I have carried this poem with me for years. Always close at hand, it is tucked into my wallet. I reread it from time to time to remind myself of what it takes to “get the job done” — whatever the job may be.
A quick look at the Internet provides ample evidence a lot of people in Vermont and around the country don’t have a place to live or enough food to eat. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports about 653,000 Americans experienced homelessness in January 2023. That’s a 12.1 percent increase from the same report in 2022.
As the Legislature makes it through crossover, we remain busy on the floor doing our best to represent your needs.
Thinking about how the short-term rental ordinance in Stowe got to this point of contention, remember that the selectboard is just a group of five locals we elected to represent us in exactly these kinds of matters.
As your Legislature heads into the final month of session, much is underway while much remains to be accomplished.
With the former president, more unhinged and desperate than ever, again knocking on the White House door, in what has become, in large part because of his first term, a fundamentally different country, the laughter has been replaced by the grim acknowledgement that we never saw this coming.
Aaron Calvin’s excellent piece on Zoie Saunders, Gov. Phil Scott’s pick for Vermont Education Secretary, sent me down rabbit holes of charter school sales brochures, statistics and studies. Between pots of coffee, I have crunched numbers and pondered policies.
The education finance crisis facing Vermont is the gravest in decades and eerily like the crisis we faced a decade ago, which led to Act 46. Legislators and school boards have difficult choices ahead as they grapple with a system they have largely lost control of.
The House ways and means and education committees are working on several bills dealing with property tax and education funding issues that have been front and center this session, as they have been in the Senate as well.
As members of Gov. Phil Scott’s cabinet and senior staff, we were part of the team who interviewed candidates for the next secretary of the Agency of Education. All five of us are also moms of kids currently in, or graduated from, Vermont’s public school system.
I recently completed an empowerment self-defense course, one specifically designed for women like me who have experienced physical or sexual assault. Initially, I felt skeptical. So much harm had been done to the core of who I am and to my sense of safety in this world, I figured it was too late for me. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Today, the House Republican Caucus is sounding the alarm. The Democratic supermajority is off the rails and out of control.
I’m a resident, voter, taxpayer, parent, community volunteer and part of a family that has been in Stowe for generations. I am not a member of any organized special interest group.
The eclipse is less than two weeks away, and as noted in earlier articles about safe observing, eclipse glasses are your best bet. They’re easy to use and inexpensive — and often free. Haven’t gotten them yet? You could order some, but they may not arrive in time.
My dad was a geophysicist. It wasn’t unusual for him to wake us up to watch an eclipse, comets and meteor showers.
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