Vermont
Vermont sees community engagement in politics through annual 'Town Meetings'
- In some Vermont towns, residents hold an annual meeting to discuss and vote on local issues.
- Town Meeting is a tradition that, in Vermont, dates back more than 250 years, to before the founding of the republic.
- Last year, residents of neighboring Morristown voted to switch to a secret ballot system, ending their town meeting tradition.
Julie wants more donations to the food pantry. Kipp is busy knitting a sweater. Shorty is ready to ask: Why is so much being spent on a truck? The coffee, fresh-baked bread and donuts have been laid out. Eighty-seven voters have squeezed into the Elmore Town Hall.
Town Meeting is about to begin. Moderator Jon Gailmor stands up.
“Good morning, everyone, and welcome to democracy,” he says. “This is the real thing, and we should all be proud that we’re doing this.”
‘VERMONT DELIVERED ON ALL FRONTS’: RESIDENTS AND BUSINESS OWNERS REVEAL WHY PEOPLE ARE FLOCKING TO THE STATE
Across the United States, people are disgusted with politics. Many feel powerless and alienated from their representatives at every level — and especially from those in Washington. The tone long ago became nasty, and many feel forced to pick a side and view those on the other side as adversaries.
Town Clerk Sandra Lacasse places a sign outside the town office on March 5, 2024, when the town holds its annual Town Meeting in Elmore, Vermont. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
But in pockets of New England, democracy is done a bit differently. People can still participate directly and in person. One day each year, townsfolk gather to hash out local issues. They talk, listen, debate, vote. And in places like Elmore, once it’s all over, they sit down together for a potluck lunch.
Town Meeting is a tradition that, in Vermont, dates back more than 250 years, to before the founding of the republic. But it is under threat. Many people feel they no longer have the time or ability to attend such meetings. Last year, residents of neighboring Morristown voted to switch to a secret ballot system, ending their town meeting tradition.
Not so in Elmore, population 886. Its residents are used to holding tight to traditions. They’ve fought to keep open their post office, their store and their school, the last one-room schoolhouse in the state. Last fall, Elmore residents voted 2-1 in favor of keeping their town meetings.
Elmore calls itself the beauty spot of Vermont. The town borders a lake, which in early March is dotted with people ice fishing. Beyond, a mountain rises. At night, steam floats up from sugarhouses, where maple sap is being boiled down into syrup.
The heartbeat of the town is the store. “I’ve always said it’s a live, living, breathing creature. I don’t own it; she owns me,” says Kathy Miller, 63, a longtime former owner who still helps out at the store. People would come in not only to buy milk and pick up the mail, Miller recalls, but to use the fax machine, find a plumber or just to swap gossip.
After joining the state grocers’ association in the 1980s, Miller testified before Congress about the impact of credit card fees. Back then, she believed that little people could have a voice in national politics. But these days, she says, Washington has gotten away from the basics. Too big, she says. Too messed up. Tilted off its axis.
Miller describes herself as a Republican who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid. But at Town Meeting, she says, political differences don’t mean a thing.
“There’s no animosity,” she says. “People can talk about things. You shake hands with your neighbor when you leave.”
At Town Meeting, she’s successful in pushing for an increase to the town’s library funding from $1,000 per year to $3,000.
Gailmor, 75, is a singer-songwriter who describes himself as an independent voter. He first moved to Elmore in 1980 and says he found the town meeting tradition nothing short of miraculous. It wasn’t some politician spouting off but real people taking part. He was so inspired that he even wrote a song about it.
“Greet the old town folks, hear the gossip and the jokes, dip a donut in a good strong cup of Joe,” Gailmor sings. “Find your favorite chair, plant your buttocks there — we’re getting down to business, don’t you know.”
At town meetings, people sometimes go beyond voting on local issues and decide to take a stand on national issues of the day. At home, Gailmor holds a photograph of his late wife, Cathy Murphy, when she was speaking out against nuclear weapons at an Elmore Town Meeting in the 1980s.
This year, Elmore decides to take a stance on another broader issue by adopting a declaration of inclusion. It states the town will welcome all people regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Frank Bryan, a retired University of Vermont professor who wrote a book about town meetings, coined the term “forced civility” to describe the way people dealing with disagreements in person are compelled to recognize each other’s common humanity in a way that larger-scale political interactions do not allow.
But just having voters show up for hours on a weekday morning is challenging. Morristown is one of many Vermont towns to end the tradition of town meetings. Richard Watts, the director of the Center for Research on Vermont at UVM, says people in larger towns tend to feel less sense of connection.
There’s a key downside when a town moves to secret ballot, also known as an Australian ballot because states there were the first to adopt such a system in the mid-19th century: It’s usually a straight up-or-down vote. That means people can’t make tweaks or debate issues. And for some, the open, collegial debate is the genius of the entire system.
Elmore’s Town Meeting has been going for nearly four hours. What has unfolded represents a cross-section of democracy, of people choosing for themselves how to live and work and govern.
An impassioned speech by Julie Bomengen secures an extra $500 for the Lamoille Community Food Share, raising Elmore’s annual contribution to $750.
VERMONT RESIDENT MAKES ‘UNSETTLING’ DISCOVERIES ON PROPERTY AS MIGRANT CRISIS HITS NORTHERN BORDER
Several people have been criticizing the town’s spending habits. Others argue that replacing equipment like the road maintenance truck will only end up costing more if the can is kicked down the road. “We have just spent two-and-a-half million on this new garage, and then we go out and put $300,000 into a new truck. I think that’s a little overkill,” Shorty Towne tells the crowd.
After exhaustive discussions, Elmore’s annual town budget of $1.1 million is passed in a voice vote. There is no dissent.
Gailmor commends townsfolk for holding a lively and well-attended meeting. Kipp Bovey, who has been active in the meeting, has made good progress on knitting her sweater. Towne has had his say about the truck. Democracy has unfolded on a small canvas. And the much-discussed American political polarization? It’s nowhere in sight.
It’s time to adjourn.
“Lunch is cold,” Gailmor says. “But it will be in the church.”
Vermont high school football: U-32’s TDs in win over North Country
Video highlights of U-32’s 40-8 victory over North Country in the season opener on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024.
The 2024 Vermont high school fall season has begun. See below for scores, schedules and game details (statistical leaders, game notes) from soccer, field hockey, volleyball, golf and cross-country running.
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.
►Contact Judith Altneu at jaltneu@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @Judith_Altneu.
SATURDAY’S H.S. GAMES
Football
See Week 1 scoreboard, results
Field hockey
Games at 10 a.m. unless noted
North Country at St. Johnsbury
Rice at Colchester
Mount Mansfield at Spaulding
U-32 at Burlington
Mount Abraham at Middlebury
Brattleboro at Fair Haven, 11 a.m.
Otter Valley at Springfield, 11 a.m.
Girls soccer
Rutland at Spaulding, 11 a.m.
Boys soccer
Games at 10 a.m. unless noted
Harwood at South Burlington
Milton at Stowe
Rivendell at Randolph
Lyndon at BFA-Fairfax
Thetford at Oxbow
Champlain Valley at Mount Anthony, 11 a.m.
MIddlebury at Rutland, 11 a.m.
BFA-St. Albans at Montpelier, 1 p.m.
Cross-country running
Essex Invitational
Boys volleyball
Matches at 11:30 a.m. unless noted
Burlington at South Burlington
Essex at Rice
BFA-St. Albans at Mount Mansfield
(Subject to change)
On a single day in late July, a pretty normal looking summer storm dropped a record 8 inches of rain over the Northeast Kingdom in just 24 hours.
Rivers and brooks swelled rapidly and jumped their banks. Homes that had sat in the same place for hundreds of years were swept away.
In the hard-hit village of Lyndonville, it was the fifth time in 13 months the town saw flooding, and the second time in July alone. Plenty of other Vermont towns were flooded at least three times in the last year.
More from Vermont Public: Frequent flooding in Vt. threatens the future of historic settlement patterns
Vermont has a reputation for being a place that is relatively safe from the worst impacts of climate change. However, the latest series of climate fueled flooding disasters is raising questions about whether that’s the case.
Lyndonville Fire Chief Jeff Corrow said in 34 years of firefighting there, he thought he’d seen it all.
“This is an event that we’ve never had before to this degree,” he told Vermont Public reporter Peter Hirschfeld outside the fire station on July 31. “We’re venturing down a road that we haven’t been on. And it’s not a good road to be on.”
We’re venturing down a road that we haven’t been on. And it’s not a good road to be on.
Jeff Corrow, Lyndonville fire chief
Lyndonville and the surrounding Northeast Kingdom communities aren’t alone in being on that road.
By at least one count, Washington County — home to Montpelier — is now tied for being the second-most disaster prone county in America. That’s if you count the number of federal disaster declarations from 2011 through 2023, as the think tank Rebuild by Design did.
Part of the problem, says Dartmouth College professor Jonathan Winter, is the rate at which storm systems are dropping precipitation over the region. Winter, a geographer, says human-caused climate change is making Vermont and its neighboring states up and down the Atlantic coast to New Jersey, much wetter.
His research finds the Northeast now sees 50% more extreme precipitation than it did before 1995, a finding that’s supported by the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
The mechanics behind this are fairly straightforward: As the atmosphere warms, it can hold more moisture, and that means more rain when that moisture gets wrung out.
So far, Winter says in New England, it seems, “We’re getting the same storms, they just have more fuel to work with once they get here.”
More from Vermont Public: Feds grant Vermont a disaster declaration for earlier July storms
It’s a trend Winter says will likely continue as the climate warms, but that could be much improved if the world makes meaningful reductions in the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we humans produce.
On the flipside, if very little is done, the Northeast is expected to continue to see much more extreme rain.
This trend has come as an unpleasant surprise for many Vermonters — in particular, for farmers. Jon Wagner co-owns Bear Roots Farm in Williamstown and Barre, where he grows organic vegetables.
Wagner used to farm on Long Island. But that ended after his fields were inundated with saltwater during Superstorm Sandy. He says they watched the vegetables turn black in the field overnight, and saw their soil get burned by saltwater.
“So we decided to move up to Vermont, a landlocked place where theoretically it couldn’t flood,” Wagner said. “But it turns out you can.”
Abagael Giles
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Vermont Public
After farming through nearly a decade of drought — something else Vermont is seeing more of with climate change — a flash flood and sustained wet weather swept away about 75% of their harvest last summer.
“We basically came into the season on credit card debt,” he said. “So we’re still kind of taking it a week at a time, just trying to stay afloat.”
This year, they’re growing everything they can up on higher ground, including a couple of acres of heirloom pumpkins and winter squash. The relatively warm weather this summer has accelerated the pace of the growing season, and that’s been a welcome relief, Wagner said.
But in some places, higher ground brings other hazards in a changing climate.
Up high in the Green Mountains in Ripton, there’s growing concern about landslides wiping out their mostly dirt roads.
Last summer during a torrential rainstorm, a hillside collapsed in the night, sweeping an entire home off of its foundation before the owner’s eyes. It was one of 82 landslides recorded by the Agency of Natural Resources after the July 2023 flooding event, and one of 11 that required a same-day evacuation.
More from Vermont Public: FEMA will review proposed floodplain map for Johnson after neglecting to include data from recent floods
“Landslides were not really a thing up here, except perhaps on Route 125, coming up the mountain,” said Laurie Cox, chair of the Ripton Select Board.
Cox said no one expected a landslide to jeopardize a home in Ripton, and the fact that one did is unsettling.
Agency of Transportation
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Courtesy
“All of that makes one realize that everything that you thought was solid under your feet isn’t always solid,” she said.
Ripton is looking at rebuilding an old road that’s more of a trail now, so that emergency vehicles can get in and out if the highway is swept away in a future storm.
And state officials with Gov. Phil Scott’s administration have called for a new statewide “Landslide Taskforce” to coordinate evacuations during storms.
The Flood Safety Act, a new state law passed this year, makes it harder to build new structures in places where rivers are likely to wash them away.
But with entire 200-plus year old communities located in places that now flood, these are not the only changes the state will be forced to contemplate in the coming decades.
More from Vermont Public: Capitol Recap: Vermont lawmakers’ new Flood Safety Act wants to bolster rivers, wetlands as natural mitigation
For his part, Jon Wagner of Bear Roots Farm says he’s grateful Vermont has water, and doesn’t have to contend with sea level rise.
Still, he says he doesn’t think of any place as being safe from climate change.
Abagael Giles
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Vermont Public
“I think ultimately, it is affecting everyone everywhere,” he said.
And while it presents a challenge for farming here, Wagner says he’s determined to adapt.
Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message.
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont hockey fans are mourning the loss of NHL star Johnny Gaudreau, who died alongside his brother in a tragic crash Thursday night. As WCAX sports director Jack Fitzsimmons reports, the Gaudreau family’s connection to the state is strong.
New Jersey State police said the Gaudreau brothers were killed Thursday night when they were hit by a suspected drunken driver while riding bicycles in their home state.
The 31-year-old Gaudreau was drafted by the Calgary Flames in 2011 out of Boston College, where Matthew also played.
Their father, Vermont-native Guy Gaudreau, had a standout career at North Country before excelling for then-Division 2 Norwich.
Also a star soccer player, the elder Gaudreau is a member of the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame.
Gaudreau’s memorial is growing outside the Blue Jackets’ arena in Columbus after the tragic news.
Copyright 2024 WCAX. All rights reserved.
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