises and whether or not they could bring in emotional support animals.

He also said that lack of training for mental health crises situations often has "tragic" consequences.

"I fully support having the police more accountable and having the systems more involved in the tragic instances that have happened," he said.

Taunton teen Victoria Gravel asked the councilors three questions: what would they do to make sure the new climate change bill that just passed the Massachusetts Legislature is implemented, would they commit to forming a sustainability committee on the Council, and what are they doing to halt the Aries Clean Technology gasification plant.

Pottier began by defending his support for keeping the approval process going for Aries. He started by pointing out that Taunton and other municipalities haven't been offered solutions for dealing with municipal solid waste, and that right now they and other municipalities are just trucking it out of state, which isn't a good solution.

"If [the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection] and EPA think that [gasification] can be done safely, then we'll do it. If they can't, then we won't," he said. "I certainly appreciate the fact that there are toxins in that product, but we have to come up with a way to fix it and to do it safely."

Pottier also said it might work best for sustainability to be wrapped in with the council's current environmental affairs committee.

Sanders said he voted to continue the process with Aries for all the reasons Pottier mentioned.

But after learning more about the plant, Sanders said, he has become more concerned about the environmental and public health impacts of the technology, and has many questions that Aries needs to answer.

In particular, he said he is concerned about what potentially dangerous substances might come out of the plant's smokestack and accumulate in Southeastern Massachusetts over the next few decades.

Duarte continued, pointing out that he was one of only two councilors to vote against Aries's host community agreement.

"Unfortunately, we live in a society where corporate greed has allowed chemical producing companies to produce hundreds of thousands of different types of chemicals that can't possibly be regulated," he said. "So it's our job at the local level to also vet these proposals and look at the environmental and public health impacts."

Duarte also said that even if the plant emits dangerous chemicals, that that doesn't mean state regulators won't allow it. Instead, he said, they will simply require Aries do its best to mitigate it.

He also said he wants the city to have an independent consultant review these issues before going forward with the project.

"The alternative to the gasification is landfilling, which is no good solution," he said. "But, in my opinion, it is the safer alternative if we don't know the implications of the gasification."

On sustainability, Duarte said he had previously founded a Sustainable Taunton group which has not been active during the pandemic, but has been working to get more community members involved in these issues.

Duarte also mentioned the Council approving the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program, which helps businesses and homes of a certain size finance use of renewable energies. He also said he supports increasing access to composting, which will lessen municipal waste.

Taunton Diversity Network founder April Funches said the organization will hold a similar question and answer session with new candidates later in the election season.

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