MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – The Vermont Senate has given preliminary approval to a bill allowing for the creation of so-called safe injection sites.

The rate of fatal overdoses has skyrocketed in recent years driven by fentanyl and xylazine.

The Senate voted 21-8 to create a pilot program where people could have their drugs tested and then consume them under medical supervision.

In an at-times emotional debate on the Senate floor, state lawmakers called them another tool in the toolbox to fight the toll of addiction.

“It really is another thing we can do in Vermont to save lives,” said Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison County.

“I don’t think Vermont’s toolbox is ready for this tool. Different tools require different supports, safety procedures, different mechanisms to make sure everybody knows how to use the tool and make sure it’s used safely,” said Sen. Tom Chittenden, D-Chittenden County.

Some lawmakers have concerns about young people accessing the sites or federal authorities cracking down on them since they are still illegal.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott has said he has moral and logistical concerns about the bill and has said he will veto it.

Copyright 2024 WCAX. All rights reserved.

The 2024 Vermont high school spring season has begun. See below for scores, schedules and game details (statistical leaders, game notes) from baseball, softball, lacrosse, track and field, tennis and Ultimate.

To report scores: Coaches or team representatives are asked to report results ASAP after games by emailing sports@burlingtonfreepress.com. Please submit with a name/contact number.

►Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @aabrami5

PREVIOUS COVERAGE

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school boys lacrosse players for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school girls lacrosse players for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school softball players for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school baseball players for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school Ultimate athletes for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school tennis players for the 2024 season

WEDNESDAY’S H.S. GAMES

Girls lacrosse

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Green Mountain Valley at Stratton Mountain

Stowe at Spaulding 

Hartford at Rice

Mount Mansfield at BFA-St. Albans

South Burlington at Middlebury

Boys lacrosse

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Randolph at Mount Abraham/Vergennes

Middlebury at South Burlington

Rice at Essex

BFA-St. Albans at Mount Mansfield

Softball

Lyndon at South Burlington, 4:30 p.m.

Missisquoi at BFA-St. Albans, 4:30 p.m.

Burlington/Winooski at Rice, 4:30 p.m.

Baseball

Rice at BFA-St. Albans, 4:30 p.m.

Girls tennis

Matches at 3:30 p.m. unless noted

North Country at U-32

South Burlington at St. Johnsbury

Montpelier at Harwood

Essex at Stowe

Rice at Middlebury

Colchester at Mount Mansfield

Burlington at Champlain Valley, 4:30 p.m.

Boys tennis

Matches at 3:30 p.m. unless noted

South Burlington at St. Johnsbury

Stowe at Essex

Champlain Valley at Burlington

Middlebury at Rice

Mount Mansfield at Colchester

Boys Ultimate

Games at 4 p.m. unless noted

Colchester at Essex

RIce at Burr and Burton

South Burlington at Middlebury

Milton at Mount Mansfield

Champlain Valley at Burlington, 4:30 p.m.

Montpelier at St. Johnsbury, 7 p.m.

Track and field

Meets at 3:30 p.m. 

Colchester-hosted meet

U-32-hosted meet

THURSDAY’S H.S. GAMES

Girls lacrosse

Games at 4 p.m. unless noted

St. Johnsbury at Burlington, 4 p.m.

Burr and Burton at Champlain Valley, 4 p.m.

Esex at Harwood, 4:30 p.m.

Boys lacrosse

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Stowe at BFA-Fairfax

Burr and Burton at Champlain Valley

Green Mountain Valley at Otter Valley

Softball

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Oxbow at Craftsbury

Paine Mountain at Blue Mountain

Spaulding at U-32

Colchester at Burlington/Winooski

Essex at South Burlington

North Country at Lake Region

Rice at Richford

Lamoille at BFA-Fairfax

Milton at Harwood

Middlebury at BFA-St. Albans

Champlain Valley at Mount Mansfield

Missisquoi at St. Johnsbury

Mount Abraham at Otter Valley

Baseball

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Paine Mountain at Blue Mountain

Vergennes at Peoples/Stowe

Essex at South Burlington

North Country at Lake Region

BFA-Fairfax at Lamoille

Spaulding at U-32

Milton at Harwood

St. Johnsbury at Rice

Middlebury at BFA-St. Albans

Burlington at Colchester

Richford at Missisquoi

Champlain Valley at Mount Mansfield

Mount Abraham at Otter Valley

Thetford at Windsor

Hartford at Lyndon

Girls Ultimate

Games at 4 p.m. unless noted

Burr and Burton at Milton, 2 p.m.

Mount Mansfield at South Burlington

St. Johnsbury at Burlington

Track and field

Essex-hosted meet, 3:30 p.m.

(Subject to change)

The most beloved home fries in Burlington are back. The heaping mound of perfectly griddled potatoes topped with melted cheese, salsa, sour cream and green onions have a new name — and a new home. But they’re still a Bucket-o-Spuds.

The iconic Penny Cluse Café dish’s new name, House of Spudology, is a nod to that new home: Deep City, the restaurant attached to Foam Brewers. A year and a half after closing the landmark breakfast and lunch spot he co-owned with his wife, Holly Cluse, Charles Reeves is now the brewery’s food director, working closely with the team behind Foam and House of Fermentology. And while he initially told Seven Days that he wouldn’t be “opening up Penny Cluse” at the restaurant near the waterfront, he sort of did.

Deep City’s brunch — served Friday through Monday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. — lacks some of the sandwiches and simpler breakfast options Penny Cluse served during its nearly quarter-century run, from 1998 to 2022. “But it’s all the hits,” Reeves said. “The aesthetic is the same, and some of the recipes are exactly the same.”

So was my order on Deep City’s opening weekend in mid-April: the aforementioned spuds ($9), which I accidentally ordered by their previous name; one large buttermilk pancake ($5) and a chile relleno with salsa ranchero ($5) to share; and huevos verdes ($16). My only new addition, appropriately beer-filled for the setting, was a michelada ($10), now made with Foam’s Tranquil Pils lager.

click to enlarge

• Daria Bishop
• Foam Brewers food director Charles Reeves

I usually skip a restaurant’s opening weekend to give the team time to settle in and work out the kinks. But I had confidence in the pairing of Reeves and Foam — especially with longtime Penny Cluse floor manager Anastasia Evans helming the front of house and Maura O’Sullivan, Penny’s kitchen manager, helping Reeves while she works to open her new Burlington restaurant, Majestic, this summer. When friends asked if we’d like to join them for an early Sunday meal, it was a no-brainer.

Like Penny Cluse, Deep City is walk-in only. We arrived with the high-chair crowd around 8:45 and were quickly seated. The dining room is smaller than Penny Cluse was — 50 seats versus 68 — but the lake-view patio will add space for 35 in May, once weather and staffing allow.

Foam’s sister restaurant first opened in March 2020, then closed in November 2023 due to lingering pandemic-era challenges and short-staffing in the kitchen. Deep City was a dinner spot, serving dressed-up pub food such as burgers, vegan poutine, and a ranch-and-romaine salad that sustained me through the early part of the pandemic.

Somehow, though, the space seems like it was always designed for brunch. Sunlight streams in through huge windows and bounces off the high ceilings, exposed brick and wooden beams. The kitchen — visible past a big bar — gets so much light that Reeves said it can be hard to judge the height of the flames on the stove.

“I’ll have to wear sunglasses,” he joked.

The energy of the space was bright during my early morning visit, too. Evans enthusiastically greeted longtime Penny Cluse customers, one after another. I waited in my fair share of lines on Cherry Street over the years but was far from a regular — especially compared to the fans who eulogized the restaurant in poetry, prose and art in these pages ahead of its closure in late 2022.

Looking at the familiar menu, I thought back to eating tofu scram with my late grandmother and hungover biscuits and gravy with my five college roommates. And then there was the time I learned the genius of ordering a pancake for the table from service-industry friends. (It’s more for snacking than budgetary purposes, but we were broke, so it ticked both boxes.) This time, I shared a table pancake with my 10-month-old son, who is just starting to learn how glorious such things can be. He was a big fan.

Based on the response in the restaurant that day and on social media, there seems to be an overwhelming sense of relief that Reeves did open up Penny Cluse. Tasting all that history again — and how it holds up, even in a new setting — I got a little choked up over my chile relleno.

The consistency, Reeves said, is largely due to how he thinks about food.

“I’m a documenter,” the chef explained. “If I change a recipe, I update my recipe card. I like to be methodical.”

He also predicted that the new Deep City would draw a crowd, which, so far, it has. “We had to open with a menu that was going to work,” he said. “This is not the time for me to be super experimental. This is the time for me to land the ship.”

click to enlarge

• Daria Bishop
• Biscuits and gravy

As things get rolling and summer produce season approaches, Reeves thinks the menu will expand. Now that dishes such as the biscuits and gravy ($7 for the starter-size BAG and $16 for the version with eggs and home fries, still called the Penny Cluse) are back — along with gluten-free gingerbread pancakes, which Penny Cluse stopped making four or five years ago — “there’s no rational way I can remove them,” he said.

That means Reeves will continue to spend a good chunk of his time making the much-loved herb cream gravy — gallons per day.

I’d skipped the biscuits on my first visit and decided that was reason enough to go back. When I texted a friend asking if she’d be up for Friday breakfast at Deep City for “the return of Penny Cluse,” I didn’t immediately realize my mistake. She showed up 15 minutes late, having first gone to Cherry Street. A farm-to-table dinner restaurant called Frankie’s launched in mid-April in the former Penny Cluse space, but thankfully it wasn’t open for brunch.

When she arrived, I ordered the BAG and another batch of the spuds. The latter dish, Reeves said, is the latest in a long line of potato piles that mark his career. In San Francisco, he worked at Boogaloos, where the dish was called Temple of Spuds, inspired by Spuds-o-Rama at another city brunch spot, Spaghetti Western. He’s changed the seasoning mix over the years, but in its recent evolution from a “bucket” to a “house,” Reeves said, it’s stayed the same.

“Home fries have gone to a dark place culturally,” he continued, lambasting the now-common over-fried square version. When he started at Deep City, Reeves eighty-sixed the fryers. The spuds are cooked on the griddle, browned with onions and finished with herb butter, “as they should be,” he said.

Some of the name changes come from the fact that, while he’s in charge, this isn’t Reeves’ restaurant. He was 56 when he and Cluse decided to close their restaurant to spend more time with family, after working in the kitchen 50 hours per week and running the business another 15 hours on top of that. Here, even though his role as food director encompasses more than Deep City’s brunch, there’s somebody else to print menus and do payroll.

“They’re set up, they’re smart and they’re savvy,” Reeves said of his new employers. “Foam has a great thing going on.”

The brewery celebrated its eighth anniversary over the weekend with a big bash. Early last Friday morning, Foam cofounder and creative director Jon Farmer called me before heading into Deep City for a light breakfast of biscuits and gravy — his first sit-down meal at the restaurant since it reopened.

“We all missed Penny Cluse massively,” Farmer said, naming the huevos rancheros and verdes as among his favorite dishes. “To have these options back is pretty incredible.”

click to enlarge

• Daria Bishop
• Deep City at brunch

Deep City had offered brunch occasionally over the years, he said, “but we were spread too thin with dinner, and I always thought it would be a dinner restaurant first.”

When Reeves and Foam cofounder Dani Casey pitched the rest of the team on the current brunch concept, Farmer continued, “it clicked for everybody that this could be the best use of the space.”

Only serving brunch leaves the restaurant open for nighttime events and overflow for live music and comedy shows at the brewery — a win-win.

Spirits are high at 112 Lake Street, Farmer said. Reeves is also revamping the menu on the taproom side, and the team is considering opening the Foam taproom before noon on weekends to let customers enjoy coffee or beer if there’s a wait for brunch.

Working with Reeves and his tight-knit team has been “a dream,” Farmer said. “I mean, he’s hilarious and professional at the same time.”

The return of Penny Cluse has been a dream for Reeves, too.

“The end of Penny Cluse was emotional. People were coming in, giving hugs and being like, ‘Oh, my God. I can’t believe it,’” Reeves recalled. “This is the whole thing in reverse: People are coming in, giving hugs and being like, ‘Oh, my God. I can’t believe it.’”