BURLINGTON — Debbie Hazen recalls turning 6 when the nuns who ran the city’s former St. Joseph’s Orphanage locked her in an attic trunk in the early 1960s.

“They told me there were bats and snakes and spiders in there that were going to get me,” she said of the dark place.

Hazen never imagined she would eventually find herself outside the orphanage dedicating a “memorial healing space” for the more than 13,000 children who lived at the Catholic facility from its opening in 1854 to its closing in 1974.

“This has been a long time coming and quite the journey for all of us,” Hazen, now 70, told a crowd of 100 fellow survivors and supporters Friday. “For some, this will complete their healing. For others, there’s still much to do.”

The North Avenue memorial, which features a sculptural arbor and stones etched with the words of former orphanage residents, is the final project in a five-year restorative justice process.

“Your voices have been instrumental in shaping our approach to child protection,” Chris Winters, commissioner of the Vermont Department for Children and Families, told survivors. “This memorial is not just a reminder of the past, but it’s also a symbol of your resilience and of our commitment to a future where every child is safe.”

Former orphanage residents once feared no one would believe their memories of mistreatment, so they didn’t start publicizing their childhood conditions until the 1990s. But authorities didn’t launch an investigation until a 2018 BuzzFeed article exposed the full extent of past “unrelenting physical and psychological abuse.”

By 2020, the review confirmed “abuse did occur … and that many children suffered,” although the accusations were too old to pursue criminal charges. To compensate, local and state leaders initiated a “restorative justice inquiry” to help former residents push responsible parties to adopt measures “to ensure that these harms never happen again.”

Working with social service and legal professionals, former residents lobbied for a 2021 state law that eliminated time limits on filing civil lawsuits alleging childhood physical abuse — a success that won them the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services’ 2021 Survivor/Activist Award.

But the orphanage’s overseers — the state’s Roman Catholic Diocese, the Sisters of Providence and Vermont Catholic Charities — would not meet with survivors as a group nor consider requests for childhood records or restitution.

As part of the inquiry, participants told their stories through several public projects, including two anthologies, a Vermont Folklife-supported oral history and traveling exhibition, and journalist Christine Kenneally’s 2018 BuzzFeed exposé and 2023 follow-up book, “Ghosts of the Orphanage.”

Inquiry organizers also released a 176-page final report that summed up the restorative justice process as both “helpful and healing” and “difficult and painful.”

The new memorial rose with help from Burlington’s Department of Parks, Recreation & Waterfront and supporters who donated $160,000. The dedication featured current and former  local and state leaders as well as survivors who came from as far away as Florida.

“I would like to acknowledge all the unseen victims who have gone unnoticed,” said Debi Gevry, 62, whose father, struggling to care for her and her two siblings, placed them at the orphanage in the 1960s.

“He did so thinking he was doing what was best for his children,” she said in a speech. “On a mechanic’s wage, he paid for our keep not knowing the suffering we were enduring on a daily basis.”

Gevry, who said she wasn’t hugged until after leaving at age 12, went on to raise her own family.

“I have yet to heal from the traumas hidden deep in my soul,” she said. “I have unknowingly passed on my fears and anxieties to the next generation. This is just a small example of the ripple effect abuse carries.”

Gevry closed by reading a poem she wrote. Chiseled into a memorial stone, it’s punctuated by the refrain, “We will be remembered.”

“I may never be completely whole,” she said, “but I will not be silenced.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: For Vermont survivors of orphanage abuse, the restorative justice process is over. The journey is not..

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has heard all the talk about Democrats hemorrhaging voters because of unaddressed economic fears. But the onetime physician, presidential candidate and national party chair has a different diagnosis.

“It’s true the Democrats forgot the working class, but we are not appealing to the next generation,” he began a recent interview. “Younger people don’t like longwinded mealy-mouthing, which is a problem in our party. Washington has never had a clue, but it’s particularly out of touch with a bunch of old folks running everything.” 

Dean was 22 when he earned a political science degree, 29 when he graduated from medical school, 33 when he won election as a state representative and 37 when he became lieutenant governor — only to turn 40 and skyrocket into the political stratosphere.

As governor from 1991 to 2003, Dean pushed to expand health care, starting with Dr. Dynasaur coverage for children and teenagers. As a presidential contender in 2004, he plugged into student support by pioneering online organizing, spurring Politico to deem him “the father of all web campaigns.” As head of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2011, he popularized a “50-state strategy” in hopes of growing the grassroots.

Then hitting 75 last year, Dean toyed with another run for governor, only to ultimately stay on the sidelines.

“I didn’t talk to anybody who I trusted who thought it was a good idea, and I don’t really know how to negotiate this world anymore,” he recalled. “I do my banking at the counter, where they say, ‘You could save yourself a lot of trouble if you just go online.’ I won’t because of the security problems. And I’ve never used Amazon. I want to keep my money in Vermont.”

And so the grandfather of three is aiming to embolden a new generation.

“People in their 70s and 80s need to understand our place and get the hell out of the way,” Dean said. “I’m not saying we ought to kick old people to the side or turn everything over to 20-year-olds, although we need a society where they feel they fit in. But I think leadership has to be between 35 and 50.”

Dean admits that can be a challenge in the Green Mountain State, where the median age is the third highest in the nation, the U.S. census reports. The number of older Vermonters has risen by 80% since 2000 — about one in every three residents is now over 60 — while figures for youth under age 20 have dropped by almost 20%.

Dean adds it’s not always easy to hand over the remote when you’ve long held the control.

“As a parent, there’s a role for you as your kids get older, but it’s not what it was.”

That said, Dean isn’t ready to go quietly.

‘The nurse knocks’

Two decades ago, most 20-year-olds knew everything about Dean, the original Vermont youth magnet before U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016 and 2020. But today’s students either weren’t born or in school when the doctor unintentionally made history on Jan. 19, 2004, with his TikTok-enduring “Dean Scream.”

Born in New York City in 1948, the son of a stockbroker graduated from Yale University in 1971, then tried his hand pouring concrete, washing dishes and finally attending the Bronx’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Meeting and marrying fellow student Judith Steinberg, he was rejected by his top three hospital choices before winning acceptance at his fourth — the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.

Juggling jobs as a physician and part-time lieutenant governor, Dean chose not to run for the state’s top spot when it came open in 1990. Then Gov. Richard Snelling died of a heart attack a year later.

“I was seeing a patient and the nurse knocks,” recalled Dean, who finished the checkup (“I knew the patient wouldn’t be able to get another appointment for quite some time”) before his emergency swearing-in on Aug. 14, 1991.

Serving as governor through 2002, Dean proved hard to pigeonhole. On one hand, he was a fiscal conservative who cut income taxes while balancing the state budget 11 years in a row — all while receiving an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. Then again, he signed a landmark 2000 law creating same-sex civil unions after the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that all couples have the right to marriage benefits.

The separate-but-equal compromise forged by the Legislature angered both voters wanting no distinction (same-sex marriage wouldn’t come until 2009) and those who opposed any deal. Dean faced so many threats, he had to wear a bulletproof vest when he ran for his fifth and final term.

Amid it all, Dean helped lead the National Governors Association and hinted at higher aspirations by hosting his 49 peers and then-President Bill Clinton at the group’s 1995 conference in Burlington. But everyone was still surprised when he entered the 2004 race for the White House.

‘The Darkest Horse’

The press soon introduced Dean to the nation, but not necessarily in the way he had hoped.

The cover of The New Republic of July 1, 2002, carried the headline, “Invisible Man:  The most intriguing presidential candidate you’ve never seen.” The American Prospect of July 15, 2002, presented a profile titled “The Darkest Horse.” The New York Times of Dec. 18, 2002, summed up its story: “The governor of Vermont will battle the ‘Who’s he?’ factor.”

Dean told the Times he wanted to follow in the footsteps of President Jimmy Carter, a onetime little-known governor who the Vermonter supported as a 1980 delegate to the Democratic National Convention. But Dean was polling far behind a slew of his party’s members of Congress, all of whom supported then Republican President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

That’s when Dean spoke out.

“’What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president’s unilateral attack on Iraq?” he was quoted at the national committee’s 2003 winter meeting. “I’m Howard Dean, and I’m here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

By summer, Dean was deemed a “maverick” by USA Today, an “insurgent” by the Los Angeles Times and worthy of a cover story by Time magazine.

“Today he has a shot at winning his party’s nomination,” Time wrote in its Aug. 11, 2003 issue. “What’s unclear is whether he has surged because contributors and poll respondents think he is a new kind of Old Democrat — a candidate who will finally revive the left — or because those contributors and respondents know the truth — he is a rock-ribbed budget hawk, a moderate on gays and guns, and a true lefty on only a few issues, primarily the use of U.S. military power, which Dean seems to regard with a mixture of contempt and suspicion.”

Whatever Dean was, “he’s all that and a stick of gum,” political strategist Donna Brazile told the magazine. “He’s that hot. The flavor has not left him.”

‘Nothing to do with it’

By the beginning of 2004, more than 500,000 supporters had signed up on deanforamerica.com, each contributing an average of $77 for a collective total of $50 million, according to finance records.

“I get all this credit for the campaign,” Dean recently recalled. “I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

The candidate instead points to tech-savvy youth who, in a first, harnessed the web for organizing and fundraising. But they knew more about programming a computer than working the political machine. Dean placed third in Iowa on Jan. 19 (the scream wasn’t the cause, but instead came in response), second in New Hampshire on Jan. 27 and third in Wisconsin on Feb. 17 before withdrawing from the race.

“Dean looked for a moment as if he might shake the political universe with a blunt-spoken, nontraditional style,” the Washington Post reported in a postmortem. “He found the same freewheeling approach that drew such fanfare was an engine of his demise.”

“His vaunted decentralized movement of political newcomers lacked experience and agility,” the Times added, “failing to quickly make or clearly communicate critical decisions.”

Dean went on to head the Democratic National Committee, offer commentary on MSNBC and teach as a senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. Since retiring from those posts, he’s now chair of the Democratic Data Exchange, which collects and shares voter contact information.

“Really smart young people are running it — all I do is keep order,” he said. “The only reason I’m chair is because somebody decided I was the only one who could get along with all the people in the Democratic Party who hated each other.” 

When Dean ran to lead the Democratic National Committee in 2005, Republicans held the presidency and both chambers of Congress. Two decades later, the Vermonter says the situation is similar “but the generation gap is bigger than it’s ever been.”

Dean recalls when Americans received their news from the same national television networks, state newspapers and local radio stations.

“Today you have 10 different versions of everything,” he said. “It’s going to be a big problem for this new generation, which is going to be separated from each other by which TikTok influencers they watch, and for the world in terms of how you establish any kind of notion of what’s true and what’s not.”

‘What’s new about that?’

Dean is a strong proponent of shared context. When his children were in elementary school, he read them an unusual bedtime story: David McCullough’s 1,120-page biography of President Harry Truman.

“They still laugh about it,” he said. “They didn’t feel like it was being abusive.”

For adults, Dean suggests two books: “Thomas Chittenden: Vermont’s First Statesman,” a 1997 history by Frank Smallwood about the state’s founding governor; and “Philip Hoff: How Red Turned Blue in the Green Mountain State,” a 2011 account by Samuel Hand, Anthony Marro and Stephen Terry of the 20th-century leader who ushered in a shift from Republican to Democratic rule.

“All this shapes who we are and why we’re different,” he said.

For Dean, the books also shed light on the present disconnect between state and national politics — and why he sees hope.

“Yeah, you’ve got a neofascist government, but I’m an optimist, and I’ll tell you why,” he said. “When I went to college, I had two Black roommates. They had never been to school with a white person and I had never been to school with a Black person. My junior year was the first time women were permitted to enroll in the Ivy League. And I don’t know a single person in my class who dared to say they were gay.”

That was then.

“The amount of change that’s happened over my generation has just been staggering, and I have hope the new generation isn’t going to like authoritarian rule,” he said. “I see my role is to coach young people — and offer an occasional intervention when Democrats in Washington get particularly stupid.”

Dean is repeating his longtime calls for the national party to seed and feed the grassroots by coordinating and contributing to local and state organizing. He’s also offering his support to self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in his current bid for New York City mayor.

“Republicans are playing by a new set of rules now, and I think Democrats have got to toughen up,” Dean said. “We don’t have to give up our ideals, but we do have to talk differently.”

More plain spoken, he explained, and less politically correct.

“I just say what I want,” Dean concluded. “What’s new about that?”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Howard Dean says it’s time to pass the torch. So why is he still embracing the fire?.

When the children of the late Vermont Gov. Tom Salmon thought about scheduling a remembrance for their father after the 92-year-old died in January, all knew why they had to wait until August.

Salmon was a Rockingham lawyer in the summer of 1972 when, seeing Democrats without a gubernatorial candidate, he announced a last-minute, long-shot bid on the afternoon of the Aug. 2 filing deadline.

“I run at a time when the public’s confidence in its governmental leaders, at many levels, is at an all-time low, when there is a deep feeling among all segments of the people that things aren’t working,” Salmon said in a speech quoted by state newspapers just starting to print stories about the Watergate scandal. “I run to give our people a choice between the policies of the past and the promise of the future.”

Three months later, Salmon miraculously beat favored Republican businessman Luther “Fred” Hackett in what the Burlington Free Press, then the state’s largest newspaper, deemed “the biggest political upset in Vermont history.”

“We celebrate not a victory of party but a victory for the indomitable and independent people of the state of Vermont,” Salmon told reporters on that Nov. 7, 1972, election night. “Democracy is alive and well.”

A half-century later, family and friends gathered Saturday to remember that past “promise of the future” amid a nationally turbulent present.

“It’s a bit of a rough patch right now — the issues have become more complex and more partisan,” said state Treasurer Mike Pieciak, a 42-year-old who first met Salmon shortly after serving as a student legislative page. “It has become meaner and focused on how are you going to beat the other side.”

The event was one of two recent memorials that featured a Who’s Who of colleagues of the late governor and his two Democratic successors, Madeleine Kunin and Howard Dean.

Salmon’s funeral at Bellows Falls’ St. Charles Parish and follow-up reception at the local country club drew people of all ages and political stripes. They included current Republican Gov. Phil Scott, who ordered the lowering of flags over the weekend in honor of his predecessor, who served from 1973 to 1977.

“Governor Salmon led Vermont through some of our nation’s most difficult times, doing his best to stabilize our economy and strengthen trust of government,” Scott said in a statement. “His efforts on behalf of Vermont are worthy of our gratitude, remembrance and respect.”

In July, dozens more gathered at the Upper Valley’s Hanover Inn to honor the late Kathy Hoyt, an 83-year-old Norwich resident who died in March after a Vermont political career that spanned three gubernatorial administrations.

“She believed in government,” Hoyt’s son Michael said in a speech. “She believed in a society that helps people and works for them, that allows them to achieve their potential.”

Attendees noted a slew of recent headlines about federal cuts to everything from Vermont food assistance to flood mitigation. In contrast, they recalled when state news once centered on Salmon’s work to protect the environment (such as his land gains tax to control subdivisions), Kunin’s efforts to boost education (ensuring all students access to kindergarten) and Dean’s push to expand health care (starting with the Dr. Dynasaur program for children).

Hoyt worked as planning director for the Vermont Agency of Human Services under Salmon, then served as Kunin’s chief of staff after the state’s first, and so far only, female governor won election in 1984.

“It was an exciting time,” Kunin said in a speech. “Women were coming into their own. We were on sort of an adventure, not knowing exactly where it would lead.”

Kunin stepped down in January 1991, only for her successor, Republican Richard Snelling, to die of cardiac arrest that August. Dean, then lieutenant governor, was no sooner sworn in as Snelling’s replacement when he asked Hoyt to serve as his chief of staff and, later, the first female secretary of administration until his departure in 2002.

“The thing that amazed me about Kathy was her integrity and her willingness to always try to do the right thing,” Dean said in a speech, “including a few times when she had to convince me to do the right thing when I was not inclined to do so.”

Attendees at both memorials said such motivation was often lacking today.

“I think in a lot of ways it has changed for the worse,” said Pieciak, noting he was talking more about the national scene. “It’s much more about personal ego, wealth, success, attention, and not about the people. I wonder if I was 10 years younger, would I ever have gotten into politics? Does the politics that I became interested in still exist?”

Pieciak added of speculation about a future run for governor: “It’s too early to talk.”

Kunin voiced similar concerns about the changing tenor.

“In those days, public administration and public action were applauded and revered,” she said. “We live in a time now where the best and the brightest might not serve because you’re demonized if you take that step.”

Attendees at both memorials questioned the best way to respond. Michael Hoyt shared what he thought his mother would say: “She’d tell you, ‘Don’t despair, don’t give up.’ She’d say, ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn.’”

Kunin, set to celebrate her 92nd birthday in September, offered her own answer when asked, “How are you?”

“I’m here,” she said. “You have to hang in there.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Roiled by national politics, state leaders past and present recall ‘the promise of the future’.

KILLINGTON — The Killington Resort is accustomed to hosting fast-flying World Cup racers on its aptly named Superstar trail. But that didn’t stop locals from gawking Wednesday when a helicopter circled higher than the mid-August temperature as part of an even more stratospheric event.

Vermont’s largest ski area used the chopper to install a dozen towers — some up to 58 feet tall — for a new $12 million Superstar chairlift. It’s part of a $38 million improvement project that also will raise the capacity and reduce the energy consumption of the resort’s 9-million-gallon-a-day snowmaking system.

“This is really a milestone moment,” Tait Germon, Killington’s director of mountain operations, shouted over the windy whir of propellers. “It’s exciting to see it start to come together.”

When a 20-something honeymooner named Preston Smith opened the first trails on the state’s second tallest peak in 1958, he was happy to raise $30,000 for a simple shelter and parking lot.

Smith, now 95, went on to create the biggest snow-sport resort in eastern North America before its sale to the Maine-based American Skiing Company in 1996 (the same year neighboring Pico Mountain joined the portfolio), the Utah-based Powdr Corp. in 2007 and local investors who formed the Killington Independence Group last year.

“This landmark purchase represents a commitment to keeping Killington and Pico in the hands of those who know and love it, with plans to increase capital investment while preserving the mountains’ unique character and community,” the current owners said in a statement last August.

The Rutland County resort closed the four-decade-old Superstar chairlift in April for dismantling, leaving its nearby K-1 gondola to transport summer visitors to hiking and biking trails and an 18-hole golf course. 

Killington faced challenges finding a helicopter, as its original pilot left to fight Canadian wildfires. But another crew arrived Wednesday to fly the towers onto recently poured concrete foundations, logging in some 50 trips up and down the 4,241-foot peak from early morning to late afternoon.

“Given the challenging terrain we’re working with — it’s not like you can drive in with a crane — this is the most efficient way to do this,” Germon said.

The new six-passenger chairlift is on schedule for completion in November, Killington officials said. But mindful of potential weather problems, they couldn’t guarantee it would be finished in time for the World Cup, which has drawn up to 20,000 spectators and a national television audience of 2 million viewers annually since 2016.

As a result, the international circuit will move this year to Copper Mountain in Colorado, although “the race is expected to return to Killington Thanksgiving weekend 2026,” the Vermont resort said in a statement.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Killington needed help erecting its new $12 million chairlift. Cue the helicopter..

BRATTLEBORO — Two months before the close of its fiscal year, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital is still trying to find enough cost reductions and new revenue to balance its current $119 million budget.

“FY25 has been a financially challenging year,” hospital leaders wrote to state health care regulators in a memo shared at a Wednesday review hearing. “BMH currently has a comprehensive financial recovery plan in place; however, we are at risk of failing to fully deliver on some of those initiatives.”

The hospital, one of Brattleboro’s three largest employers, revealed in May it faced a projected $4 million budget shortfall upon the close of its fiscal year Sept. 30. In response, it launched a hiring freeze and let go of six administrators in hopes of lowering its staff count from 543 this fiscal year to 513 in the one that starts Oct. 1.

Hospital leaders still have work to do. On Wednesday, they informed the state that patient volumes and revenues were “generally stagnating or decreasing.” (Regulators didn’t push why, but praised the quality of care.) Brattleboro officials then noted this fiscal year’s losses had totaled as much as $9.5 million and unpaid patient bills had risen as high as $38 million.

“We recognize we are in a bad financial condition,” Laura Bruno, the hospital’s chief financial officer, said during the online hearing. “We have some ways to go.”

Hospital President Christopher Dougherty added in a letter to the state: “BMH must produce a positive margin in the fourth quarter of 2025.”

Brattleboro is one of Vermont’s 14 community hospitals meeting with the state’s Green Mountain Care Board this month as regulators study proposed budgets for the 2026 fiscal year.

Brattleboro’s 2026 spending plan estimates its total operating expenses will rise $2.3 million or 1.9% from the current year’s, while revenues could increase enough to project a surplus of $244,000. 

While hopeful, the hospital foresees several potential problems. It is set to lose $14 million next year with the Dec. 31 end of the OneCare Vermont accountable care organization, although it hopes to replace those funds by joining another system.

It could lose $3.6 million if the federal government doesn’t extend Medicare-dependent hospital and low-volume adjustment support and another $700,000 if dropped from a national 340B drug pricing program that offers financial help. And new U.S. tariffs “threaten to dramatically increase our costs for supplies and drugs,” it said in its memo.

State regulators will continue to review budgets this week and next before ruling on whether to approve, modify or deny proposals by Sept. 15.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Even after cuts, Brattleboro hospital unsure it can balance budget.

DUMMERSTON — The nonprofit Landmark Trust USA makes money to preserve historic properties through short-term rentals of such holdings as the late Victorian-era writer Rudyard Kipling’s former Vermont home.

And soon, his horse barn.

Kipling, born in India and raised in England, was 26 when he visited the United States on his 1892 honeymoon and decided to build a house near his wife’s family in the southeastern town of Dummerston.

The man who’d become the first English-language author to win the Nobel Prize in literature named his 2½-story hideaway Naulakha after a Hindi word meaning “jewel beyond price.” There, he penned “The Jungle Book” and “Captains Courageous” and conceived “Kim” and “Just So Stories,” only to depart after constructing a barn for his horses, Nip and Tuck, in 1896.

The property stayed in local hands, then sat unused for 50 years before Landmark Trust USA — an offshoot of Britain’s Landmark Trust conservation charity — purchased it in 1992.

To generate revenue, the organization rents Kipling’s home and carriage house for short-term stays and small gatherings. This week, it’s announcing plans to convert the horse barn’s loft into a studio apartment.

“The Naulakha stable project furthers our preservation mission, ensuring this remarkable place is accessible for future generations,” Susan McMahon, the trust’s executive director, said in a statement.

The plan is part of a $1.25 million Naulakha capital campaign, which is 85% complete and will also replace several roofs and improve groundwater drainage.

Landmark Trust USA manages six historic properties that include the Naulakha buildings, a nearby Dummerston farmhouse and sugarhouse and the Amos Brown House in Whitingham. It also maintains the 570-acre Scott Farm orchard, which grows 130 varieties of heirloom apples just down the road from Kipling’s home.

“We’re making good progress,” Jeremy Ebersole, the trust’s public outreach manager, said of the improvement campaign. “The goal is to have the stable rental done and ready sometime in the fall.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Seeking a unique vacation rental? Introducing Rudyard Kipling’s Vermont stable..

WESTON — When the Weston Theater Company announced its musical now playing would be a stage adaptation of the 1954 film “White Christmas,” some locals wondered about the seeming incongruity of orchestrating summer with sleigh bells in the snow.

More residents, however, are worried about an even bigger toppling of tradition.

Upon its start in 1937, Vermont’s oldest professional acting troupe performed in a white-pillared playhouse on the postcard green of its namesake Windsor County town of 623 residents.

In 1962, a fire ravaged everything but the building’s Doric columns. In 1973 and 2011, storm overflow from the neighboring West River flooded the cellar of the restored structure. But come hell or high water, the company always reopened in keeping with the theatrical credo “the show must go on.”

Then on July 10, 2023, a record downpour swallowed up the playhouse’s basement and first floor. The troupe relocated to a smaller second stage at the nearby Walker Farm with hopes of bailing out the main theater in time for that summer’s musical — fatefully, the splashy “Singin’ in the Rain.”

But two years later, the playhouse sits empty as its nonprofit operators wrestle with questions about finances and the future.

“Our estimate right now is we’re three years out from getting back into the building, and when I tell people that, they’re shocked,” said Susanna Gellert, the theater company’s executive artistic director. “They think, ‘Why can’t we be back in tomorrow?’”

The answer, according to all involved, is almost as complicated as the bureaucratic paperwork they’re swimming in.

The theater company doesn’t own the playhouse, which was built as a church in 1839. Instead, the troupe leases it from the Weston Community Association, a volunteer-run nonprofit that also oversees the nearby 1795 Farrar-Mansur House museum and Cold Spring Brook Park.

In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene washed away a $700,000 renovation of the playhouse’s dressing rooms, prop shop and orchestra pit. Twelve years later, the 2023 floodwater rose about 30 inches higher, swelling cleanup costs to nearly $500,000 and the proposed reconstruction to as much as $5 million.

Both the community association and theater company are seeking damage reimbursements from insurance carriers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They’re also planning separate fundraising campaigns to pay for their parts of a shared restoration project.

But the state fire marshal has closed the playhouse to the public until the community association replaces the alarm and sprinkler system — a nearly $200,000 expense that volunteers have yet to figure out how to fund.

“A lot of the people we know who are capable of writing a big check are reluctant to do so until all of the building mitigation has been done,” community association President David Raymond said. “It’s a Catch-22 situation.”

The community association and theater company are not giving up. They recently welcomed U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, to tell him about the cleanup challenges shared by dozens of communities statewide.

“When you look at this town at the helicopter level, we’ve got probably $12 million to $15 million worth of capital needs in the playhouse, fire station, post office, school,” Weston Town Moderator Wayne Granquist said. “That’s incredibly far beyond our capacity to raise money. We need to have external help.”

Welch didn’t promise federal funds, just words of understanding.

“The Weston Playhouse is such a community resource,” the senator said.

Planners are aiming to move all of the playhouse’s electrical and mechanical systems and backstage and storage space above the most recent flood line.

“It’s going to be a push to get the building sustainable, and then a push to get it functional again,” said Rebecca Marzalek-Kelly, the theater company’s general manager.

In the meantime, the theater company is presenting its 89th summer season at its nearby Walker Farm performance space.

“We’re doing what work we can right now so that we’re ready to get back into the playhouse once it’s ready,” Gellert said. “But all of that starts with funding.”

Raymond, for his part, knows the playhouse may be within walking distance of everything in town, but he and his community association colleagues have a long road ahead.

“Hope,” Raymond said when asked what kept him going. “And patience.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Weston Playhouse’s main stage is still closed after flooding. Can it make a comeback?.

Steve Terry was a University of Vermont student on Nov. 6, 1962, when he stood in a Winooski election night crowd and saw Philip Hoff crowned — literally, with a tin-foil coronet tossed by a spectator — the first modern Democratic governor of the Green Mountain State after more than a century of Republican rule.

“I was an eyewitness, just a young, awestruck college student,” Terry recalled to this reporter 30 years later. “It was one of the defining moments of the 20th century history of Vermont.”

Terry didn’t know he’d go on to chronicle six decades of equally headline-grabbing events as a Vermont journalist and historian. Even with his recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, the Middlebury retiree stayed on top of the news — right up to his death Saturday at his home at age 82, his family announced in an email to friends.

“Nowadays, if it’s not on social media, it doesn’t exist,” Terry, a former Rutland Herald reporter and editor, said in a 2023 interview. “There seems to be an absence of memory of events that happened a week earlier, let alone years earlier. Maybe this is just my age, but we don’t seem to have deep introspection as to the roots of what’s happening today. History doesn’t seem to be in our culture anymore.”

Putting current events into context was an essential part of Terry’s life. Born in Windsor on Oct. 2, 1942, he was a high schooler when he began reporting on local sports for the weekly Vermont Journal and a University of Vermont student when he interviewed his peers for articles the school distributed to their hometown newspapers.

Terry had just started college in 1960 when he saw John F. Kennedy campaign in Burlington the day before the politician became the youngest person ever elected U.S. president.

“Like all students, I suppose, I was certainly enamored by JFK,” he recalled.

But Terry didn’t realize he was on the edge of a seismic shift. When Kennedy spoke at Burlington’s airport on Nov. 7, 1960, Vermont was anything but a Democratic stronghold. Instead, it was the only state in the nation to have supported the top of every Republican ticket since the GOP’s founding in 1854. 

Attracting a tarmac crowd of 10,000 people, Kennedy nonetheless lost Vermont to Richard Nixon. But two years later, Terry saw Hoff claim a historic Democratic victory, sowing the seeds of the Republicans’ eventual loss of their legislative majority when Democrats won the state Senate in 1984 and the House in 1986.

“It was the tangible beginning of the new Vermont,” Terry recalled. “A lot of what we know about Vermont now had its beginnings there.”

The transition would prove to be turbulent. Terry was a University of Vermont senior when Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.

“I remember, like almost all people, exactly what I was doing when I heard the news that the president had been shot,” Terry recalled on the 60th anniversary. “I was at the library interviewing a student leader, then rushed back to my fraternity house. Minutes later, I saw that famous TV picture of Walter Cronkite announcing to the world that JFK was dead.”

Decades before cellphones, personal computers and cable, Vermonters relied on radios, television antennas and newspapers. Graduating college in 1964, Terry interned for six months at the Providence Journal in Rhode Island before covering Hoff’s second and third terms as a capitol reporter for the Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, two of the state’s then-largest and most respected news outlets.

Terry joined the sister papers’ shared Vermont Press Bureau on the eve of the 1965 reapportionment of the state Legislature — ending the practice of giving every municipality its own House representative, regardless of population — and headed the office when it sent reporters to the 1968 presidential conventions.

“I drew the straw to cover the Republicans in Miami,” Terry recalled in a 2024 interview.

Terry reported on the GOP’s nomination of Nixon. A colleague traveled to Chicago to follow Democratic challenger Hubert Humphrey amid explosive protests against the Vietnam War, only to drop his press duties and demonstrate himself.

That created a challenge for Terry who, in Montpelier, suddenly had to cover what was happening inside the Democratic convention hall nearly 1,000 miles away. Turning to a television and landline telephone, he soon was investigating the fact that Hoff was being floated as an anti-war alternative for vice president.

“I certainly did wish I was on the scene in Chicago,” Terry recalled. “It had to be, from a journalistic perspective, one of the most amazing historic events.”

Terry wrote a retrospective on Hoff upon the governor’s exit in 1969, leading Terry’s college history professor, Samuel Hand, to assign it as required reading. The former student and teacher later teamed with friend and Newsday managing editor Anthony Marro to turn the retrospective into the 2011 book, “Philip Hoff: How Red Turned Blue in the Green Mountain State.”

“In the years before Hoff, Vermont had been seen as a small and sleepy rural state where change came about only slowly and grudgingly,” Terry wrote in the book. “In the years during and after Hoff’s time as governor, Vermont became known for social ferment and rapid change.”

As a fledgling reporter, Terry dialed up another legendary Vermont figure — Republican U.S. Sen. George Aiken, who served from the beginning of World War II to the end of Nixon’s Watergate scandal — and discovered the politician who chose green for the color of the state’s license plates and coined the term “Northeast Kingdom” was willing to talk any time from early morning to late at night.

“I was learning on the job,” Terry recalled, “but he was never in a hurry to get off the phone.”

Terry made the first of several career transitions to join Aiken’s Washington, D.C., staff in 1969. He worked as a lead aide for the Senate Foreign Relations and Agriculture Committees until his boss’ retirement in 1975.

“I often took notes on the events I witnessed,” Terry recalled. “I had always aspired to do a book.”

Terry compiled the senator’s most important speeches in 2004’s “The Essential Aiken: A Life in Public Service.” He later wrote 2019’s “Say We Won and Get Out: George D. Aiken and the Vietnam War,” a biography centered on the senator’s oft-misquoted 1966 thoughts on U.S. involvement in Asia.

Terry filled the latter book with personal memories. He started by confirming other historians’ assertions that Kennedy was secretly planning to pull out of Vietnam after his anticipated reelection campaign in 1964.

“Aiken told me when I was on his staff that it was told to him in confidence,” Terry said in a 2019 interview. “Was Aiken right about Kennedy’s resolve to get out of Vietnam after the 1964 elections? We will never emphatically know the answer.”

Terry also remembered the time an 80-year-old Aiken was contemplating retirement in 1973 when a 31-year-old freelance writer convinced the elder statesman to sit for an interview.

The aspiring scribe’s name: Bernie Sanders.

“My job as Aiken’s aide,” Terry recalled, “was to take the very long-haired Bernie to lunch in the ornate U.S. Senate dining room.”

Terry said the contrast between Sanders and Aiken was striking: A young Brooklyn-born revolutionary conversing with a lifelong Republican tagged by his congressional colleagues as “the wise old owl.” But the resulting story in Vermont Life magazine’s spring 1973 issue showed a surprising degree of consensus between two men now considered among the state’s most legendary U.S. senators.

Terry returned to journalism upon Aiken’s retirement to work as founding editor of the Sunday Herald and Times Argus in 1975 and managing editor of the daily Herald from 1977 to 1985. He then moved to a corporate career as a communications executive at Green Mountain Power from 1985 to 2014. At the same time, he helped found the nonprofit Vermont Journalism Trust that oversees VTDigger.

Growing up milking cows by hand at his grandfather and uncle’s dairy farm, Terry retired to raise a small herd of Belted Galloway beef cattle. He left full-time work after receiving the Vermont Chamber of Commerce’s 2014 Citizen of the Year award at a ceremony that featured written testimonials from prominent peers.

“Steve is, in the true sense of the word, a public citizen,” former Gov. Madeleine Kunin said in her statement. “While he has been employed full-time in the private sector, he has had an impact on public life in Vermont.”

Friends ranging from former Gov. Howard Dean to The New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer (who got her start as Terry’s first Herald hire) recently contacted Terry to express their own appreciation after learning of his declining health. Many were encouraged by Terry’s wife Faith, who noted “his mind is ever active and engaged.”

Christopher Graff, former head of the Associated Press’ Vermont bureau, said Terry was the rare person who could juggle jobs in the press, politics and power industry.

“They said of Aiken he was neither hawk nor dove but a wise owl,” Graff said. “That’s the role Steve played for decades, helping reporters, governors and CEOs work through tough times and decisions. Steve really was one of the last links to those huge personalities and to those history-making times.”

Disclosure: Jane Mayer is a board member of the Vermont Journalism Trust, which operates VTDigger.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘I was an eyewitness’: Vermont journalist and historian Steve Terry dies at 82.

Adjusting 90 pounds of gym weights, a Vermont teenager named Gabe introduced himself to a visiting filmmaker before noting that growing up male could be a heavy lift.

“In my experience in school, like elementary school, I got in trouble a lot,” the boy told the man with a camera and microphone. “I felt very alone, and I just felt no one understood me. I think that a lot of the older generation, they might think that, you know, guys in my generation have much less drive.”

Instead, many boys and young men are struggling with social isolation and consequences such as substance abuse and suicide, state and national statistics show. That’s why the Montpelier-based Well Told Films is set to debut a new documentary, “Gone Guys,” this week to kick off a series of free screenings throughout Vermont.

“Something is out of sync for many boys and young men, and it’s showing up in classrooms, job sites and communities,” Dan Smith, president of the Vermont Community Foundation, said in an interview. “We recognize the urgency and opportunity to create space for people to better understand.”

Smith’s organization has teamed with the state’s Richard E. & Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation to sponsor the 45-minute film and follow-up talks.

“When we began researching this film, the idea of exploring the challenges facing boys and men was often met with confusion,” said its director, Chad Ervin. “But in conversation after conversation, two groups understood our focus immediately: parents of boys and educators. Their reaction was almost always the same: ‘Thank you. It’s about time.’”

Ervin and producer Angela Snow collected data as evidence of what they call a “quiet crisis.”

Men earned 13% more bachelor’s degrees than women in 1970, only to go on to receive 16% fewer degrees than women in the half-century since, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Boys now make up only one-third of U.S. high schoolers with the top 10% grade point averages, yet almost two-thirds of students in the bottom 10%, the center says.

The country’s work participation rate for “prime age” men has dropped from 97% in 1960 to 88% today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And men total 71% of all opioid deaths, while their suicide rate is four times the figure for women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

The documentary features interviews with Vermont educators, mentors and young men, as well as with Richard V. Reeves, author of the internationally recognized book “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.” 

“We’re landing at a moment when the nation is really starting to talk about this,” said Lauren Curry, executive director of the Tarrant Foundation. “I think this film invites everyone into the conversation.”

Addressing the rise of male disengagement, the online “manosphere” and radicalization, the film doesn’t advocate for any particular solution. Instead, it offers examples such as Montpelier High School’s “Healthy Masculinity” class, the University of Vermont’s “Men & Masculinities” program and the Associated General Contractors of Vermont’s trainings on overdose prevention and mental health.

“We always held firm to the focus of creating a film that seeks to listen to boys and young men and learn from their perspectives and priorities, not preach to them about what they should be doing,” Ervin said.

The film is set to open in St. Johnsbury on Thursday and Friday before moving on to free screenings and discussions in Bellows Falls, Brattleboro, Burlington, Montpelier and White River Junction.

“We must hold two truths at once,” said Smith from the Vermont Community Foundation. “That advancing opportunity for women and girls remains essential — and that boys and young men are struggling in ways we can no longer ignore.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont film gives voice to ‘quiet crisis’ facing boys and young men.

Drive through the small Northeast Kingdom town of Newark on this week’s anniversaries of July floods in 2023 and 2024 and you’ll discover highways repaired, 2023 cleanup costs paid and 2024 debts soon to be settled.

“We’re fortunate,” Newark Town Clerk Amber Holden said of damage totaling less than $300,000.

But surrounding communities, still rebuilding from nearly $1 billion in estimated destruction statewide, face rockier roads.

The town of Lyndon, for example, has secured a $18.9 million line of credit — more than double its $7.4 million annual budget — to repair miles of pavement, the municipal office building, water and sewer plants and a historic covered bridge. While federal and state reimbursements have fully covered the $500,000 in eligible damage from 2023, the town has received just $140,000 toward $14 million in 2024 expenses. 

“People see things are back to normal, but they don’t understand how much paperwork remains,” Lyndon Municipal Administrator Justin Smith said. “What’s left is pretty astronomical.”

Neighboring communities are awaiting their own fixes and funds to replace inundated infrastructure, be it Cabot for a new $8 million public safety building or Marshfield for a $8.3 million package of four bridges and three culverts.

“We’ll be wrestling with this for years to come,” said Bram Towbin, town clerk for nearby Plainfield, which is working to reopen its Brook Road artery and recoup more than $8 million in repair costs.

The story’s the same in dozens of cities and towns on the anniversaries of what the National Weather Service calls “The Great Vermont Flood of 2023” and “The Significant Flooding and Severe Weather Event of 2024.”

“We’ve said from the beginning this is a long process,” said Douglas Farnham, the state’s chief recovery officer. “We still have a lot of progress to make.” 

‘We have to find the money’

Up to 200 of Vermont’s 247 cities and towns reported flooding in the past two years, with a VTDigger survey finding several dozen still awash in red ink and repairs. Yet amid the slog, local and state leaders see reasons for optimism.

Vermont’s “Great Flood of 1927,” whose destruction would total up to $4 billion today, required four years of rebuilding, according to historians. Tropical Storm Irene hit so hard in 2011 that the state was finishing a few final projects when the 2023 deluge struck a dozen years later.

“It’s not as quickly as we would like,” Farnham said of the current recovery effort, “but it is consistent with our historical experience.”

Even so, the state has found cleaning up after the 2023 and 2024 storms to be uniquely challenging. The back-to-back floods ravaged freshly rebuilt infrastructure. Then the return of President Donald Trump in January raised concerns about potential cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which had previously promised to cover 75% to 90% of Vermont’s recovery costs.

“The 2024 flooding destroyed pretty much everything we had repaired in 2023,” Michael Webber, Bolton’s town clerk and treasurer, said in February. “In a good year, you never knew how long FEMA would take. Who knows what’s going to happen now?”

But after a pause in federal funding this winter, local leaders reported money flowing again this spring. FEMA, which had reimbursed Vermont about $110 million for 2023 flooding and $10 million for 2024 damage just before Trump’s return, has since raised those payments by $65 million to $175 million for 2023 and by $5 million to $15 million for 2024, according to state figures.

FEMA declined to provide specifics about individual communities “for privacy reasons” and added only that reimbursement timelines “will vary by weeks or months” depending on the complexity of an application, according to an agency statement.

Moretown is wrestling with a collective $9 million in damage from 2023 and 2024 — almost five times its $1.9 million annual budget. This winter, the town had received about $750,000 from FEMA. Since then, it has reaped another $650,000.

“We’re in a waiting game,” Moretown Town Clerk Cherilyn Brown said.

Small town leaders blame much of the delay on a lack of enough staff to complete the paperwork required for reimbursements. Moretown, like many neighboring communities, doesn’t have a municipal manager or administrator. Instead, Brown juggles the jobs of town clerk, treasurer and tax collector.

Moretown has secured a $3 million loan for a year, but its bank recently expressed reluctance to extend any more money unless the municipality can promise that FEMA will pay.

“When Tropical Storm Irene hit, I contacted the bank, said, ‘I need $1 million and I need it now,’ and it was instantly there,” said Tammy Legacy, the town clerk in nearby Roxbury. “This time, not so much.”

Roxbury, whose 678 residents support an annual budget just under $1 million, has signed a $2.5 million contract to replace two bridges.

“The only issue is getting a line of credit,” Legacy said. “Now banks need a guarantee the town will receive funding from FEMA. The difficulty is getting that guarantee. I’m not blaming anyone. We’re all in a tough boat. But one way or the other, we have to find the money.”

‘Dotting every i and crossing every t’

Although the 2023 and 2024 storms began on July 10, they ended with different outcomes. The 2023 rains caused more significant damage to state government facilities, according to Farnham, while the 2024 precipitation hit municipalities hardest.

Geographically, many southern Vermont towns battered in 2023 were spared in 2024, while many northern communities were hammered both years. But all continue to swim in paperwork.

In southern Vermont, Cavendish reported $2 million in road damage in 2023 but didn’t receive the first of its FEMA reimbursements until the end of 2024. Two years later, it’s still seeking the remaining $500,000.

“People say, ‘Aren’t you glad the flood’s over?’ but it’s not over in our office,” Cavendish Town Clerk Diane McNamara said. “It has been a budget challenge.”

In central Vermont, Waterbury has wrapped up most of its $430,000 in federal and state reimbursement requests for 2023 but has yet to close out $625,000 in claims for 2024. The application process has required the town to document every single expense, employee time card and piece of equipment used.

“You have to make sure you’re dotting every i and crossing every t,” Waterbury Municipal Manager Tom Leitz said.

Leitz estimated he and his staff have invested up to $50,000 in administrative time on such paperwork, which itself can be reimbursed — with more paperwork.

In northern Vermont, Barnet reported $3 million in 2024 damage but has yet to receive any federal compensation.

“We’re still in the paperwork churn,” said Benjamin Heisholt, Barnet’s town clerk and treasurer. “It’s been a slow bureaucratic process just because it’s a slow bureaucratic process. For a small town like us, the biggest challenge is we don’t have a lot of bandwidth personnel-wise.”

To mark this week’s flood anniversaries, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., is touring the state to spotlight the need for continued federal help.

“FEMA does lifesaving and important work after a disaster, but we need to find a way to fix the agency so it works better to help communities recover in the weeks, months, and years after a disaster,” Welch said in a statement. “Vermont saw it firsthand: There’s too much red tape, and the long-term recovery process is inefficient.”

Welch is introducing a bill — the Disaster Assistance Improvement and Decentralization (AID) Act — to streamline and strengthen federal recovery efforts. The proposal is drawing support from local and state officials.

“After facing devastating floods over the last two summers, Vermonters have seen firsthand the value of federal support and assistance from FEMA workers,” Gov. Phil Scott said in a statement. “However, we’ve also experienced gaps between response and recovery, and we need to make changes that better support responders on the ground and those trying to rebuild.”

Back in the Northeast Kingdom, Holland Town Clerk Diane Judd recalled how stormwater flooded her community’s one paved road for days in 2023, only to return and close it for weeks in 2024.

Judd, president of the Vermont Municipal Clerks’ and Treasurers’ Association, knows she isn’t alone in worrying about funding and the forecast.

“I’m just really hoping there isn’t a third year of rain,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: After historic flooding, many Vermont towns still awash in red ink and repairs.

Even with July 4 landing this year on Friday, at least 50 Vermont cities and towns are ready to celebrate Independence Day with free public festivities that stretch from Wednesday through Sunday.

Vermont’s biggest city of Burlington is set to host the state’s largest fireworks show Thursday, July 3, to cap an evening of entertainment from 5 to 11 p.m. at Waterfront Park along Lake Champlain.

The capital city of Montpelier will hold its own July 3rd celebration — an event that draws up to 15,000 people to the Statehouse lawn — with food trucks and family activities starting Thursday at 3 p.m., a mile road race and parade at 6 p.m., and fireworks at 9:30 p.m.

Individual businesses, organizations and attractions are holding activities too numerous to mention. But among the Vermont communities promoting free public events online:

Alburgh will mark the holiday on Friday, July 4, with a parade at 11 a.m. and fireworks at dusk.

Barton is set to gather at the Orleans County Fairgrounds on Friday, July 4, for a horse pull at 10 a.m. and Saturday, July 5, for a tractor pull at 9 a.m.

Bennington’s program on Friday, July 4, will start with morning speeches at the Bennington Battle Monument and end with music and fireworks at Willow Park from 5 to 9:30 p.m.

Brandon’s Independence Day celebration on Saturday, July 5, will include a downtown parade at 10 a.m. and fireworks at dusk.

Brattleboro’s “By the People: Brattleboro Goes Fourth” observance on Friday, July 4, will feature a 10 a.m. parade downtown and an afternoon and evening program of family activities and fireworks at Living Memorial Park.

Bristol’s celebration will begin Thursday, July 3, with music and fireworks from 6 p.m. to dusk and continue Friday, July 4, with an outhouse race at 9 a.m. and parade at 10:30 a.m.

Brownsville will feature music and fireworks on Thursday, July 3, from 6 p.m. to dusk and a parade on Friday, July 4, at 1:30 p.m.

Cabot is advertising a parade on Friday, July 4, at 11 a.m. as part of a day of Main Street activities.

Castleton will mark the holiday on Saturday, July 5, with a parade at 10 a.m. and music and fireworks at Crystal Beach from 7 to 9 p.m. 

Colchester’s observance on Friday, July 4, will begin with a parade at 10 a.m. and end with fireworks at dusk.

Corinth’s celebration on Friday, July 4, will feature a parade at 10 a.m., followed by a chicken barbecue at the local fairgrounds.

Danville will offer fireworks at Joe’s Pond on Thursday, July 3, at dark.

Derby’s parade is scheduled for Friday, July 4, at 10 a.m.

Dover will offer music and fireworks at the Mount Snow Resort on Saturday, July 5, from 6 to 9 p.m.

Essex Junction’s program on Friday, July 4, will feature music at the Champlain Valley Exposition from 6 p.m. until fireworks at 9:30 p.m.

Fairlee’s shared celebration with neighboring Orford, New Hampshire, on Friday, July 4, will include a parade at 11 a.m. and fireworks at dusk.

Greensboro’s “Funky Fourth” on Saturday, July 5, will feature a parade and community picnic at 10 a.m. and a free Vermont Philharmonic concert at the Highland Center for the Arts at 6:30 p.m.

Guilford will gather on Friday, July 4, for an 11:30 a.m. reading of the Declaration of Independence at the local Meeting House before moving on at noon to a picnic at the nearby Broad Brook Community Center.

Hartford’s celebration on Friday, July 4, will include music and fireworks at Kilowatt Park from 7 to 9:30 p.m.

Hartland’s Old Home Day on Friday, July 4, will range from a tractor pull at 8 a.m. to a parade at 10 a.m. and fireworks at 9 p.m.

Hinesburg’s program on Friday, July 4, will include a parade at 11 a.m. and music and fireworks from 6:30 to 9 p.m.

Island Pond’s event on Saturday, July 5, will offer a parade at 11 a.m. and music and fireworks at Lakeside Park from 6 to 9:30 p.m.

Jeffersonville’s celebration on Friday, July 4, will feature a parade at 10 a.m. and music and fireworks at Smugglers’ Notch Resort from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.

Killington’s event on Friday, July 4, will include a parade at 10 a.m. and music and fireworks from 7 to 9 p.m.

Londonderry will hold a celebration at Magic Mountain on Sunday, July 6, with music and fireworks from 7 to 11 p.m.

Ludlow will offer music and fireworks at the Okemo Mountain resort on Saturday, July 5, from 6:30 to 11:30 p.m. 

Milton’s celebration on Friday, July 4, will begin with a parade at 11 a.m. and end with music and fireworks from 5 to 10 p.m.

Newport will offer music and fireworks on Friday, July 4, from 6 to 9:30 p.m.

North Hero will present music and fireworks on Thursday, July 3, starting at 6 p.m.

Peacham’s July 4th celebration on Friday, July 4, will feature a tractor parade at 11 a.m. and festivities until 4 p.m.

Plymouth will celebrate the late President Calvin Coolidge’s birthday at his former home on Friday, July 4, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Poultney’s celebration on Friday, July 4, will include a parade at 10 a.m. and a field day and fireworks at dusk.

Randolph will offer fireworks on Thursday, July 3, at dusk and a parade and festival on Friday, July 4, at 10 a.m.

Richmond will gather on Friday, July 4, for a parade through town at 10:35 a.m., followed by an afternoon of festivities and fireworks at 9:45 p.m.

Rochester will present a parade on Friday, July 4, at 11 a.m.

Saxtons River’s celebration on Friday, July 4, will feature a parade and street fair at 11 a.m.

South Hero will hold a parade on Friday, July 4, at 11 a.m.

Stowe’s “Old-Fashioned Fourth of July” on Friday, July 4, will include two parades — one in Moscow at 10 a.m. and another on Main Street at noon — and fireworks at dusk.

Strafford festivities on Saturday, July 5, will include a parade at 11:30 a.m., a “Fabulous Frog Jumping Competition” at noon and a Strafford versus South Strafford tug of war at 2 p.m.

Stratton Mountain’s Fourth of July weekend will include fireworks on Saturday, July 5, from 8:45 to 9:30 p.m.

Vershire’s program on Saturday, July 5, will include music and fireworks from 6 to 9 p.m.

Wardsboro will hold its annual parade and street fair on Friday, July 4, starting at 9 a.m.

Warren’s event on Friday, July 4, will feature a parade at 10 a.m. and an afternoon and evening of music at the Sugarbush Resort leading to fireworks at 9 p.m.

Williston’s program on Friday, July 4, will include a parade at 10 a.m. and fireworks at 9:20 p.m.

Wilmington will present music and fireworks on Wednesday, July 2, from 6 to 10 p.m.

Woodstock will offer music and fireworks on Sunday, July 6, from 6 to 9 p.m.

And Woodsville and Wells River’s celebration on Friday, July 4, will feature a parade at 11 a.m. and fireworks at 10 p.m.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont to ‘Go Fourth’ with five days of parades and pyrotechnics.

MANCHESTER — Over the decades that Vermont Country Store owner Lyman Orton has amassed what Yankee magazine has called “the largest private collection of 20th-century Vermont art in the world,” the 83-year-old has hung his paintings at home, the office, seemingly everywhere but a single, permanent site.

Then Orton gathered them two years ago for a state tour that began at Manchester’s Southern Vermont Arts Center.

“This collection should end up here,” he recently recalled thinking about the arts center, “so my kids don’t sell it at a yard sale.”

Orton assured he’s just joking about his three sons, the third generation to run the family’s multimillion-dollar retail and catalog business. But he’s serious about wanting a place to share his more than 250 paintings in perpetuity. That’s why he’s breaking ground on a two-story addition to the arts center that’s set to open next summer.

“We are aligned with Lyman on the vision that this should be a public resource,” Amelia Wiggins, the arts center’s executive director, said of showcasing the collection. “We know the beauty of this area is such a draw, and art that captures it compels both locals and visitors.”

The new 12,000-square-foot wing is expected to cost $8.5 million, with related sitework raising the project up to nearly $10 million, according to a state land use permit. The building will be funded by a $14.5 million capital campaign that’s hit 90% of its goal.

“We’re not just constructing galleries, we’re creating space for freedom of expression and bold ideas,” said Bob Van Degna, president of the arts center’s board of trustees and, along with Orton, a top project donor.

‘What’s the story behind it?’

The wing now under construction is a full circle moment for Orton, who was 5 years old when his parents founded the Vermont Country Store in the nearby town of Weston in 1946.

Orton grew up in the unplugged days before the interstate and internet as artists working with oils, watercolors and woodblock ink “came up from down country” to capture the landscape and lifestyles of Vermont.

“They didn’t just pass through,” he recalled in an interview. “They started living here, painted what they loved.”

A group calling itself the Southern Vermont Artists displayed its work on the lawn of Manchester’s Equinox hotel and inside the gym of the nearby Burr and Burton Academy before purchasing the property that would become the arts center in 1950.

Turning 20 a decade later, Orton started his own collection, not knowing he was seeding a lifelong mission to “repatriate” Vermont art sold and scattered over the decades across the country and around the world.

When choosing pieces, Orton has looked for artists such as Luigi Lucioni, whose oils and etchings appear in the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Kyra Markham, an actress, painter and printmaker who was briefly married to the son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright; and Ogden Pleissner, nationally recognized for his Life magazine work and sporting scenes.

But Orton has ultimately focused on the art itself. Take Rockwell Kent’s 1926 depiction of Sunderland’s Union Church. Many see the canvas for its creator, whose works are displayed at the National Gallery of Art. Orton has appreciated it for memorializing the place his great-grandfather helped build.

“I look for paintings that have a ‘there’ there,” he said. “What is it? Where is it? What’s the story behind it?”

‘Art accessible to everybody’

When the collector debuted the traveling show “For the Love of Vermont: The Lyman Orton Collection” in 2023, he grouped both minor and master works into themes such as “Making A Living,” which pictured sugaring, slate quarrying and sawmills, and “Coming Together,” which portrayed families, fairs and ice fishing.

Amid paintings of barns and covered bridges, Orton has an affinity for depictions of clotheslines, be it Leo Blake’s circa 1940 “Summer Laundry” or Mitzi Goward’s “Out to Dry.”

“There is nothing more consistent with a Vermonter’s heritage of practicality, frugality and common sense than hanging the washing outside,” he said of the latter work. “Sunshine and the breeze are free.”

Similarly, Orton traded discreet museum labels for large-print signs more familiar in a school or senior center.

“That makes the art accessible to everybody, not just experts and Chardonnay sippers,” he said.

The traveling show included a postscript requesting “new, corrected or missing information” about the people and places illustrated but not necessarily identified in the art. In response, visitors from Manchester, Vermont, to Manchester, England, offered dozens upon dozens of comments.

“One woman left a card that tells it all,” Orton recalled. “She said, ‘Dear Lyman, I had to drag my husband to the show — and then I had to drag him out.’”

The state tour went on to attract crowds at the Bennington Museum, Montpelier’s Vermont Historical Society and the Manchester Community Library. But each location could only squeeze in a fraction of the full collection.

“It’s 250, 300, 400 paintings,” Orton said of the ever-changing total. “I’m not being coy. I bought 15 paintings in the last two months, just because things happen to come up. But because there’s so much art, it creates the opportunity to have a scheduled rotation.”

The Southern Vermont Arts Center is expecting to exhibit about 75 works in the new wing and keep the rest in a climate-controlled storage space for future viewing.

The addition, designed by the Richmond-based Birdseye architecture and building company, will include a second general exhibition gallery and a patio for outdoor events. But Orton’s collection promises to be the main draw.

“By being the highest bidder on the dozens of artworks of Vermont that Lyman Orton saw go up for sale at local country auctions, he made himself every Vermonter’s heir,” author Anita Rafael wrote in the collection’s 2023 catalog. “By keeping the art of Vermont in Vermont, it is tacitly being passed down to all Vermonters.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Historic trove of Vermont art set to go public in a permanent home.

BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro Memorial Hospital has cut six administrative posts as it seeks $4 million in reductions and new revenue to balance its $119 million annual budget.

“Unfortunately, creating financial stability at times requires a reduction in force,” hospital President Christopher Dougherty said in an interview Thursday.

The day before, the hospital let go of its director of radiology, senior director of revenue cycle, data scientist, outpatient specialty practice manager and two executive assistants.

“They’re all administrative positions,” Dougherty said of the layoffs at one of Brattleboro’s three largest employers. “None of these are patient-facing positions.”

The hospital announced last month it was exploring 40 “strategies” to save or earn money by the end of its fiscal year Sept. 30. At the time, it listed options ranging from capitalizing on services such as its new MRI machine to continuing a hiring freeze that began April 1, to, at last resort, laying off some of its 520 staffers.

“We believe that we have some tremendous opportunities in enhancing our financial standing,” Dougherty said Thursday without elaborating.

But the hospital president couldn’t rule out more staff cuts.

“Our hopes are that we can avoid these reductions in force, but we certainly can’t guarantee that,” he said.

Brattleboro is relatively small among Vermont’s 14 community hospitals — it ranks eighth in the state for net patient revenue. Like the other hospitals, it is reliant on government reimbursement for Medicaid patients with limited incomes and Medicare patients age 65 or older. Both programs offer lower reimbursements than commercial insurance.

Last fall, the hospital asked the state’s Green Mountain Care Board, a key health system regulator, for a 4.7% increase in what it charges patients with commercial insurance. But the board instead capped any rise to no more than 3.4%, noting Brattleboro instead should reduce “system inefficiencies.”

“We did see an opportunity with some administrative positions to get our staffing in alignment with national benchmarks,” Dougherty said Thursday. “Six probably doesn’t sound like a lot, but they are six members of our community.”

Brattleboro so far is the only Vermont hospital to announce staff cuts this year, but it isn’t alone in wrestling with what the Green Mountain Care Board has called “a health care affordability crisis.”

“We’re committed to doing everything possible to create a sustainable future for the hospital,” Dougherty said. “I do think there’s hope that we are making progress in addressing our financial challenges, and we do have some opportunities to continue to accelerate that, short of reductions in force.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brattleboro hospital cuts 6 administrative posts in effort to balance budget.

Geri Peterson can tell you about the citizen discontent behind Saturday’s “No Kings” rally in Burlington, the largest of several dozen Vermont demonstrations — and 1,800 national events — set to protest the Trump administration.

As a lead organizer, she also knows about the unseen costs.

Peterson has learned the price of a permit to take over Burlington’s Waterfront Park from noon to 4 p.m. is $4,000. Renting a stage is another $4,000. Hiring a standby ambulance service is yet another $4,000. Add private security, traffic patrols, support personnel and portable restrooms and the final tab is expected to total about $20,000.

“It’s an enormous undertaking,” she said.

Peterson arranged a similar “Hands Off!” protest April 5 on the Statehouse lawn in Montpelier. Joining peers at 1,000 sister events nationwide, volunteers at the Vermont capital raised about $6,000 for a local street closure permit and security to handle an expected 6,000 people, only to see the crowd swell to an estimated 10,000.

Peterson hopes Saturday’s rally in Burlington will draw up to 20,000 people for speakers including U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., cartoonist Alison Bechdel and Columbia University protester Mohsen Mahdawi.

“Fingers crossed,” Peterson said of a potential appearance by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

The event is one of several dozen around the state and more than 1,800 across the nation set to counter a Washington, D.C., military parade on President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.

Vermont activists are building off a March 1 protest during Vice President JD Vance’s visit to the Sugarbush resort and several dozen April 5 “Hands Off!” resistance rallies statewide.

Organizers with the national 50501 and Indivisible networks said they hope their “No Kings” efforts will attract a total U.S. crowd larger than the estimated 3 million to 5 million “Hands Off!” participants in April.

Vermont State Police and the Department of Public Safety don’t anticipate the protests will require them to increase their staffing or spending, according to spokesperson Adam Silverman. But Saturday’s demonstrations, set for communities as far north as Barton and as far south as Bennington, could squeeze the finances of at least one town.

Brattleboro organizers are planning for 1,000 people or more to gather on the town common from 3 to 6 p.m. The local government is charging $50 for the park rental and $25 for an event permit, although it won’t bill for police and public safety expenses anticipated to total up to $900 per hour.

“Our policy has been for the town to absorb the costs of these larger rallies,” Town Manager John Potter told the local selectboard at a meeting last week.

But hearing complaints about a 10.8% tax hike in the town budget, Brattleboro officials plan to ask protest organizers to voluntarily pay more until the municipality considers a higher fee structure.

“In recognition of what’s happening in the nation, there will be more events,” selectboard Chair Elizabeth McLoughlin said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s big protests against Trump come with big price tags.

The Vermont Roman Catholic Diocese is one of a dozen U.S. religious entities that have filed for bankruptcy whose digital information — potentially including confidential sex abuse claims — was exposed in a cyberattack.

The California-based Berkeley Research Group had been hired to collect allegations of Vermont clergy misconduct when it discovered a data breach in early March, the firm said in court papers filed in Burlington.

The Wall Street Journal reported that a hacker impersonating an information technology worker got inside the company’s computer system and installed ransomware.

Berkeley Research Group confirmed in court papers that it paid an undisclosed settlement to an unidentified “threat actor” and received a “destruction log” that showed “any data exfiltrated during the incident was deleted and will not be disclosed.”

U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Burlington has scheduled a hearing on the issue for June 24.

According to the company, the 12 Catholic entities involved in the breach include the Vermont diocese; California’s Franciscan Friars and its dioceses of Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco and Santa Rosa; the Louisiana archdiocese of New Orleans; the Maryland diocese of Baltimore; and the New York dioceses of Albany, Ogdensburg, Rochester and Rockville Centre.

Berkeley Research Group has not disclosed what information was stolen from each diocese, but said “there is no indication that this crime was targeted” because the breach also involved its business clients.

The firm said it couldn’t elaborate because of an ongoing FBI criminal investigation, but noted it was monitoring the internet and dark web and had yet to find any signs of leaks.

Lawyers representing more than 100 Vermont accusers declined to say whether they knew of or believed that any private data was compromised. But they noted the cyberattack occurred a month before an April 4 court deadline for filing abuse reports, so the company may not have held any of the state’s confidential claims at that time.

The Vermont diocese referred questions to its attorneys, Fredrikson & Byron of Minnesota, who didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Trustee Program, which oversees bankruptcy cases nationwide, has filed court papers noting the potential release of any “sensitive and confidential” information was “very concerning.”

The Vermont diocese is the nation’s 40th Catholic entity to seek Chapter 11 protection because of clergy misconduct as far back as 1950.

As part of the process, the Burlington court placed all sex abuse lawsuits on hold and invited accusers to file confidential claims as potential creditors. A total of 118 people submitted new allegations either just before or after the data breach — almost double the number who previously settled cases over the past two decades.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Data breach reported in firm handling Vermont Catholic abuse claims.

As the creator of the comic “Dykes to Watch Out For” and memoir-turned-Broadway-musical “Fun Home,” Alison Bechdel understands why readers of her new graphic novel, “Spent,” may think it’s autobiographical.

The main character is a cartoonist named Alison who sketches works such as “Lesbian PETA Members to Watch Out For” when she isn’t wrestling with the same questions dogging the artist drawing her.

“How is she supposed to sit here writing a book when the world hangs by a thread?” asks an opening panel of the novel.

But within the 272 pages of fiction is one fact: Both the real and make-believe Alison love the state they’re in.

“Vermont plays a big role in this book,” Bechdel told a crowd in Norwich this past week at the start of a regional publicity tour. “It’s almost like a character that, in so many ways, has made my life and work possible.”

Bechdel, 64, has journeyed from underground press to mainstream success since moving to what she calls the “cerulean blue” Green Mountains at 30. She sparked the term “Bechdel test” in 1985 to see whether a creative work has at least two women talking about something other than a man. She won a $625,000 MacArthur “genius” grant in 2014, and saw “Fun Home” win the Tony Award for best musical in 2015.

Bechdel and her wife, artist Holly Rae Taylor, were cooped up in their Bolton home during the pandemic when the cartoonist began brainstorming her latest book.

“It felt like money was really at the root of all of the really serious problems facing us — the climate, technology, homelessness, addiction, polarization — so I thought maybe I could solve them all by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about capitalism,” she said.

Bechdel piled up texts such as Karl Marx’s three-volume opus on economic theory.

“I suddenly realized it would be much more fun to write a book about a cartoonist named Alison who’s trying to write a memoir about capitalism,” she said.

“Spent” opens with the protagonist roaming around Burlington. At the Onion River Co-op, she scans shelves of oat milk, goat milk and stoat milk. Near the airport, she shudders at the “VROOSH!” sound of a Vermont National Guard F-35 fighter jet as a tourism poster for flaming fall foliage promises “No Need for LSD.”

Moving on to Montpelier, characters from Bechdel’s “Dykes to Watch Out For” are pictured cleaning up from the past two summers of record rainfall.

“This is the second ‘hundred-year’ flood since I was a kid,” a college student tells a friend amid signs for downtown’s Charlie-O’s bar and Bear Pond Books.

Later in St. Johnsbury, the pair stage a climate protest at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium. 

“Two were arrested for throwing ginger black currant kombucha,” a radio station announces shortly after.

Back at the main character’s home, author and activist Bill McKibben makes a cartoon cameo on roller skis. Finally at a nearby farmers market, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint browse booths for “Vermont maple CBD beard oil” and “free range, pasture-raised, certified humane, non-GMO, local, AI-free” eggs.

All that said, the self-billed “comic novel” isn’t kid stuff.

“There’s sex in the book, gratuitous nudity, pickleball, polyamory,” Bechdel cautioned her audience.

That didn’t stop 200 people from filling every seat at the Norwich event and similar programs selling out this month in Burlington, Hardwick and Montpelier.

Reviews are equally enthusiastic.

“If these characters are sad and bewildered by the state of the world, their frustration feels like a reassurance to readers who share it, and perhaps a gentle reminder that it’s easy to confuse being socially conscious with being self-serious,” the New York Times wrote.

The Washington Post praised the book’s “charming, funny, sincere portrait of a Vermont community.”

“The veneer of fiction gives Bechdel that much more permission to go broad as she takes aim at the proclivities of lefty Vermonters, herself included, who long to reclaim their old activist passions but can’t quite escape the comforts of Burlington and its environs,” the Post wrote.

In a story titled “What Is Alison Bechdel’s Secret?” The Atlantic noted that “the cartoonist has spent a lifetime worrying. In a new graphic novel, she finds something like solace.”

Bechdel cautiously agrees.

“By the end of the book, Alison is finally able to actually be in the moment,” the author said. “She starts to notice little details — little newts, little fiddleheads — until her watch alarm goes off.”

Bechdel pointed to her drawing of its ironic, interrupting digital message: “Reduce stress by taking time to reflect.”

“Despite all of my serious worries about the state of the world right now, I also feel weirdly hopeful,” Bechdel said. “Maybe this onslaught we’re experiencing is what it takes for us to finally achieve enough solidarity to turn things around.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Alison Bechdel’s new graphic novel illustrates the comic side of Vermont.

BRATTLEBORO — Great-great-grandmother Shirley Squires is also a great, great fundraiser.

The 94-year-old Guilford resident arrived at Saturday’s AIDS Project of Southern Vermont charity walk with four generations of family, including the newest member born just two weeks ago.

Though rain forced organizers to cancel the annual outdoor stroll, Squires still shined, raising $22,291 in contributions this year to reach a lifetime fundraising milestone of $500,298.

“Your unwavering commitment is nothing short of extraordinary,” U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vermont, wrote to Squires in a letter read at Brattleboro’s Centre Congregational Church.

Squires first learned of the AIDS walk in 1992 when her son — state Rep. Ronald Squires, the first Vermont lawmaker to reveal his homosexuality — spoke at it shortly after winning passage of a statute prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“We can teach our children how to prevent AIDS or we can sit and watch them die,” the Democratic legislator told the Town Crier at the time.

The 41-year-old died of the disease in January 1993. Five months later, his mother joined the walk to raise money in his memory.

“After the painful loss of my brother, a tragedy that would have broken many, my mom chose to turn grief into action,” Diana Squires recalled Saturday alongside many of her mother’s 74 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

Since starting in 1993, the matriarch has yet to miss a year of fundraising — continuing even this winter, when she broke her shoulder before she was set to handwrite 500 solicitation letters.

AIDS, once considered a death sentence, is now a treatable condition that about 750 Vermonters are living with through help from the Brattleboro-based service organization, along with Vermont CARES and the Upper Valley’s HIV/HCV Resource Center, according to the state.

To honor Squires’ half-million-dollar milestone, the AIDS Project is renaming its annual fundraiser the Ron and Shirley Squires AIDS Walk. Its top finisher promised to be back next year after celebrating her 95th birthday in August.

“I will keep doing this until I’m not here anymore,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: 94-year-old Vermont charity walker reaches $500,000 milestone.

BRATTLEBORO — Two months after rejecting a municipal budget for the first time in town history, residents have finally agreed on a 2025-26 spending plan — but not before trying two more times to amend it.

“I don’t think anyone’s thrilled with it,” resident Tom Franks said at a special Town Meeting that approved a $24.9 million budget Tuesday night. But after months of setbacks and surprises, Franks told more than 100 attendees at Brattleboro Union High School, “We need to pass it as is and move on.”

Residents defeated an initial $25 million plan in March, telling the town selectboard its proposed 12.1% tax increase for the fiscal year starting July 1 was too high.

Local leaders went back to the drawing board, only to discover their budget underestimated contracted expenses such as payroll taxes, retirement contributions and overtime. That forced them to raise the bottom line by $426,732 before cutting a half-million dollars, resulting in a revised proposal about $200,000 lower than the original.

Residents wrestled for two hours Tuesday over the latest plan, which will still require a double-digit percentage tax hike of 10.8%.

The meeting began with a call to add $43,045 to restore a municipal sustainability coordinator job to full time instead of part time. Supporters expressed hope that an employee working more hours could generate more grant money, while opponents noted the need to reduce the budget.

“The taxpayers are screaming and they want you to listen,” resident Dick DeGray said against raising the total, even if only by a small sum.

After 45 minutes of debate, residents defeated the request in a 71-53 vote. Residents then considered a call to cut the plan by almost $1 million, which would limit spending to 4% over the current budget.

“There needs to be some brakes on the system,” resident Robert Oeser said.

But townspeople overwhelmingly defeated a 4% limit in a voice vote before finally approving the selectboard’s latest plan by a 110-4 margin.

Tuesday’s endorsement came six months after local leaders learned that continuing to fund all current services amid rising staff counts and trash disposal costs would trigger a 22% tax increase as of July 1. The selectboard voted this winter to retain all personnel and instead decrease or defer other spending, only for residents to reject the plan in March and call for revisions.

Local leaders found savings by keeping several empty posts vacant, including assistant town manager and information technology coordinator.

The selectboard — anticipating fire department overtime could rise to up to $700,000 or more annually because of recurring vacancies and contract requirements — added three more firefighters in hopes their regular salaries would cost less than paying existing personnel to work higher-priced extra hours.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brattleboro approves $24.9M town budget after months of setbacks.

BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro Memorial Hospital is seeking $4 million in expense reductions and new revenue in the next four months to balance its $119 million annual budget.

“Like rural hospitals here in Vermont and across the nation, BMH faces significant financial challenges that have been imposed on us in large measure by both the state and federal governments,” President Christopher Dougherty wrote to the hospital’s 150 community corporators in an email over the Memorial Day weekend.

The hospital is exploring 40 “strategies” to save or earn money between now and the end of its fiscal year on Sept. 30, Dougherty said Tuesday. The list ranges from drawing more revenue through services such as a new MRI machine to reducing expenses through a hiring freeze that began April 1.

Laying off some of the hospital’s 520 staffers would be a last resort, Dougherty said.

“It is absolutely a possibility, but it is at the end of the line of things that we would pursue,” he said of personnel cuts at one of Brattleboro’s three largest employers.

The hospital received budget approval from the state’s Green Mountain Care Board last fall, only to now see diminishing results from the $600,000 a month it pays in Vermont health care provider taxes to help finance Medicaid expenditures for people with limited incomes. 

“While part of that money comes back to us to help offset uncompensated care, the state recently reduced the percentage of annual return to less than 10 percent,” Dougherty wrote in his email.

The hospital president said reimbursements for professional services from the 65-and-up Medicare insurance program have declined by almost 3% annually. He also noted the state rejected a request for a 4.7% increase in its commercial insurance rate.

Last fall, the Green Mountain Care Board, a key statewide health care regulator, required 10 out of Vermont’s 14 hospitals to reduce their requested increases in commercial rates to 3.4% or less.

In its decision on the Brattleboro request, the board wrote that “the commercial market in Vermont cannot afford the current cost of care,” saying “for commercial rate increases to slow, our statewide health system needs to curb spending.” 

The board repeated a similar argument in decisions for other hospitals. In particular, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, which covers roughly one-third of all Vermonters, is facing financial difficulties due to the increasing cost of care.

The board added that Brattleboro’s low Medicare payment-to-cost ratio, clinical productivity data and higher-than-average wait times “indicate system inefficiencies.”

“It is appropriate for the hospital to focus on managing expenses and reducing inefficiencies to obtain a positive margin,” the board’s decision read. 

The hospital is now working on a “robust combination of expense reductions and revenue generating tactics,” Dougherty wrote before ending his email with a link to “donate now.”

Brattleboro is just one of many hospitals in Vermont wrestling with what the Green Mountain Care Board has called “a health care affordability crisis.”

“It’s estimated that as many as 753 small rural hospitals like us are at risk of closing across the United States,” Dougherty said Tuesday. “I hate to say we’re one of those 753, but we’re not going to let that happen.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brattleboro hospital eyes $4M in cuts, new revenue to balance budget.

MARLBORO — As a longtime volunteer and chair of the town’s new cemetery commission, Marcia Hamilton annually prepares for Memorial Day by helping place American flags at the graves of local soldiers. This year, that tradition hit especially close to home with the latest addition to the list: The 102-year-old World War II hero she knew as Dad.

Richard Henry Hamilton was born to nearby Brattleboro farmers on Sept. 28, 1922. The family didn’t plug into electricity until after he graduated from high school in 1940, which is why all were huddled around a battery-powered radio when President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for war after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

“Listening to that, we didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was,” Richard recalled in a 2015 National WWII Museum interview, 

Drafted in 1942, the young Vermonter joined the Army Air Corps. He was serving as a radio operator and gunner on a B-17 bomber named “Destiny’s Child” when it flew over Germany on July 20, 1944.

“When dots were spotted way back, we assumed that was our escort,” Richard said.

Instead, the speeding specks were 60 enemy fighters that shot a wing off his plane. Richard saw bullets and a resulting blaze kill four crewmen before he and four others parachuted down 18,000 feet. Separated from his fellow soldiers, he soon found himself in a wheat field.

“The whole village seemed to turn out — with their clubs and pitchforks,” he recalled in a 2008 Library of Congress interview. “I don’t speak German, but I was introduced to it very suddenly.” 

Richard landed in the Stalag Luft IV prisoner-of-war camp. Jailed for 10 months, he was forced out on Feb. 6, 1945, for a multiweek death march.

“Day after day we were just on the road,” he said. “There was no destination.”

It instead led to dysentery, frostbite, blisters, body lice and jaundice. 

“My feet were black and blue and infected,” he said of his 76th day. “I came to a decision that I wasn’t going to go anymore.”

Miraculously, that’s when two Allied soldiers liberated him on April 24, 1945.

“When we saw the Statue of Liberty, I could just sense how those immigrants placed all their hopes and dreams in that,” he said of his return home.

Back in Vermont, Richard married his sweetheart Joyce White and moved to Marlboro, a southeastern Vermont town known for its former namesake college and longtime music festival. There, they acquired the Skyline restaurant, which the couple ran atop Hogback Mountain until retiring almost 50 years later in 1994.

Ever busy, Richard also served on the town select and school boards and as a constable, tax collector and justice of the peace. He wound the clock in the Meeting House steeple until his hip was replaced at age 90. He commanded the Vermont chapter of American Ex-Prisoners of War, and after drawing faith by memorizing Psalm 91 during his capture (its line “He is my refuge and my fortress” appears on his gravestone), he helped Gideons International distribute Bibles to hotels, schools and prisons.

Richard died at home on Feb. 19 at age 102, leaving four daughters, seven grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

“He was still active” attending men’s breakfasts, senior lunches and veterans’ dinners, his obituary said.

Marlboro residents were still thinking about him two weeks later when they voted to create a local cemetery commission.

According to state law, municipal gravesites are the responsibility of a town selectboard or city council unless a community “votes to place its public burial grounds under the charge of cemetery commissioners.”

Marlboro approved Vermont’s newest such commission in a 308-22 vote March 4, electing Marcia Hamilton and fellow volunteers Hollis Burbank-Hammarlund and Sally White to its three seats. They’re now working on spring cleanup, summer mowing, year-round green options and “a user-friendly flowchart to help the public navigate the burial process,” according to meeting minutes.

“One thing we plan to do is create a policy to standardize the care each cemetery gets,” Marcia said of the group, which has a $16,200 annual budget. “We’re trying to show that a commission is a good idea by not having a spurt of expenditures. It’s not going to cost any more money than it ever has.”

Marcia and her family received help at her father’s graveside service May 14 at King Cemetery. More than 200 friends, neighbors, veterans and first responders assisted with a 21-gun salute, the playing of taps and a U.S. Air Force flyover.

Shortly after, Marcia followed in the footsteps of her late mother by gathering three generations of her family to place American flags at the burial plots of local soldiers. She started with her father and went as far back as Revolutionary War militiaman Elijah Bruce, who is believed to have fought at the Battle of Bennington in 1777 before dying from smallpox in 1835.

Each stone, she knows, has its own story.

Read the story on VTDigger here: A Vermont WWII veteran survived a death march. 80 years later, his hometown is saying goodbye..

BURLINGTON — Two decades after news broke of a nationwide Catholic priest misconduct scandal, seven Vermont child sex abuse claimants spoke in court Wednesday about the lingering impact.

“He molested me in my own house, in my own bed,” a 61-year-old man identified as Speaker 5 recalled of being an altar boy a half-century ago. “I froze and never said a word. Today, as an adult, I am still working on the side effects.”

Leaders of Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese have heard many such comments over the years as they’ve paid out $34.5 million to settle 67 civil lawsuits alleging clerical improprieties dating as far back as 1950.

But Wednesday saw officials in a different venue: U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Burlington, where the state’s largest religious denomination is seeking Chapter 11 protection in hopes of reorganizing its depleting finances.

“I’d like to say thank you for having our voices heard,” the first speaker, who identified himself to reporters as Kevin McLaughlin, told Judge Heather Cooper. “This sort of thing leaves scars.”

As part of the Chapter 11 process, all pending and future lawsuits have been placed on hold as 118 new accusers have submitted confidential claims to join the case as potential creditors — almost double the number of people who previously settled before the diocese filed for bankruptcy last fall.

Although the bankruptcy court has no authority to rule on any of the sealed allegations, it allowed seven of the latest accusers to offer non-evidentiary “survivor statements” as a courtesy at a special session at Burlington’s Federal Building.

“When the diocese filed for bankruptcy, it robbed those survivors of their opportunity to stand in front of a jury of their peers,” said Brittany Michael, the lawyer for a federally appointed committee representing creditors with abuse claims. “We know that the opportunity to speak in court can be an important part of the healing journey.”

For two hours, speaker after speaker talked both generally and graphically, standing up and breaking down, as they remembered being anywhere from 6 to 15 when they were abused.

“I immediately buried those memories, but I was forever changed,” said a man identified as Speaker 3. “I thought many times of committing suicide because it was so painful.”

Other men spoke of continuing shame and stress, anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks, as well as failed classes and marriages and alcohol and drug dependence.

“It has taken me decades to understand this monster has been responsible,” a man identified as Speaker 2 said of the priest who abused him. “All this time I thought I had been the only one. My only regret is not having the courage to come forward sooner.”

The Vermont diocese is the nation’s 40th Catholic entity to seek bankruptcy protection because of clergy misconduct. Under federal law, it must present the court with a tally of its financial assets and liabilities. The judge then will decide whether to allow church leaders to develop a reorganization plan that would require approval from both the court and creditors.

Abuse claimants are seeking church records detailing not only a reported $35 million tied to the diocese’s headquarters and state-level holdings but also all the local operations it oversees, starting with 63 parishes with an estimated collective worth of $500 million. The resulting findings are expected to spark future court debate on which assets can be used to compensate creditors.

Vermont Catholic Bishop John McDermott attended Wednesday’s special session.

“It is my sincere hope and fervent prayer,” he said afterward in a statement, “that today’s hearing will be a source of continued healing for the survivors who shared their stories and for all who have filed a claim against the diocese.”

McDermott was installed as bishop last July, only to land in court just two months later.

“The diocese is not filing this bankruptcy case in an attempt to avoid any responsibility,” the bishop said at the time in an affidavit. “Due to the number of civil cases and claims filed against the diocese and limitations of the diocese’s resources, the diocese determined that reorganization under Chapter 11 is the only way to fairly and equitably fulfill the diocese’s obligations to all survivors of sexual abuse.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: A new wave of Vermont Catholic abuse claimants has its day in court.

Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese, now seeking to reorganize its depleting finances in U.S. Bankruptcy Court after settling 67 priest misconduct lawsuits, is bracing for a new wave of child sex abuse claims.

The state’s largest religious denomination paid out $34.5 million to survivors in the two decades between when news of a nationwide scandal broke in 2002 and its filing for Chapter 11 protection last fall.

As part of the bankruptcy process, all pending and future lawsuits have been placed on hold, with Judge Heather Cooper inviting accusers who haven’t reported abuse before to join the case as potential creditors.

As a result, 118 people have submitted confidential claims, records show — almost double the number of previously settled lawsuits.

The bankruptcy court doesn’t have the authority to hold hearings on any of the allegations, which are sealed from the public and the press. Instead, the judge has scheduled a non-evidentiary “presentation of survivor statements” for Wednesday at 10 a.m. at Burlington’s Federal Building.

“For many survivors, it took years and a lot of courage to come forward, so when the diocese filed for bankruptcy, it robbed those survivors of their opportunity to stand in front of a jury of their peers,” said Brittany Michael, a lawyer for a federally appointed committee representing creditors with abuse claims. 

“We know that the opportunity to speak in court can be an important part of the healing journey,” Michael said. “The survivors’ statements are a way to at least tell their story.”

The diocese, facing allegations of priest misconduct dating as far back as 1950, is the nation’s 40th Catholic entity to seek bankruptcy protection, it notes on an explainer page on its website.

Under federal law, the diocese must present the court with a tally of its financial assets and liabilities and petition for Chapter 11 help. The judge, in turn, will decide whether to allow church leaders to develop a reorganization plan that would require approval from both the court and creditors.

Seeking “full disclosure and transparency,” abuse claimants are seeking church records detailing not only a reported $35 million tied to the diocese’s headquarters and its state-level holdings but also all the community operations it oversees, starting with 63 parishes with an estimated collective worth of $500 million.

The resulting findings are expected to spark future debate on whether abuse claimants and other creditors will be limited to compensation from the church’s headquarters or also could be reimbursed through local assets.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese faces 118 more clergy misconduct claims.

Most matriarchs observe Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May. But Guilford great-great-grandmother Shirley Squires has reason to wait until the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont’s annual Walk for Life fundraiser later this month.

The 94-year-old didn’t know much about the human immunodeficiency virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome when it struck her son, former state Rep. Ronald Squires, D-Guilford, some four decades ago.

The lawmaker was the first in the Vermont Legislature to announce his homosexuality, doing so in the spring of 1992 to help pass a statute prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“This bill is not about special privileges,” the representative told colleagues on the House floor, noting the legislation instead would give him and his peers “the same rights that you all have.”

Nine months later on Jan. 8, 1993, the 41-year-old was hospitalized for AIDS-related viral meningitis when switchboard operators patched through a call from then President-elect Bill Clinton.

“They thought it was a hoax,” his mother recently remembered. “I was dumbfounded.”

Within the next hour, the legislator, taking his last breath, became the first Vermont public figure to lose his life to AIDS, the Associated Press reported nationwide.

“Just before he died,” his mother recalled, “he said he didn’t know what he would do without the AIDS Project.”

Shirley Squires knew little about the Brattleboro-based nonprofit, one of the state’s three AIDS service organizations — along with Vermont CARES and the Upper Valley’s HIV/HCV Resource Center — that provide support to people with HIV as well as community prevention and education programs.

Squires nonetheless collected $1,000 from family members and friends for the organization’s 1993 Walk for Life, not knowing how far that first step would take her.

When AIDS was initially identified in the 1980s, a diagnosis was a certain death sentence. The advent of testing and treatment in subsequent decades is now helping some 750 Vermonters live with the virus, according to the state Department of Health. But such advances have left succeeding generations less concerned and, as a result, less conscientious of a disease that still must be managed by ever-continuing and costly medications.

And so the great-great-grandmother (yes, she has children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, although she admits to losing count of how many) hasn’t stopped generating money and awareness.

Squires, yet to miss a year of fundraising, reported a cumulative total of $52,000 upon her 10th anniversary walk in 2003, $235,000 upon her 20th in 2013 and $456,118 upon her 30th in 2023. By the start of 2025, her lifetime haul was up to $478,007 — just $21,993 shy of a half-million dollars. 

Anticipating her annual handwriting of solicitation letters to 500 regular contributors, Squires had a sure-fire pitch: If she can raise just $104 more than the $21,889 she reaped last year, she’ll hit the $500,000 milestone. 

But that isn’t what the matriarch penned to her mailing list that ranges from past and present state leaders to locals who visit her home at Christmastime to view her collection of more than 1,000 Nativity sets.

“I am writing on behalf of Shirley, who recently broke her shoulder and is unable to write her usual personalized note,” someone else printed.

Even so, Squires and the staff of the AIDS Project are forging forward.

“Every single dollar Shirley brings in could potentially be replacing a chunk of funding that we might be losing,” said Samba Diallo, the service organization’s executive director.

The AIDS Project, whose nine staffers serve 77 clients in Bennington and Windham counties, operates on an annual budget of about $600,000. Nearly 85% of that comes from federal and state funding, with the remaining 15% covered by local and private sources.

Talk of government cuts is scaring the nonprofit, which already has seen financial aid shift from rural areas with fewer people and lower perceived risk to urban centers with larger populations.

“There are so many challenges, but money is the biggest,” Diallo said. “How do we make sure we have stable funding?”

The AIDS Project will start by holding its 38th annual Walk for Life on May 31 at 10 a.m. at Brattleboro’s Centre Congregational Church.

Squires hopes people will contribute whatever they can.

“I want to try to write everyone to thank them,” said the matriarch, who notes she no longer has to confine her shoulder to a sling.

Diallo, for his part, is drafting his own wish list. Top on it: “We just need more Shirleys.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: This 94-year-old Vermonter is the great-great-grandmother of all fundraisers.

BRATTLEBORO — Six weeks after residents defeated a forthcoming municipal budget for the first time in town history, local leaders are set to present a new proposal to a special Town Meeting this month.

“When I run into anybody, they will say three things every time,” selectboard member Oscar Heller said Thursday at the last of eight budget-revision sessions. “They will say, ‘I don’t envy your job.’ Then they will say, ‘You’ve got to bring the tax rate down.’ And then they will say, ‘Here are the two, three, four things that I’m telling you that you can’t change.’ And that list of things is different for every person.”

Supporters note the plan set for consideration May 27 is down some $200,000 from the original $25 million figure. Opponents counter the resulting taxes remain up by double digits, from a rejected 12.1% to a revised 10.8%. And everyone else is questioning whether any budget will be approved before the start of the fiscal year July 1.

“A lot of the people who I’ve talked to would like to have seen a broader reduction in personnel across departments,” selectboard member Isaac Evans-Frantz said at Thursday’s session.

Instead, local leaders have retained all currently staffed positions and found savings by not filling several empty posts, including those of assistant town manager and information technology coordinator.

In the most unusual action, the selectboard — anticipating fire department overtime could rise to up to $700,000 or more annually because of recurring vacancies and contract requirements — voted to hire three more firefighters in hopes their regular salaries would cost less than paying existing personnel to work extra hours at a higher rate.

When local leaders began drafting a 2025-26 budget last fall, they learned that continuing to fund all current services amid rising staff counts and trash disposal costs would spark a 22% tax increase.

The selectboard went on to vote this winter to retain all personnel and instead decrease or defer other spending, only to see Town Meeting attendees in March defeat the proposal and its 12.1% tax hike.

Revising the budget this spring, officials discovered the rejected plan underestimated such contracted expenses as payroll taxes, retirement contributions and overtime, forcing them to raise the bottom line by $426,732 even before they started cutting.

A half-million dollars in reductions later, the selectboard’s new proposal already has sparked public friction.

Board chair Elizabeth McLoughlin opened the last budget-revision session by apologizing for earlier cutting off a local teenager voicing opposition to any loss of library hours. But two hours later, McLoughlin shouted and sounded her gavel at resident William Kraham when he wanted to speak about the cost of emergency medical services.

Kraham has long advocated for the town’s previous provider, Rescue Inc., which he credits with saving his life after sudden cardiac arrest. But McLoughlin, who voted for a recent fire department takeover of ambulance services, said his comments weren’t germane and threatened to stop the session if he didn’t stop talking.

“I will not have this discussion,” McLoughlin told Kraham before noting she had the right as chair to “request law enforcement assistance in removing a disorderly person.”

Local leaders will explain the revised budget at an informational session on May 21 and seek approval of it at a special Town Meeting on May 27.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brattleboro officials reduce defeated town budget, yet proposed taxes remain up by double digits.

As Revolutionary War leader of the Green Mountain Boys militia, Ethan Allen had seemingly no sooner captured Fort Ticonderoga from British troops on May 10, 1775, when he put quill pen to parchment to chronicle his effort.

“I have,” Allen wrote, “taken the greatest care and pains to recollect the facts and arrange them; but as they touch a variety of characters and opposite interests, I am sensible that all will not be pleased with the relation of them.”

Two and a half centuries later, that’s the one and only thing most people can agree on.

“He has been accused of ignorance, weakness of mind, cowardice, infidelity, and atheism,” Henry Hall wrote in 1892’s “Ethan Allen: The Robin Hood of Vermont,” one of many books on the state’s love-him-or-hate-him symbolic rebel. “If Vermont is careful of her own fame, well does it become the people to know whether Ethan Allen was a hero or a humbug.”

Search “Ethan Allen” online today and you’ll find more assertations of the latter, be it questions about whether he enslaved Black people or stole land from Indigenous populations.

“He’s become a lightning rod for everyone’s feelings about that entire historical era,” Angie Grove, executive director of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum in Burlington, said in a recent interview. “He gets all the credit and all the blame.”

Historians say that divide is complicating efforts to mark next weekend’s 250th anniversary of his crossing of Lake Champlain and capture of Fort Ticonderoga — and, conversely, offering them the opportunity to separate fact from fiction.

The 2,000-acre Fort Ticonderoga historic site in Ticonderoga, New York, is set to present a reenactment of Allen’s raid between May 9 and 11, as well as educational stops in the Vermont towns of Sudbury, Orwell and Shoreham and a flyover by the Vermont Air National Guard.

“Independence was not a foregone conclusion,” organizers note on their website. “Recovering the contingency of the American Revolution helps to underscore its profound significance.”

For its part, the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum will offer free admission to Vermonters on May 10 in hopes of drawing visitors, be they curious or cynical.

“I know that there are people who avoid the museum because they just assume Ethan Allen was a racist, Native American-slaughtering person,” Grove said.

Then again, Grove has met others who swear Allen was a trail-blazing abolitionist at a time Vermont was drafting a 1777 constitution that would make it the first state to outlaw adult slavery. (Children wouldn’t be officially protected under the provision until 2022.)

“Where did you get that information?” Grove will ask people expressing commendation or complaints.

“Oh, it’s just well known,” she often hears in reply.

But Grove — who holds a master’s degree in history from the University of Vermont — says it’s not so simple.

Allen has been the subject of a slew of books, starting with his own in 1779. Then in 2014, the now late professors John Duffy and H. Nicholas Muller published “Inventing Ethan Allen,” an exploration of the historiography behind him.

“How does the memory of Ethan Allen coincide with the reality of his life as well as much repeated supplemental legends and myths composed long after his death?” Duffy and Muller write in the prologue.

The book notes, for example, that past authors often have emphasized or excluded facts to fit a particular narrative.

“The story of Ethan Allen has been transformed since the 1830s to present a hero configured by comedic or tearful treatments in a consistently sentimental avoidance of events and actions that could otherwise have diminished his popular appeal,” Duffy and Muller write.

But that doesn’t mean historians have censored content. Although scholars have found records of other family members using Black labor — the legal status of “free” or “slave” is rarely reported — they’ve yet to find any definitive proof whether Allen enslaved people.

“In the absence of positive evidence, the question, ‘Did Ethan Allen ever own slaves?’ never appears in his biographies,” Duffy and Muller write.

So why do people claim Allen did? Grove cites primary sources that show American Colonial society as a whole exploited marginalized populations — a fact that can lead some to extend the generalization to specific individuals.

“We can make educated guesses, but we actually know very little about Ethan Allen’s political, social and moral relationship to slavery or Indigenous people that can be backed up with real evidence,” Grove said. “You can find claims online, but nobody has any sources for them. That isn’t to say we can’t find answers to these questions, but that research hasn’t been done yet.”

Study, however, takes money.

“Try as I might, I’ve found it challenging to convince people that research in general, and on Ethan Allen in particular, is worthy of investing in,” Grove said. “Anytime I mention anything about Ethan Allen, everyone says, ‘Nope, we don’t want to hear about him, we want to hear untold stories.’”

Increasingly that’s leaving the internet to spin its own speculation.

“In today’s climate, it doesn’t matter how much evidence or lack of evidence you have, people are going to feel the way they feel,” Grove said. “I always hope people are inspired by the idealism of the American Revolution — fighting for equality for all people, even though it didn’t give equality to all people. But I think it’s easier for some to blame certain figures of the past than to reckon with entrenched prejudices and inequalities in our society that have been passed down generation to generation.”

The historian stresses she’s not taking sides, just in search of a truth not yet fully found. She hopes people will discover the homestead and its work — if only to take in one of the state’s oldest farmed areas, with a documented history dating back 600 years.

“For better or for worse, Ethan Allen is the figurehead of Vermont,” Grove said. “It would be most responsible to invest in further research of him, particularly to see how well he represents the diverse state of today.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Ethan Allen has an image problem. Is the internet and present-day polarization to blame?.

BRATTLEBORO — When March Town Meeting attendees rejected a $25 million municipal budget for the coming fiscal year, they returned it to local leaders for revision in hopes of lowering a 12% projected tax increase.

No one anticipated costs might instead climb higher.

Officials have discovered their original spending plan underestimated contracted expenses like payroll taxes, retirement contributions and overtime. With the addition of the omissions and other accounting adjustments, the base budget’s corrected total is $426,732 more than initially calculated, according to administrators and their updated spreadsheet.

As a result, the town selectboard will have to cut nearly a half-million dollars from the new number just to level down to the 12% tax hike defeated last month, leaders have determined.

“The budget news is really disappointing,” selectboard Chair Elizabeth McLoughlin said at the start of a special Thursday session on the topic.

Five and a half hours later, the board asked Town Manager John Potter to return this week with a plan to cut $500,000 in expenses for the fiscal year that starts July 1. That would allow leaders to present a revised proposal at a special Town Meeting on May 27 that’s lower than the original, if only by about $75,000.

“The numbers have been corrected and our task has gotten way more difficult,” selectboard Vice-Chair Oscar Heller said.

Heller, newly elected to the board, headed the town’s advisory Finance Committee this winter when it issued a rare public resolution questioning why local leaders, facing double-digit-percentage increases in staffing, health insurance and trash disposal costs, weren’t studying decreases in the biggest single source of spending: personnel.

“We recognize that the concept of staff cuts is painful,” the committee said in its statement, “but we believe that considering it is an essential part of the responsible management of the town.” 

The selectboard at the time — which lost three of its five members in March when the former chair didn’t run for reelection and two incumbents were defeated — chose not to reduce employees. On Thursday, continuing board member Peter Case, who has opposed layoffs, asked how the town would achieve $500,000 in savings.

Replied Potter: “It’s going to come from positions.”

And McLoughlin: “Nothing is off the table.”

The selectboard is scheduled to receive and review proposed reductions at a special session this Thursday. Leaders so far have chosen not to fill two open administrative jobs: assistant town manager and finance director. But they are considering the addition of three firefighters after determining that station overtime is so high — currently upward of $700,000 or more annually — that hiring help would be less expensive.

“I don’t see any way to reduce that number,” new Fire Chief Jay Symonds said of the overtime spurred by vacancies and contract requirements, “other than adding staff.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brattleboro rejected a $25M municipal budget as too high. Now comes a $426,732 aftershock..

Ask Justin Johnston why he recently joined the support staff of the Brattleboro Police Department and he’ll rewind some quarter of a century to the day its officers took him into custody at age 11.

Johnston was 3 when his father died, leaving his mother to juggle two jobs, two children and an unwanted yet unrelenting dependence on alcohol. Finding himself uprooted from Florida to Ohio to Vermont, the schoolboy arrived in Brattleboro to his first stirrings of adolescence — and, feeling lonely and lost, sparks of anger.

“My mom had called the police because I was out of control,” the now 39-year-old recalls. “I picked up some object and went to throw it at the wall.”

What he hurled he can’t remember. The fact it hit her he can’t forget.

Johnston marked his 12th birthday in the first of several foster and group homes.

“I started smoking weed,” he says today, “and eventually, you do it so much, you have to find a way and a means to get it.”

Johnston befriended and began working with drug dealers. At 17, he was convicted and jailed for selling crack cocaine. He’d graduate high school at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, then move in and out of prisons in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Kentucky. Arrested for dealing heroin just before turning 30, he finally landed in a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

Johnston can detail every moment of his descent into drugs and despair. But now sober for a decade, the newly hired recovery specialist for the police department’s Brattleboro Resource Assistance Team would rather share how he — and others — can rise above.

‘What’s wrong with me?’

Johnston never had an easy childhood, which went from bad to worse when, as an elementary schooler, he discovered the truth about his father.

“For most of my life, I had thought he died in a car accident,” he recalls. “And then I found an article in my mom’s bedroom and learned that it was by suicide.”

The resulting questions swarmed Johnston as if he had struck a hornet’s nest.

“Why didn’t he love us enough to not do this?” he remembers thinking. “What’s wrong with me?”

With his mother often away working a double shift, Johnston had few people other than his younger sister to ask. And so he sought validation from other boys in their rough-and-tumble neighborhood.

“I might not have a car or a big house with a swimming pool or ever invite you on a family vacation, but I can show up at the party with alcohol, I can get you marijuana, I can get you mushrooms,” he recalls thinking. “I wanted to show that I had something to offer, that I could fit in, that I could run with the crowd.”

And from himself.

“It might have started with fun,” he says, “but it eventually became a way to numb myself, to just ignore the world, to be lazy, to ignore responsibilities and what my future might look like.”

‘It never felt like a real punishment’

At 17, Johnston was convicted of a felony drug charge and incarcerated a half-hour north of Brattleboro in Springfield.

“It never felt like a real punishment that was deterring me from making bad decisions,” he says of his years in state prison, “because I was around all of my friends, hanging out, playing cards, eating food, watching sports.”

Industrious, Johnston also sold tobacco and unnamed “illegal substances” and ran sports betting and gambling operations “to keep me surviving and sometimes living so well I was sending my mother money.”

Returning home, Johnston met his partner, Deidre, who later became pregnant. He was at her last prenatal appointment when, on the run from probation and parole, he was seized and sent back to jail before his daughter’s birth in 2009.

Johnston boomeranged in and out of prison, all while banking up to six figures dealing drugs. By 2011, someone invited him to try a few blueberries — not the fruit, but the street name for oxycodone pills. 

They melted his pain like hot cobbler with ice cream.

Johnston began seeking and selling opioids locally, not knowing an aggressive marketing push by pharmaceutical companies was leading to a rise in substance use disorders and overdoses nationwide.

‘I might as well do everything now’

“I kept telling myself, ‘I’m not a junkie, I’m not an addict, I’m just having fun, hanging out, this isn’t a big deal,’” Johnston recalls.

Then news of an “opioid crisis” — former Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin dedicated his entire 2014 State-of-the-State address to the topic — sparked a clampdown in prescriptions.

“I got to a breaking point where I could not find them anymore,” Johnston says. “I remember vividly sitting in a car with somebody who happened to say, ‘Well, I do have these bags …’”

Johnston opened one and inhaled the heroin powder inside.

“Maybe I can just do this a day or two until I find more oxy,” he thought amid a rush of pleasure.

The backdraft hit seconds later.

“I said to myself, ‘You’re doing heroin — your life’s over. I might as well do everything now.’”

Sniffing that initial half-bag grew into snorting up to 100 bags of the drug a day. In between, he smoked crack cocaine morning to night.

“Over time, the money I had saved up just dwindled down,” he says. “I lost the apartment, I sold my motorcycle, I crashed all my cars into trees or signs.”

It was just the beginning — the beginning of the end.

‘A minnow in an ocean full of sharks’

One evening in early 2014, Johnston was walking his dog when he passed out. Authorities, finding him and one of his drug stashes, sentenced him to 28 months at the Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania.

It was nothing like state detention.

“I would have been known locally as one of the bigger dealers, so that can inflate your head and make you think you’re the man,” Johnston says. “Then I went to federal prison and realized I’m just a minnow in an ocean full of sharks.”

One of his first Pennsylvania cellmates was a man with Mafia ties who was convicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO.

“In for double life, plus 80 years,” Johnston recalls. “I’m meeting Mexican cartel members and blue-collar crime guys in a culture that forces people, out of survival, into being violent. That’s one thing I’m not. I desperately wanted to avoid prison politics and drugs so I didn’t end up in a maximum-security penitentiary. I thought, ‘How can I avoid going to the rec yard to fight a gang or race war?’” 

Johnston’s answer: Stop using drugs and stuff his day with classes. In a substance use course, he learned about post-acute withdrawal syndrome.

“It started to make sense where all my emotions were coming from, why one day I just wanted to lash out and others I had a vision of a real future. My brain was healing. I said, ‘I’ve got to give myself some time to get through this.’”

‘They had every reason to suspect’

In the movies, a reformed inmate exits a dark cell into the blinding shine of promise and potential. But returning home in 2017, Johnston was enveloped by fear and cravings for a fix.

Signing up for opioid dependence treatment at the Brattleboro Retreat, he met a volunteer peer coach who introduced him to the nearby Turning Point of Windham County recovery center.

“I felt hope and safety and connection to people who understood me,” he says. “I could see a future. I could see brighter days.”

Then that September, his sister died of an opiate overdose at age 28. 

“My mom and I sat with her as she took her last breath,” he recalls. “In that moment, I made a promise that I was going to do everything I possibly could to break this cycle. I didn’t know if I would really be able to keep it, but I knew every day I was going to try my hardest.”

Johnston renewed the vow a year and a half later when his mother died of cancer at age 58. 

Going on to have a son with his partner, the father of two became a recovery counselor. He soon found himself working alongside the same police who once arrested him.

“As a predicate felon who had no job history and had done very little positive at this point in my life, they had every reason to suspect I might go back to my old ways,” Johnston says.

Instead, police hired him to serve as a community resource specialist under a new effort to put more social workers and unarmed support staff on the streets.

“This young man has shown what can be accomplished by someone who can get their life together,” Brattleboro Police Chief Norma Hardy said at a recent town selectboard meeting.

A decade clean from heroin, Johnston sums up his status: “Not selling dope, selling hope.” 

‘We need to change the norm’

Today, Johnston works in a town where county records show a statistically higher rate of hospital visits for opioid overdoses compared to the rest of the state, according to the Vermont Department of Health.

Caught between calls for a police crackdown and pleas for public compassion, Johnston wants the community to find common ground in the concept of “compassionate accountability.”

Johnston demonstrates this strategy through his job. He talks with people struggling with substance use about treatment options, transports them to rehabilitation centers and connects them to social services as part of the town’s Project C.A.R.E. (Community Approach to Recovery and Engagement) — all with the understanding that continued illegal activity could lead to police action.

“I think it’s more harmful to sit back and watch people die slowly,” he says, “versus help them be accountable to themselves and others for the best shot at a happy and healthy life.”

That’s not always easy. Johnston notes several dueling challenges: How can society respect people’s autonomy to make their own decisions and, at the same time, recognize the fact addiction hijacks a brain? How can a community aim to help everyone as well as afford sufficient resources for sober living and co-occurring substance use and mental health conditions?

“I support all pathways to recovery, including harm reduction,” he says, “but it’s unrealistic to think a majority will live a long, happy, healthy, dignified life sustaining daily fentanyl use.”

For all his firsthand knowledge, Johnston is still learning. Take his recent introduction to college courses. One social service teacher extolled the benefits of evaluating clients through a formal and formulaic survey of their biopsychosocial history.

“I found myself always challenging what was being taught,” he recalls. “Why would I ask somebody 80 questions in a row when I could have a conversation and get what I need out of a real connection? For too long, someone has sat across a desk and made you feel like they’re only there to diagnose and fix you, not to understand you, not to really listen to you, not to meet on that very human level. We need to change the norm.”

He’s starting with himself.

“I view recovery not as just being sober, but working every single day to show up for myself, my family and community, to be honest, to have integrity, to challenge my irrational thoughts and form new ones, all while recognizing I’m not perfect,” he says. “I’m going to have bad days. And when I do, I’m going to give myself some grace. If I can be hired by police, somebody might see that and think, ‘Maybe my past isn’t going to hold me back forever.’”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Once drug dependent and desperate, this Vermonter had a problem. Now he’s part of the solution..

Ludlow Municipal Manager Brendan McNamara isn’t the only local administrator questioning the future of state and federal funding and unforeseen budget-breakers such as flooding.

“A lot of towns are looking for ways to increase revenue,” said McNamara, whose community is still awaiting $2.2 million in reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after a historic July 2023 storm.

That’s why Ludlow and the communities of Marlboro, Pittsfield and Putney are set this summer to join more than 30 others in supplementing property taxes with a 1% local option charge on some combination of rooms, meals, alcohol and sales.

“Our population swells from 2,000 during slow times of the year to upward of 30,000,” McNamara said of the town that’s home to the Okemo Mountain Resort. “We want to be able to provide the highest level of services, but our infrastructure has to be able to handle that. This gives us a chance to capitalize on visitors helping pay for what they use.”

Ludlow leaders have long known Vermont charges a state tax of 6% on sales, 9% on rooms and meals and 10% on alcohol. Then they learned how a subset of municipalities reaped a collective $50.9 million this past year by approving an additional 1% fee of their own.

In a plan approved by voters in March, Ludlow expects to pocket nearly $700,000 annually from a local tax on meals, rooms, alcohol and sales beginning July 1. Of that, residents will pay less than $40,000, town leaders estimate, while visitors will pick up the rest.

“We’re one of the last resort towns in the state to try this,” said McNamara, who plans to funnel the new money into flood rehabilitation and resilience projects, fire equipment replacement and water system upgrades.

A total of 37 Vermont municipalities have approved some sort of local option tax since Manchester became the first in 1999, the state reports. The smallest — the lakefront town of Westmore, population 357 — only taxes rooms. The largest — the city of Burlington, population 44,743 — taxes all the options of meals, rooms, alcohol and sales.

Different places cite different purposes for the additional money.

“Some want to control property taxes and bring in new revenue, while others may be considering substantial new infrastructure projects or other initiatives,” said Samantha Sheehan, a municipal policy and advocacy specialist with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.

Prior to last year, communities had to create or change local charters to enact local option taxes. Then the state Legislature voted to extend the opportunity to the nearly 200 cities and towns without charters. That led six municipalities to approve new local option taxes during Town Meeting voting last month.

Montpelier, for example, approved a 1% tax on sales to supplement its already established charges on rooms, meals and alcohol. The new add-on is estimated to collect another $500,000 a year.

Not all communities are sold on the concept. In Royalton, local leaders told this year’s Town Meeting that a proposed tax on rooms, meals and alcohol could reap an estimated $24,000 annually. But after some residents questioned if it would hurt local households and businesses, they blocked passage in a 51-51 vote, minutes show.

Whitingham, for its part, rejected local taxes on rooms, meals, alcohol and sales after some Town Meeting attendees expressed concern it could deter tourists, leaders there said.

Under the long-standing law, local option tax money is collected by the state, which returns 70% to the sending community and keeps the remaining 30% for processing fees and a special Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) fund that compensates municipalities for the value of state-owned property.

The Vermont League of Cities and Towns is pushing the Legislature to increase that municipal draw to 75% or 80%.

“Even a 5% shift is really substantial,” Sheehan said.

Hartford, for example, would take in about $150,000 more with a 5% increase, while Williston could see an additional $500,000, each municipality estimates.

The league is also lobbying for the creation of a new local short-term rental tax separate from that on rooms. But the Legislature, facing growing uncertainty about federal revenue to the state, has yet to commit to returning more local option tax money to the communities that collect it.

“Municipal government in Vermont delivers many of our most important and most relied-on services,” Sheehan said. “The needs of those budgets are becoming more difficult to manage through property taxes alone. Getting money back to those local option towns would be a real wind in the sails.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Amid federal and state funding questions, more Vermont municipalities are turning to local option taxes.

BRATTLEBORO — As local leaders race to revise a forthcoming municipal budget after a March Town Meeting defeat of a $25 million plan, they are split over how to decrease spending by July 1 to avoid a projected tax increase of 12%.

“I’m very optimistic that we can make cuts of a sufficient nature and add revenues of a sufficient nature so that we have a budget that is more structurally sound than the one that was rejected and everything’s hunky-dory,” Selectboard Chair Elizabeth McLoughlin said Thursday at the first of a month of special follow-up sessions.

But when three newly elected members to the five-person board introduced the idea of a municipal hiring freeze, they faced pushback from McLoughlin and Town Manager John Potter, the latter who said that only he should be making decisions about specific people and positions.

“I manage the staff,” Potter said.

The 2 1/2-hour session — part of a series to continue Tuesdays and Thursdays in April before a May or June revote — ended without a decision. Instead, a divide emerged between local leaders who drafted the defeated budget and fledgling board members who campaigned on the promise of fiscal change.

“The thing I want to do is economize and find ways to reduce the budget,” said Oscar Heller, a newcomer and board vice chair. “I’ve been told over and over again that doing it by attrition and by hiring freeze is the much-preferred way rather than considering actual reductions, so we have to be able to talk about that.”

Heller served this winter as chair of an advisory Town Meeting Finance Committee that issued a rare public resolution questioning why local leaders, facing double-digit increases in staffing, health insurance and trash disposal costs, weren’t studying decreases in the biggest single source of spending, personnel.

“We recognize that the concept of staff cuts is painful,” the resolution said, “but we believe that considering it is an essential part of the responsible management of the town.”

Now seeking to review employee numbers over the next several months, Heller proposed the hiring freeze.

“Unfilled positions are a rare opportunity to possibly decrease ongoing costs without firing somebody,” he said. “That doesn’t mean no position can be filled, it just means that filling an empty position becomes an intentional decision of the board.”

Heller noted that although the former selectboard voted for up to nine new police positions last fall — declaring a rise in crime an “emergency” and using $675,669 in unassigned general funds — the town still had at least one of those ancillary positions open and available for savings.

“I’m looking for ways to find small budget compromises in the face of what was already a really big quick increase for the department,” he said. 

But the town manager objected, saying that administrators were screening applicants for the support post.

“It’s very disruptive to the management of the town to be having conversations about individual staff positions,” Potter said.

Heller disagreed, noting it felt like “a bridge too far” to be told the board couldn’t discuss whether to fill open positions.

“I am out of fighting energy on this topic for tonight,” Heller went on to conclude, “but the energy will return tomorrow.”

Potter has opposed staff cuts for months, most recently in a memorandum in which he offered scenarios about what could happen as a result.

In one case, Potter said a cut of a finance department worker could mean “overworked staff miss a critical deadline for a scheduled debt payment, triggering penalties and damaging the town’s credit rating,” according to the memo. “Residents are left paying more in taxes to cover the financial mismanagement.”

In a second example, a cut of a human resources employee could mean “job postings for critical roles were delayed for months.” the memo said. “Instead of saving money, the cuts created a staffing crisis, leaving emergency services stretched thin, road maintenance delayed, and essential town resources overwhelmed.”

In a third, a cut of a clerical worker to support town boards and committees could mean “meetings become disorganized, with missing agendas, delayed minutes, warning and procedural errors,” the memo said. “Instead of a smoothly run government, Brattleboro becomes bogged down in inefficiency and confusion.”

Many locals have complained about the memo, with resident Eric Caron noting at one meeting that such “doomsday things” are “not professional, those are threats.” The local website ibrattleboro.com, for its part, commented through a column headlined, “Town of Brattleboro Budget-Cutting Scenarios Win Award for Short Fiction.”

“A drop in the tax rate increase,” ibrattleboro.com co-founder Christopher Grotke countered in his own scenario, “made the taxpayers of Brattleboro very happy and reinvigorated their trust in a lean, highly-effective municipal government.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brattleboro sees more division than subtraction in efforts to cut defeated budget.

BRATTLEBORO — U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes slept in one of its bedrooms in 1877. Writer Rudyard Kipling drank lager in its basement bar and played poker in its penthouse suite from 1892 to 1896. Broadcaster Lowell Thomas presented the NBC national radio news live from its ballroom in 1946. And if current owners have their way, someone new will buy this town’s cornerstone Brooks House and soon make their own history.

The five-story Main Street landmark — built in 1871, ravaged by fire in 2011 and restored in 2014 — has been placed on the market “on an ‘as-is’ basis and is being offered without a formal asking price,” according to an online listing that notes potential purchasers must sign a confidentiality agreement to receive more specifics.

“Although we have listed the property for sale with a broker, the Brooks House team members, all of whom continue to work at our businesses downtown, remain committed to Brattleboro,” its five local owners — engineer Bob Stevens, lawyer Craig Miskovich, financial-planner brothers Pete and Drew Richards and their colleague cousin, Ben Taggard — said in a written statement to VTDigger.

When the late businessman George Brooks fashioned his namesake block in 1871, he spent $150,000 on 1 million bricks and 500,000 feet of lumber. A century and a half later, the local quintet scraped up $23 million more to rebuild the structure after a gutting blaze April 17, 2011.

Stevens had known the Brooks House as the view from his engineering office when he was hired to assess the fire damage and draw up restoration plans, not knowing he’d soon join four friends in buying the 88,000 square-foot building with six retail spaces, three office units and 23 apartments.

The team, reopening the block in 2014, won the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce’s Corporate Citizens of Year award. Vermont Life magazine, for its part, chronicled the restoration in a 2015 cover story headlined “Miracle on Main Street.”

“Boarding up a wet, moldy, vacant building that inhabits a quarter of the downtown was not an option if we wanted Brattleboro to thrive,” Stevens said in the Vermont Life piece.

With the block finished and fully occupied, the five now want to relinquish their duties as landlords and return to their day jobs.

“We formed the development team with a few goals in mind: renovate the building, recruit great new commercial and residential tenants, and restore the Brooks House to its rightful place as the cornerstone of downtown Brattleboro,” they wrote in their statement. “Now that the building is full of life and every space has been filled, it is time for us to hand the building over to its next generation of owners.”

Asked to elaborate, the owners said they would limit their comments to the statement. But they stress they’re not leaving the community or, in one case, the construction field. In addition to his engineering office, Stevens will continue to operate M&S Development, a firm he founded with Miskovich (whose law office is a Brooks House tenant) to support other New England projects, including the $56 million renovation of Bennington’s Putnam Block.

The potential sale comes as downtown Brattleboro is stabilizing after the Covid-19 pandemic, several longtime business closures and public complaints about a rise in police calls.

“Bigger changes are coming to downtown Brattleboro as we look ahead,” Kate Trzaskos, executive director of the Downtown Brattleboro Alliance, wrote in a recent newsletter that noted several new businesses and the current construction of a $7.4 million Amtrak train station.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brattleboro’s cornerstone Brooks House block up for sale.