BRATTLEBORO â Itâs no secret that finding staff now is difficult.
âIâm hearing that across the board from lots of people â restaurants, you know, small factories,â said Greg Lesch, interim director of Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce, âskilled and not skilled.â
Lesch said it seems to be a statewide and nationwide problem.
âWe hear from employers on a daily basis about the need to hire,â said Adam Grinold, executive director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp.
Grinold said the sentiment expressed to him is, âIt used to be hard to find people. Now, itâs next to impossible.â
The Covered Bridge Inn on Putney Road in Brattleboro closed after all the guests checked out of their rooms on Memorial Day due to a shortage of staff. Needing 10 employees to run the property, the inn was down to three.
BRATTLEBORO After experiencing a prolonged shortage in staff, the police department has rearranged scheduling. Our department has been relatively short staffed for some time now but over the past six months, maybe year, our staffing has continued to decline as additional officers have resigned and left the department, Interim Police Chief Mark Carignan said during the Select Board meeting held remotely Tuesday. Currently, our overall strength is at less than two-thirds.
Brattleboro has 17 officers working in a department authorized for 27, and not all of the officers are assigned to patrol duties, Carignan said. If officers did not offer to work overtime, they have found themselves assigned to overtime shifts.
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BRATTLEBORO â The Select Board voted 3-2 to level fund police training for the fiscal year 2022 budget, as recommended by a recent report about improving community safety, rather than going with a 48 percent increase as proposed by the interim police chief.
Commissioned by the town and released Jan. 1, the 224-page report says needs should be assessed before investing further in training and community members with lived experience should be consulted. At the board meeting held remotely Tuesday, which at one point had 88 participants, interim Police Chief Mark Carignan said he wanted extra funds for training on diversity, equity, inclusion and de-escalation, but also to hire local subject matter experts to advise in making the sessions more effective.