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Affordability - Home ownership for $600/mos.VT can be affordable. -
School Funding is out of Control;We need to stop school closings & regroup;Act 46 is the worst. -
Drugs.Vermont lead the nation in addicted births for 2014.We need a new plan, we have a problem. -
It took longer to repermit these condos after a fire, than to rebuild our state after Irene.It shouldn't be so difficult -
$200,000 budget for riverside park benches.Budget $45,000 for permitting and engineering park benches & plantings.Wasteful spending. -
Montpelier doesn't get it!We have a spending problem.
AFFORDABILTY
Vermont is expensive.
Housing – the bedrock for building wealth, stability and strong families is near impossible in Vermont. We can have fine homeownership for $600 per month.
We can stop generational poverty. It doesn’t have to be this way.
VERMONT IS NOT AFFORDABLE! We make normal things difficult, which in turn makes everything expensive. Montpelier is controlled by their corresponding PAC or Lobbyist, the root of our problems.
We have many state sanctioned and protected monopolies; in every case the citizen has no other choices and gets abused; cost containment and improved service are not part of the monopolies game plan, pick your category….it’s the same results in every case.
Schools, College, Day Care, Health Insurance, Medical Facilities are protected monopolies in our state. We have plans for better care/service at better prices. When a monopoly makes $500 hammers we get stuck with the bill! The only side winning with a monopoly, are those that control the monopoly, everyone else loses. It’s the same in Washington….it’s all over, it needs to stop.
SCHOOL FUNDING
Montpelier has had three swings at home plate and struck out. It’s time to bring back more local control, use a simple, sane formula for school funding.
First Strike – Prior to Act 60 we had a shared pool, which the state misspent.
Second Strike – Act 60, was supposed to keep the small schools open and funded, many have closed because of Act 60. Higher spending was our best outcome.
Third Strike- Act 46, Schools are being closed, taxes are going up, school spending is going up and the student populations is 30% lower. This plan make no sense.
We need to have a moratorium on all school spending for the next two years and get a plan that works for Vermonters and not the lobbyists. Let’s work together and solve our problem.
DRUGS
Our state with good intentions has enabled bad behavior; supported a plan that has brought chaos, despair and ruin to many families across our state.
We have drug dealers going in and out of towns without concern. We have state road workers collecting multiple 5 gallon buckets of hypodermic needles on the road sides. We warn people not to wander around woods at rest areas due to the prevalence of needles.
Vermont is the national leader in babies born addicted to heroin and hard core drugs.
Two places that should be drug free; schools and prisons, are easy spots to purchase drugs.
Sending people to jail for smoking a joint makes no sense, nor does state sanctioned drug cartels disguised by the name “co-operative”, big pharma, clean needle sites and “artisanal pot”, why can’t we find sane middle ground? Vermont needs to change focus.
Drugs are not the road to success,
WORKING TOGETHER
In town meetings of yore, a person would stand up, let’s say an old dairy farmer; and bring up a topic that was dripping with common sense. Upon completing their statement a long pause would ensue.
In the pause, people were thinking, peoples minds were changed and often a different course was set. We worked together, we listened.
Today’s politics are purposely divisional, this division keeps the lobbyists and government sanctioned monopolies in power, the people lose. Our media language is riddled with fight this, resist this, stupid this….we get nothing done, the lobbyists line their pockets an get their way. People have far more in common than their differences, it’s the lobbyists biggest fear: Vermonters coming together in harmony, solving their own problems.
We need to break the programmed responses we’re being fed and work toward the more perfect union. If we stop with our over virtuous attitude, reduce NIMBY ism add a bit more Love and respect we could go along way.