Beth Hankes said her sex shop in Burlington was meant to be “the resource that I hadn’t had.” 

Struggling with sexual health issues and feeling trapped in the corporate world, she noticed a lack of modern, accessible and “joyful” stores selling sex products in the area. So in 2021, she opened Earth + Salt, the first women-owned sex shop in Burlington.

Now a certified sex educator, Hankes runs educational events at the store at least once a month. When Kell Arbor, health and wellness director at the Pride Center, approached the store to ask if they would sponsor Burlington’s first-ever Sex Week, she was so eager that she ended up becoming heavily involved in organizing it. 

The upcoming Sex Week, scheduled from Sept. 14 to 20, features 18 events and runs the gamut from educational panels to art shows and performances to how-to workshops. Earth + Salt plans to host two events, andbut others will take place at the Spiral House, the Karma Birdhouse, the Pride Center and the Burlington Waterfront Park.

Hankes and Arbor pulled together local sex educators as well as their connections in New York and elsewhere to offer the events, that which vary in price from free to roughly $20.

Arbor said Sex Week was partly meant as a counterbalance to Burlington’s more “family-friendly” Pride event, which took place on Sunday. 

“I have been hearing from community members that we need more saucy, juicy, sexy things, not just within Pride, but within the community, centering queer and trans folks,” Arbor said. 

Arbor, whose pronouns are fae/faer, said the events were meant to be LGBTQ+ friendly by nature, but all are welcome. Only two events, mixers for BIPOC Vermonters and bisexual Vermonters, are restricted to people in each of those groups. 

“That’s what equity is about, right? Lifting up the perspectives of people most left out, that we might all see new ways forward,” fae said. 

Arbor said that as an HIV-positive Vermonter, fae have encountered ignorance around sexual health, even among health providers, as an HIV-positive Vermonter. “I’ve seen where the gaps were in my care with doctors saying women don’t get STIs,” or sexually transmitted infections. “That’s very inaccurate. One, I’m not a woman, and two, women get STIs,” fae said. 

Three events are aimedtargeted specifically attoward health practitioners, including one on sexual health for older adults and one on trans-inclusive practices in health care, according to the event website. 

At the same time, the organizers hope to draw people into the conversation by centering and celebrating pleasure in its workshops on kink and other sexual practices. “Pleasure is more of a sustainable invitation in. That’s why I like ‘edu-taining’ models,” Arborfae said. 

Hankes said the event felt will feel like a release point for all the pressures and restrictions that have been building up this year regarding sexual health and marginalized communities. 

“We’re still going to be ourselves,” she said. “We’re still going to have this point of pleasure, education, community and give ourselves access to that, because obviously the government and the current cultural climate is not going to give us that.”

Arbor said events like these feel even more essential in the current political climate. The Pride Center was hit hard by federal funding cuts to HIV prevention earlier this year. 

“When we’re being attacked at our identities because of who and how we love, that’s all the more reason to invite people into education about how we might all free ourselves into more pleasure,” Arbor said. “I’m always like, ‘if we’re too busy having orgasms, we can’t bomb the world.’”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Burlington’s first-ever ‘sex week’ celebrates inclusivity in sex education.

Hunger Mountain Co-op in Montpelier has purchased the neighboring property of rK Miles, a lumberyard that was damaged in a 2023 fire, as part of an expansion plan.  

The co-op purchased the 1.6-acre property for $487,500, according to a press release. Co-op leaders plan to use the lot to expand its capacity for parking, storage and other operational needs. 

“This purchase is a key part of our long-term vision to deepen the Co-op’s values of health, sustainability, and cooperation,” general manager Mary Mullally said in the press release. “Back in 2012, we anticipated a need for more parking and retail space. This agreement allows us to explore those options while continuing to serve our vibrant community.” 

The co-op sits along Stone Cutters Way, a one-way street parallel to the Winooski River. Its customer parking lot is located on the northwest side of the building, while the new purchase adjoins the co-op building to the southeast. 

The exterior of an 8,000-square foot building on the former rK Miles property still has fire damage that will need to be addressed before it can be used for storage, Mullally said in a phone interview. The property will allow the co-op to buy in larger quantities, and it should also be “relatively easy” to set up staff parking on the site as an initial goal, she said. 

But the press release and website for the project seem to anticipate concerns from members. In its “frequently asked questions” section, the co-op addressed the timing of the purchase with the recent ratification of a union contract with UE 255, the union that represents co-op employees. 

According to the website, the timing was a coincidence, and the purchase should not affect salaries because money used for the purchase is from reserve funds rather than the operating budget. The union did not respond to a request for comment before publication time. 

The FAQs also addressed why the purchase negotiation was not shared with members. It was instead left to a smaller council vote. 

“We began exploring the possibility seriously in the fall of 2024, after the property’s owner expressed interest in selling,” the co-op wrote on the website. “At that point, we followed standard fiduciary and governance practices by conducting due diligence in private. This included reviewing financial terms, legal considerations, environmental assessments, and potential risks.”

Mullally said the co-op published the FAQ section to “provide as much information as possible.” So far, the feedback received has been “extremely positive,” she said. 

The co-op has its annual meeting planned for Sept. 13. Members are welcome to bring their questions about the future of the property to the meeting, Mullally said. 

In the long term, the co-op has floated ideas for the property: Expanded retail space, community gardens, housing. But the co-op may need further assessments to determine if environmental remediation is needed, it wrote on the website. The co-op is also creating a flood risk management plan. 

Mullally said it has been “a long process,” but she’s happy it’s come to completion. 

“I’m so excited about what this means to the co-op’s future,” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Hunger Mountain Co-op purchases neighboring rK Miles property.

Stacy Harshman describes her dairy-barn-turned-gift-shop in Wallingford as a “surprising dose of wow.”

The Sparkle Barn is a pop of bright color along a quiet, mostly rural stretch of Route 7 in Rutland County. The first floor is filled with “eclectic gifts,” Harshman said, while the second serves as an Alice in Wonderland-inspired art installation called “the bloom room.”

“I’m an artist, and my right hand lady (and) retail manager, she’s an artist,” Harshman said. “So I consider the Sparkle Barn an oasis. A lot of people describe it as magical.”

The store sources many of its products from Vermont and other New England artists, but other products come from artists around the world. It’s that portion of her sales that has Harshman worried for the future of her store. 

President Donald Trump announced various tariffs on different products and countries beginning in March, but until now, many small businesses have fallen under an exemption called the “de minimis” rule. Essentially, orders under $800 were not subject to the duties and fees of the tariff schedule, according to the National Foreign Trade Council. 

That exemption is coming to an end. Due to an executive order from Trump, beginning Friday, all imports into the United States will be subject to the same duties, regardless of the size of the order. 

Trump argued the de minimis exemption allowed for the illegal import of fentanyl into the country, when he signed the executive order at the end of July. Amy Spear, president of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, said the decision also appeared to target foreign e-commerce websites like Shein and Temu. 

But regardless of the intent, Spear said, the end of the exemption could erode the thin margins of Vermont’s small businesses, especially artisans and small-batch producers. 

“Our small businesses have gotten swept up in the foreign e-commerce firms that I think the federal government is trying to target,” she wrote in an email. “The end of it means that small businesses, artisans, et cetera, are going to have higher costs and new red tape that they’re going to have to go to when they’re looking at their supply chain.”

Harshman said some of her most popular products are imported, and she is only beginning to understand how the end of the exemption will affect their prices. 

The Sparkle Barn has imported hand-illustrated cards from an English artist named Fay and, so far in 2025, has sold more than 600 of her cards at $5 each. The next order would have an additional $80 tariff charge, adding about 27% to the price of the order, according to Harshman. 

But it’s hard for her to predict exactly what the final charges might be. Last week, she said she was hit by a surprise fee on an order above the exemption from the United Kingdom. She expected the 10% general tariff rate, but administrative fees raised the total to 17%. 

“Customs actually charged a $50 fee for billing us!” she wrote. 

Harshman said it makes her sad to think she might have to end relationships she’s built with international artists, some of whom she has worked with for seven or eight years. 

“I look around the shop and I’m like, ‘How much is this going to change our vibe?’” she said in an interview.  “Because, you know, I have to make the decision: Do I keep carrying the item and raise the price, or is it something that is just not gonna work anymore?”

Harshman said she also is frustrated by the politicization of her business. When she posted on Facebook about her struggles, she received many supportive comments — but also accusations that she was “blasting democratic political screed” and overly simplistic suggestions that she simply buy more U.S.-based products, she wrote. 

In fact, she has heard from the local artists that she works with that they, themselves, are facing higher costs for the materials they use to create their products. 

“Even artists that are making it down the road in Wallingford … their materials are coming from overseas,” she said. 

Spear said she’s heard of similar issues with maple syrup producers. Though maple syrup is well-known as a Vermont product, supplies like the tubes between trees or collection buckets may be sourced from overseas.  

Erik Waring, owner of Erik’s Sugarbush in Kirby, said a recent order of a stainless steel tank from Canada came with a new stipulation: He had to sign a warning that the product may or may not have a tariff on it when it got to the United States. 

He said he simply cannot afford to sink thousands of dollars into stockpiling equipment. As a small producer, he is already contending with stiff competition from larger companies that have the advantage of economies of scale. 

“The deck’s stacked against the smaller producers, other than the fact that we should be selling our better, our best stuff, and put our best foot forward,” he said.

In Montpelier, the stationery and gift shop Magpie & Tiger offers a wide variety of international goods, from German notebooks to Korean paper stickers. Owner Elena Gustavson said many of the products she offers are not manufactured in the United States or are not manufactured to the same quality level. 

“This country does not have the infrastructure, knowledge, or systems — and hasn’t for many, many years,” she wrote in an email. 

She said she is now navigating “ridiculous” product codes and the federal tariff site to understand what her liabilities might be. She also is stockpiling what she can in preparation for the busier months of fall and winter. 

But with little ability to absorb the additional costs, she believes she will have to stop importing many of the store’s international goods for now. 

“To put small businesses, the heartbeat of their communities, through this political circus is beyond my understanding,” she wrote. 

Clarification: Captions in a previous version of this story partially misrepresented Stacy Harshman’s job title.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont shops and businesses brace for higher costs on imports after Trump executive order.

Most of the state was under a “very high” fire risk warning as of Monday due to dry conditions, according to Vermont Emergency Management. 

Only the central portion of the southern end of the state, including eastern Rutland and Bennington counties, and western Windsor and Windham counties, were under a lower-level “high” risk, the department wrote in a Facebook post. It warned Vermonters to avoid open burning, exercise caution with outdoor grills, campfires and machinery, and properly extinguish cigarettes. 

Megan Davin, a spokesperson for the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, said three “very high” fire warnings had been issued so far in 2025. Meanwhile, there were 13 overall in 2024 and 13 in 2023. 

Dan Dillner, the state forest fire supervisor, said the current conditions were abnormal compared to the past 20 years. “I don’t know what normal is anymore,” he said. 

Wildfires are supposed to be less common in the summer, when the state is usually lush and green, but they appear to be popping up more frequently, he said. In July, the state spent weeks fighting an 11-acre wildfire in Fair Haven. The last time a wildfire of that size had broken out in July was in 1988.

He urged Vermonters to follow safe fire practices. Along with avoiding open burns, anyone lighting a grill or campfire should keep it away from vegetation, monitor the embers and make sure it’s always attended. People also should be careful with cigarettes and other small burning items. 

“When you get to ‘very high’ fire danger, even flicking a cigarette into brush can cause a fire,” he said. 

Forty-five wildfires have been reported in Vermont so far this year, totaling 46 acres of damage. One was attributed to a lightning strike. The rest? Human-caused. 

“We in the Northeast need to remember our Smokey the Bear,” the famous mascot for fire safety, he said.  

The alert came as the state entered a new phase of hotter temperatures in an already hotter-than-average summer. The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for Chittenden, Franklin, Grand Isle and western Addison counties for Monday and Tuesday. Burlington is expected to reach temperatures in the mid-90s on both days, the weather service said. 

The Vermont Department of Health maintains a list of cooling centers across the state and tips on staying safe in the heat on its website. 

Recent days have also seen less rain than expected for this time of year. Burlington has received 6 inches of rain in total since June 1, the start of meteorological summer. By contrast, the average rainfall during that time between 1990 and 2020 was over 9 inches. 

Roughly three-quarters of Vermont has been reported to have “abnormally dry” conditions by the U.S. Drought Monitor, a research project from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont reaches ‘very high’ fire risk amid hot, dry conditions.

A wafting trail of Canadian wildfire smoke has blanketed Vermont, triggering air quality alerts across the state and causing a haze to block out its mountain views. 

The National Weather Service issued a Code Orange air quality alert for Addison, Rutland and Windsor on Wednesday, a slight improvement from the statewide alerts on Monday and Tuesday. 

Officials have urged Vermonters with health risks to be cautious. The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation said in an emailed statement that wildfire smoke pollutants can cause an array of health effects. 

To many Vermonters, the haze of recent days is reminiscent of 2023, when record-breaking wildfires in Quebec and Ontario sent smoke southward. To health officials, this latest string of alerts is the harbinger of a worrying trend. 

“These recurrent episodes of wildfire smoke are a new and serious risk for Vermont air quality,” said David Grass, senior environmental health program manager at the state Department of Health. 

Here are some details about the recent wildfires, what we know about the rise of air quality issues and how to protect your health. 

Is Vermont’s air quality getting worse?

Historically, Vermont has been able to boast having some of the cleanest air in the nation. Burlington was once regularly ranked one of the “cleanest cities” by the American Lung Association for both ozone and particle pollution. 

But it fell off the list in 2023 as particle pollution worsened, said Bennet Leon, planning section chief at the Department for Environmental Conservation. 

Data from air quality monitoring stations at three state sites seems to show that there’s been little change in air quality on average in winter, spring and fall. It’s the periods of acute pollution, like this week’s wildfire smoke, that seem to be worsening the overall air quality. 

“We’ve definitely seen … a lot more wildfire smoke impacting Vermont in the last five years than we saw for a number of years prior,” Leon said. 

At the same time, it can be hard to predict when, and how, wildfires could impact Vermont in the future. 

“There are predictions with climate change that wildfires will increase, and their severity will increase, but it doesn’t mean that every year is going to be worse than the last,” he said. “There will still be variability from year to year.”

The department has aimed to help Vermonters understand that “dealing with wildfire smoke is going to be part of our future,” Grass said. 

“We’re going to have to learn how to live with it,” he said. “And if we want to live with it and not have it adversely impact our health, then we have to figure out how to stay healthy in spite of it.”

How does wildfire smoke impact Vermonters’ health?

The primary pollutant from wildfire smoke is known as PM 2.5, or particulate matter that is 2.5 microns or less in diameter, Grass said. Compare that with the width of a human hair, which measures 50 to 120 microns. 

Those small particles can pass into the bloodstream, causing inflammation that can lead to a broad range of symptoms — from irritated eyes and runny noses, to respiratory symptoms like coughing and asthma attacks, to cardiovascular symptoms like a rapid heartbeat and chest pain, Grass said. 

He likened it to the “cumulative stress of, essentially, being a smoker when you’re a non-smoker.”

Those effects are more likely when you have health conditions that already affect those systems of your body, like heart disease or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to the health department website. It can also impact children, older people and pregnant people more easily. 

The health department has only recently begun to track the effects of wildfire smoke incidents on population health. In 2023, department data showed an uptick in emergency department and urgent care visits tied to COPD, Grass said. 

In emerging research, air quality has also been linked to a variety of long-term health effects like premature births, worsening dementia symptoms and mental health issues, he said. 

And poor air quality has delivered a hit to Vermonters’ overall well-being and quality of life in a state so reliant on outdoor recreation, he said. 

“We have a short summer. It’s glorious, and we try to make the most of it,” Grass said. “And when the air quality is as bad as it is, and has been recently, that is a significant obstacle to us being able to take advantage of all of the wonderful opportunities outdoors.”

How can you protect yourself from wildfire smoke pollution?

The best way to protect yourself when air quality is poor is to simply stay inside with your windows and doors closed, according to the health department’s website. It suggests avoiding outdoor activity or limiting it to a shorter duration. 

Grass acknowledged that may be more difficult for some Vermonters than others. In a state with relatively low access to air conditioning, sealing yourself off from air flow could also make it more difficult to keep your home cool, he said, potentially creating “a dangerous situation inside.” 

The department has a map of cooling sites on its website, some of which have air conditioning. 

An air filter or purifier can provide an additional layer of protection during very poor air quality days, but that is a “new ask” for Vermonters, he said. 

“Especially when all the other expenses in their lives are challenging, saying that it’s a good idea  to buy an air filter or air purifier of some kind feels like it’s asking a lot,” Grass said. 

If you do have to go outside, the department recommends wearing an N95 mask, limiting strenuous activity and planning activities for the morning or evening when pollution levels are lower. 

Grass said it could help to avoid doing things that create even more air pollution, like idling your car, burning yard debris or even cooking something like meat at high temperatures. 

“There’s been days where there’s bad air quality outside, and I’m making breakfast for my kids, and I think, ‘Yeah, sausage seems like a great idea,’” he said. “I have an air quality monitor, and I see it go from green into yellow.”

He noted that some Vermonters are at higher risk because they have no choice but to spend time outside. That includes people who work outdoors daily.

“Someone who is a farmworker, or works on a road crew — they’re going to have a very different exposure than someone who spends most of their time inside,” he said. 

And the state’s unhoused population, particularly its growing number of people without any shelter, have few options for retreating indoors, he said. 

“Those folks are at increased risk because they are going to be exposed to the wildfire smoke 24 hours a day when they’re not inside in a clean air environment,” Grass said. “I feel like that group of unhoused people are frequently overlooked, and that it’s important to keep their welfare in mind, particularly on those days when it’s extremely hot out, or when the air quality is really poor.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: What to know about Vermont’s air quality concerns.

From Burlington to Bennington, Vermont is having a rather hot summer, according to National Weather Service data. 

The average high temperatures for June and July this year were above the 30-year average for at least four longstanding weather stations across the state: Burlington, Montpelier, St. Johnsbury and Bennington. 

To get a read on how the whole summer measures up, we’ll have to wait. The National Weather Service defines the “meteorological summer” as June, July and August.

It’s also been drier than average in Burlington, Montpelier and St. Johnsbury, although Bennington had more typical rainfall for June and July. 

None of those locations quite broke the record for average monthly temperature so far this year. But weather service meteorologist Matthew Clay said multiple one-day records were hit — like in Burlington on June 23, when the daily high hit a whopping 99 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Those instances are becoming more common. 

“If I could go and look at every record statement that we sent out for a year, the vast majority of those are going to be record highs compared to record lows,” he said. 

The Burlington weather station has records going back more than a century. They show that the city has experienced a gradual rise in the number of very hot days over the past 20 to 30 years. 

The weather service has also issued six heat advisories so far this summer, a reflection of the health and public safety dangers of extreme heat. But Clay said it was difficult to compare that with previous years because the weather service lowered its threshold for issuing advisories from 100 degrees to 95 degrees in 2018. 

Also, the weather service’s threshold for heat advisories is lower in Vermont than in hotter places in the country, in part because Vermonters may be less able to handle the heat when it arrives.

“If it’s your first 90-degree day right after 50-degree weather, your body’s not acclimated,” he said. 

There’s also fewer homes with air conditioning in this part of the country compared to, for example, Arizona, Clay noted. 

“We don’t have centralized air in a lot of places in New England, so we don’t have the ability to cool off like they do in the South, where the air conditioning is more prevalent,” he said. 

Emergency room visits for heat-related illnesses spiked the week of June 22, when temperatures rose in Burlington and elsewhere, according to the Vermont Department of Health. 

Heat-related illnesses have fluctuated year to year, but “rates have been trending upwards since 2003,” according to the health department website. The department also has recommendations on how to keep cool and prevent heat-related injuries on its website.  

The weather is expected to stay cooler — in the 70s and low 80s — over the weekend, but parts of the state could see temperatures rise to the mid-80s next week, according to weather service predictions. 

Clay said that heat does tend to come in “waves.” 

“Sometimes you have these warmer spells, you have cooler spells,” he said. “You can’t just say that it’s all related to one thing or another, but we are seeing that, overall, our temperatures are warming.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: You’re not imagining it: This summer is hot.

A plan to buy Barre’s most prominent vacant building has gotten an eleventh-hour extension of its fundraising goal — and a lowered sale price — after the nonprofit development corporation failed to meet its initial deadline. 

The former JJ Newbury’s at 143 North Main St. has sat vacant since 2010. The nonprofit leading the fundraiser have called it the city’s “biggest eyesore.” Yet the owners, local real estate developers Jeff Jacobs and Steve Lewinstein, are looking for more than the assessed value of $325,800. 

In January, the Barre Area Development Corporation launched a campaign to raise $1.1 million for a new offer and closing costs to finally purchase the building and tear it down. The city of Barre agreed to contribute $400,000 toward that fundraiser, despite some objections from residents and city councilors who said the money would be better spent toward the city’s other needs, like housing and flood mitigation. 

The fundraiser’s initial deadline was set for June 11, the initial purchase option’s expiration date. Development corporation vice president Steve Mackenzie said as that deadline loomed, it had only raised between $600,000 and $700,000, so he approached the owners and asked if they would take that amount. “Long story short, the answer was no,” he said. 

He then went back and asked if the owners would allow a 90-day extension and a lowered sale price of $800,000. That time, the answer was yes. 

The development corporation now has until Sept. 9 to reach its revised fundraising total of $850,000, which includes closing costs. It has raised $730,000 so far, and Mackenzie said he was cautiously optimistic that it would hit the new target. 

“It’s still no small challenge, but I think it’s doable,” he said. “We have a number of folks that I still need to contact, as do other board members. We know that there are people out there considering a pledge, they’re just deciding how much.”

He noted that the 15 directors of the development corporation have contributed a total of $75,000 toward the fundraiser. “We need to have skin in the game if we’re gonna go out and ask the public for money,” he said.

Mackenzie acknowledged the “hurdle” for many Barre residents is that they are paying owners who “sat on this for 15 years” and have allowed it to go downhill. 

“I understand that, and the way I come at it is, the only way something good is going to happen with this property is that we have to get it out of the hands of the current owners,” he said. 

What happens to the property if, and when, the sale goes through is still uncertain. The nonprofit has posted an artist’s rendering of its vision for the project on its website: an interim “green space” after the current building has been torn down and a longer-term concept to construct a large mixed-use multistory building on the site. 

But Mackenzie said the nonprofit has not done any significant research or planning for those concepts yet. 

“It’s hard to invest any substantial amount of time or effort or money into a property that you don’t own,” he said.  “It’s a real risk to initiate that kind of planning and development process when you don’t know if you’ll get the property.”

The common consensus is that the current structure has deteriorated, Mackenzie said. A code inspection in December 2024 found that the building had significant damage from its years left vacant, with rotting floors and a hole in part of the roof, according to inspection documents. The inspectors also found the basement full of water, possibly from the 2023 or 2024 flooding. 

Barre City Manager Nick Storellicastro said he is preparing a memorandum of understanding for the Aug. 5 City Council meeting to provide for the transfer of the property to city ownership if the sale is successful. 

Storellicastro said the general plan was to begin an environmental study immediately. He cited the development of City Place down the street as a template — the site also spent years as a green space while the city created a development plan. 

City Councilor Sonya Spaulding was one of the three councilors who voted against the city’s contribution, unsuccessfully, in December 2024. She said she still has many of the same objections. 

“We’re putting in half the amount of money that needs to get raised, but there’s still no plan, no funding for remediation,” she said. 

She, like many people in Barre, is excited to see the building finally get torn down. But she’s also concerned that the city will be asked to contribute further funds toward infrastructure and upgrades toward those long-term plans. 

“We’re building this on the backs of taxpayers,” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Barre’s contentious plan to buy a vacant building gets an extension — and a discount.

On a chilly afternoon in early March, two pigs escaped from their pen at Heidi’s Haven, an animal rescue in Williamstown.

Veterinarian Sarah Spencer said animal control called her after they loaded the pigs into a trailer and took them to a local farm for holding. The officer told Spencer she had pigs that were “desperately emaciated” and needed an exam. 

In fact, she had been scheduled to visit them at the Williamstown rescue the next day to follow up on a neighbor’s complaint that the two pigs had grown far too thin. 

When Spencer saw them the following morning, one of them “was not that far away from the point of actually dying,” she said. 

“Pigs this size, normally you go in a pen with them, and you have to be careful because they’ll mow you down if they’re not friendly,” she said. “And they were just literally huddled in the corner, shaking the entire time, and just you could tell they were totally exhausted, cold. They were not even eating because they were just like, ‘Oh my god, we have a comfortable, warm, dry place to lie down.’”

The pigs have since been moved to Merrymac Farm Sanctuary in Charlotte, where founder Era MacDonald said they have begun to gain weight and confidence in their surroundings.

The owner of Heidi’s Haven, Sheila McGregor, has been charged with animal cruelty, which could lead to fines or prison time. However, local advocates and community members are wondering what will happen to the other animals in McGregor’s care — somewhere between 40 and 80 dogs and an unclear number of cats and other animals, according to court documents.

A private Facebook group called Shut Down Heidi’s Haven has amassed 700 members, who claim to have been tracking reports of abuse at the rescue for years. 

The case also highlights the continuing challenges of Vermont’s animal welfare system. Advocates like MacDonald believe there’s not enough training, staffing or enforcement tools available for game wardens and animal control officers to act on allegations of animal abuse. 

Recent high-profile investigations, like the repeated seizure of horses from a Townshend farm, have revealed gaps in the system. What makes Heidi’s Haven unusual is its status as an animal rescue, which some advocates say illustrates the need for more regulation of rescues and shelters statewide. 

In an email, McGregor declined to be interviewed about the allegations of neglect on the advice of her lawyers. She wrote that game wardens have responded to every complaint for more than two years and have been granted access to any building or animal they wanted to see. 

“The vet who examined every animal on the property found no significant concerns,” she wrote. “I have implemented every suggestion made by veterinarians, animal health specialists or law enforcement.”

‘You have fresh water here’

At the Merrymac Farm Sanctuary in Charlotte, every animal has a backstory.

Walking through the barn on a hot July day, MacDonald points to each of its residents in turn. A pig named Buster escaped from a slaughterhouse in Connecticut. Another swine resident, Bernadette, was displaced by a barn fire in the Northeast Kingdom.

When MacDonald reaches the outdoor pen where former Heidi’s Haven residents Gladys and Olivia spent their morning, the pigs run up to her, snorting with excitement as they’re taken into the shade indoors. At first glance, they appear to have recovered from their time in Williamstown, but MacDonald said she’s noticed signs they are still struggling with the memories of their experience. 

They still have to be fed separately so they don’t fight over food. It took months for them to stop drinking each other’s urine, which MacDonald believes is the result of them not having access to clean and regular water at their previous home. 

“Pigs are considered almost at the intelligence of humans,” she said. “So they knew their survival mechanism was to drink each other’s urine. But it took them about three weeks to realize, like, you don’t need to do this. You have fresh water here.”

The roughly 7-year-old pigs appear to be a farm breed, as opposed to popular pet breeds like pot-bellied pigs. In other words, they’re very large. Spencer said a healthy farm pig could be roughly 500 pounds and could eat up to 10 pounds of food per day.

“If you know anything about pigs, I mean, a pig’s whole existence is eating,” MacDonald said. 

When Spencer first evaluated the pigs after they were caught, she said they were closer to 350 pounds each. She also inspected their pen at Heidi’s Haven and found there did not seem to be enough feed on hand to provide for pigs of their size — and found the pen to be far too bare, dry and exposed to the cold winter wind. 

The posts on the Heidi’s Haven Facebook page indicate that McGregor intended to keep her animals thin. The page has reposted photos of thin dogs from agility competitions and animal fitness pages, along with photos from her own rescue demonstrating her dogs’ fitness. 

“It is truly disturbing that the general population thinks that fat pets are healthy pets,” she wrote in a September 2024 Heidi’s Haven Facebook post. “My pigs can potentially live to be 12+ yrs old ***IF I KEEP THEM THIN***. Fat pets live shorter, more uncomfortable lives. My girls will never be fat.”

Laurie Lawless, co-moderator of the Shut Down Heidi’s Haven Facebook group, is a behavior consultant for local animal shelters. She’s skeptical of McGregor’s assertion that her dogs are simply conditioned for agility, she said, since the work that goes into feeding and providing exercise regimens for agility dogs is far too much for a home-based rescue to handle.

“There is absolutely no way that the animals on her property are conditioned. They’re underfed, and they’re skinny and not being cared for adequately,” Lawless said. 

Concerns about Heidi’s Haven date back to its previous location in Ferrisburgh. In 2018, WCAX reported that neighbors complained about the rescue’s smell, noise levels and rodent problems spreading onto their properties. 

The town selectboard rezoned the property and demanded McGregor handle the rat problem, leading her to announce she was shutting it down. The rescue reopened in Williamstown shortly after. 

“As animal control of the town, I have received multiple complaints from volunteers, adopters, and visitors to this rescue,” Williamstown Animal Control Officer Sam Puncher wrote in court documents. “Most complaints focus on overcrowding with over 60 dogs, 30 cats, multiple chickens and other small animals. The indoor areas are dirty and smell of ammonia and feces. People have noted that dogs have hair loss, are thin, and are ‘feral’. Dogs are left in crates for over 20 hours a day and water is only offered a few times.”

Game wardens from the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department visited the property 10 times in the past three years in response to complaints from neighbors, volunteers and potential adopters, court records show. 

In five of those visits, wardens could not substantiate the complaints, finding the animals in good health or the condition of the dogs’ living space to be in good shape. But in four instances, the wardens observed thin or underweight dogs. On two visits, they noted an overwhelming odor of ammonia, according to court records.

Lawless and MacDonald said that game wardens, who often enforce fishing, hunting and wildlife management laws, might not have had enough training about domestic animals to recognize signs of abuse. 

It’s also difficult to prove a certain animal’s health issues are the result of abuse, Lawless said. Often a veterinarian’s evaluation must prove the animal’s needs are not being met, and someone could claim the animal came to the rescue already in poor health. 

“It makes it really hard for (officials) to do their jobs, and it makes it really easy for people to get away with doing bad jobs at taking care of the animals and tracking their medical care,” she said. 

MacDonald said she feels compelled to “make sure that the pigs have a voice.” She’s concerned that the state will settle rather than prosecute McGregor to the fullest extent of the law.

She was frustrated when McGregor filed a motion requesting the right to visit the pigs in April, citing her “emotional attachment” to the pigs in court documents. MacDonald fought back in a filed motion, although she was ultimately overruled.

How does Vermont plan to fix the system?

MacDonald is not the first person to raise concerns about how the animal welfare investigation system allows potential abuse to slip through the cracks. Those complaints reached the halls of the Statehouse in 2024, when legislators passed a bill that created a new Division of Animal Welfare at the Department of Public Safety. 

Lisa Milot, appointed by Gov. Phil Scott, assumed her role as director of the division in May. Her first task is to study the state’s existing animal welfare system over an eight-month period. She is then expected to produce a report and issue a set of recommendations for its reform.

Milot plans to draw on her previous experience as a lawyer and academic in Athens, Georgia, to help guide her work in Vermont. In Athens, she helped bring the region’s first state-level animal cruelty prosecutions, a step up from local code enforcement. She also worked on ways to prevent animal abuse, like spay-neuter programs and animal welfare classes. 

“We were looking at it in terms of, how do we prevent these problems from getting worse? As well as, once we are down to the offenders who need to actually be prosecuted, how can we effectively do that, as well as come up with remedies that might fix the situation instead of just punishing people,” she said. 

She said she was not familiar enough with the Heidi’s Haven situation to discuss it specifically. But when asked about some of her top priorities for her upcoming report, the lack of regulation of animal rescues was one of the top things that came to mind. 

“There’s been no oversight of how rescues and shelters operate,” she said. 

The lack of regulation in Vermont is not unusual, but many other states have higher operating standards than Vermont does, she said. She cited Maine and Massachusetts as examples of places that have specific health and welfare rules for rescue agencies. 

“It’s a growing trend to have this sort of regulation, both on the in-state domestic entities as well as on the animals being brought in from out of state, being imported from other states for adoption,” Milot said. 

In the 20 years she has worked in the field, she’s seen an increasing number of animals coming through national networks that transport pets for adoption, mostly from southern states to northern states like Vermont. That can give animals better opportunities for adoption, but it can put pressure on the receiving jurisdictions to keep up with the inflow of animals. 

“The amount of stress rescuers feel, legitimately, when they see the number of animals that are being euthanized simply because there aren’t homes for them, is incredibly high,” Milot said. 

She said a lot of rescuers get overwhelmed as a result.

“They are either panicked and getting over their heads, or they step back, and they do less, but maybe do better when they set boundaries better,” she said. 

Many southern shelters and rescue organizations are “flooded with animals, and they are simply trying to bail out their sinking ship,” Milot said. That means rescues in Vermont might receive animals with little to no information about their health status or likelihood of adoption. 

Lawless said she believes that there should be minimum standards on things like kennel size, noise levels and regular vet care. Rescues should also have better documentation on the animals in their care, she said. She’s seen prospective adopters get taken advantage of by rescue staff who downplayed a dog’s bite history. 

For Vermonters who are looking to assess the quality of a rescue, Lawless advised taking a hard look at the location’s “capacity of care,” essentially how many staff members and volunteers it has compared with its volume of animals.

“This is something that ethical shelters will do, is make sure that, yes, if they’re taking animals, they are able to adequately provide for them, with the theory that if they can’t provide for those animals in the shelter, it’s no better than them not being in the shelter,” she said. 

People in animal rescue are tired of cases like McGregor’s that keep happening in Vermont, Lawless said.

“It’s really a bunch of people who are just doing their best to tie the strings together and not able, at the end, to get anybody actually really prosecuted,” she said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated which department oversees the Division of Animal Welfare.

Read the story on VTDigger here: How 2 emaciated pigs in Williamstown shed light on the lack of animal rescue regulations in Vermont.

Trying to stay out of the heat during Vermont’s first heat wave of 2025? The state Department of Health maintains a map of cooling centers open to the public — although there are caveats to keep in mind before you head to one. 

The National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat warning for parts of Franklin, Grand Isle, Chittenden and Addison counties through Tuesday at 8 p.m., and a heat advisory for the rest of the state. Burlington is forecast to hit 97 degrees Monday and 96 degrees Tuesday, with cooler temperatures expected for the rest of the week.

The health department lists more than 400 potential places for Vermonters to go inside for air conditioning or access water to help stay cool. Some locations are only occasional cooling facilities, so the department recommends calling ahead to check if they’re open to the public. Others might only be open during the daytime or only on certain days of the week. You can also call 211 to help find an open cooling location near you.

Other locations are recreation sites with bodies of water but charge an entry fee, like a pool or a state park. Housing advocates have said in previous years that it can be difficult for unhoused Vermonters to access these locations. 

Older adults, young children and people with chronic health conditions are more at risk of heat-related illnesses, according to the health department. It recommends Vermonters stay hydrated, avoid exertion and wear light, loose-fitting clothing if they go outside. 

If your home is not air conditioned, keeping the shades drawn, taking cool showers and using a fan can be helpful to keep the temperature down inside, the department said. It has more information on avoiding heat-related injuries on its website.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Find the cooling center nearest you amid Vermont’s 1st heat wave of the year.

The number of emergency room visits for Covid-19 in Vermont hit zero multiple times over the past week, “at or nearing” a historic low for that indicator, the Department of Health reported Wednesday.

The health department first reported a drop in Covid-19 hospital visits in its weekly surveillance report. Epidemiologist John Davy confirmed via email there have been a few recent days with no emergency room visits, with the rolling average around one. 

He wrote that overall hospitalizations for the disease, which includes Vermonters who have been in the hospital with Covid-19 for days or weeks, have not dropped to zero. But the number of current patients has been in the “low single digits” in recent weeks. 

In past years, the period of late spring and early summer has been marked by low rates, followed by a rise in the late summer into early fall. Davy wrote it “remains to be seen” if that pattern will reappear in the coming months. 

“There have been recent outbreaks in Long-Term Care facilities, so there is clearly some amount of COVID circulating,” he wrote.

The state health department also reported it has detected the presence of a new Covid-19 variant, NB.1.8.1. The variant has made international headlines for causing severe sore throats nicknamed “razor blade throats.” But it has not been found in Vermont in large numbers, Davy wrote. 

“There is no clear indication that NB.1.8.1 is associated with greater disease severity,” he wrote. “Preliminary lab studies suggest that vaccines will be effective against severe outcomes from this strain.”

The future of vaccines themselves are still uncertain, however. Covid-19 vaccines tailored to the dominant strains of the virus have typically become available in early fall, along with other seasonal vaccines like influenza. But U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a long history of anti-vaccine activism. 

Kennedy recently dropped the recommendation for pregnant people and healthy children to receive the vaccine and dismissed all 17 members of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel, replacing them with eight of his own appointees, some of whom have previously objected to the Covid-19 shots. The panel is slated to hold its first meeting June 25. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Covid-19 hospitalizations hit new low in Vermont, with future of vaccines uncertain.

An estimated 42,000 Vermonters attended last weekend’s No Kings Day protests, organizers said, making it one of the biggest one-day demonstrations in state history. 

Vermonters turned out on Saturday to demonstrate against President Donald Trump on the same day he hosted a military parade in honor of Flag Day and the military’s 250th anniversary, coinciding with his own 79th birthday. Millions of people attended protests nationwide, and some experts believe that it may have been the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history. 

Debbie Peel from 50501 Vermont, the group that organized the protests in the state, provided attendance tallies from local organizers of the more than 50 protests, marches and rallies held around Vermont. 

The organizers gathered the figures through a combination of headcounts, drone footage and crowd estimation algorithm, Peel said. Calls to local police departments to confirm the figures were not returned as of Thursday evening. 

50501 Vermont sponsored its first protest of just a few hundred people on President’s Day. The effort has grown quickly since then thanks to multi-group coordination, social media, mailing lists, and volunteers working on logistics and planning, according to Peel.

Among the largest of the June 14 protests in 50501 Vermont’s data were Burlington, with 16,500 people; 5,000 in White River Junction and neighboring Lebanon, New Hampshire; and 3,000 in Brattleboro. The sole pro-Trump gathering, in Montpelier, had about 30 people in attendance.

Does this mean it was the largest single-day protest in Vermont history? 

No single source tracks attendance figures, but a review of news archives for other major demonstrations — such as the 2017 Women’s March, the 1970 Earth Day rally and the 1986 Hands Across America fundraiser — failed to turn up any bigger numbers. 

Annelise Orleck, a Dartmouth College professor and historian, said the Green Mountain State has a long track record of involvement in social activism. Vermonters have even ventured beyond its borders to attend national protests in New York City and Washington, D.C. 

“During the 1982 anti-nuclear marches … I think there were representatives from every single town in Vermont,” she said. 

Orleck joined the march in White River Junction and described it as a “remarkably large turnout for such a small town.” She said the feel of the protest was different than others she’s attended or studied. 

“What I think is different about this movement, nationally and locally, is that people don’t feel like the Democratic Party in Washington is standing up in opposition to encroaching fascism,” she said. “There’s a sense that people have to put their bodies out there and respond and resist.” 

Orleck has direct experience with that risk. In 2024, she was arrested and body slammed to the ground while trying to intervene in a clash between pro-Palestinian student protesters and police. That experience has been forefront in her mind as she’s read recent headlines, like Alex Padilla’s forcible removal from a Department of Homeland Security press conference. 

“What went through my mind when I watched how they forced him to the ground and kneeled on his back is (that) there are too many of us unfortunate Americans who know exactly what that feels like, and exactly how scary that can be when they press your face into the ground and you can’t breathe,” she said. 

The Vermont No Kings protests were largely peaceful, although a brief altercation broke out that day when a counter-protester shoved his water bottle into the pro-Trump demonstrators’ celebratory cake. Some violence broke out elsewhere in the country: A man drove an SUV through protesters in Virginia and one protester was fatally shot in Utah. 

Orleck noted that while younger people seem to be taking the lead in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, the No Kings day demonstration appeared to draw an older crowd. 

“I do feel like older people, very viscerally, are recognizing the dangers of encroaching fascism right now,” she said. 

The local nature of the protests created a decentralized feel and enabled people to come who could not have afforded a trip to a major city, she said. It also helped to build local power and hope, Orleck added. 

“When I was standing in the middle of all those people in White River Junction on the bridge to New Hampshire, I said to someone, ‘This feels like I just drank a really good cup of coffee,’” she said. “That’s what it is. It’s energy. It’s community. It’s humor.”

Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated when the No Kings Protest took place.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Was the No Kings Day protest against Donald Trump the biggest in Vermont history?.

More than 40 “No Kings” anti-Trump protests are scheduled across Vermont Saturday, according to the 50501 Vermont website. 

President Donald Trump has ordered one of the nation’s largest-ever military parades to take place in Washington, D.C., this weekend, coinciding with Flag Day and his own 79th birthday. In response, the grassroots anti-Trump 50501 movement has planned protests across the nation. 

In Vermont, Saturday’s events include a border-to-border anti-Trump flag parade that plans to travel up Route 7 from Massachusetts to Canada, allowing Vermonters on the route to honk and wave as the parade passes by. At least 15 communities outside of the parade route are planning their own anti-Trump protests. 

Some rallies have special activities planned along with the protests. In Middlebury, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church plans to conduct a dramatic reading of the one-act play “Paul Revere Resists.” In Charlotte, protesters are invited to hike to the top of Mount Philo to display their signs and flags at the summit. 

At least one pro-Trump event has been announced so far. The Vermont Republican Party has listed a “Celebration of Flag day, Army’s 250’s Anniversary & Birthday” on its website, to take place at the Statehouse lawn in Montpelier — the same location as the city’s 50501’s anti-Trump rally. 

Use the map above to see what events are happening in your area on Saturday. This information is current as of 2 p.m. Thursday. Check the 50501 Vermont website for additional details and updates on events before they occur. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Map: See where Trump-related protests are happening in Vermont this weekend.

On Montpelier’s lively Front Porch Forum, Morgan Brown is one of the most frequent posters, providing local news, commentary and occasional humor. 

“Can’t sleep at night? Restless?” began one recent post. “Not to worry, call the Insomnia Warmline. Our professionally trained, volunteer, experienced peers, people who are sleepless at night as well, will bore you to sleep.”

When Brown went silent for several months this winter, his absence was noted by locals. Upon his return in February, he had some not-so-humorous news to share: He had been diagnosed with an aggressive case of colon cancer and been in and out of the hospital for weeks. 

The response was immediate and kind. “Morgan Brown, So sorry to hear of your health struggles. I’m thinking of you,” Cindy McCloud wrote on Front Porch Forum. 

Brown told VTDigger he was incredibly grateful for the Montpelierians who had driven him to the hospital, brought him omelettes and scrambled eggs, and looked after his cat, Miss “Cleo” Cleopatra, while he was gone. 

“I’ve learned not to say no because that sometimes pisses people off because they want to help,” he said. 

In mid-May, Brown received a positive update. His oncologist told him he could have a year or more to live if he pursued treatment, rather than his initial prognosis of three months to a year. 

Brown fully intends to pursue treatment. However, he said he’s still in a lot of pain. 

“I’m a fighter, and I intend to beat those odds, so I intend to be around for a while,” he said. “Winston Churchill’s favorite saying every day in the morning was, ‘Keep buggering on.’ And that’s basically a model I’ve adopted — keep buggering on.”

Brown’s diagnosis has also forced him to retire from his passion of advocating for unhoused Vermonters, especially those living on the streets of Montpelier. 

Brown has attended protests, served on the city’s Homelessness Task Force, and written commentaries for outlets like VTDigger in support of policies that would provide more compassion and support to unhoused Vermonters. 

The issue is personal to him. Brown spent 12 years living unhoused, transitioning between a variety of living situations before he found housing 15 years ago. 

When it comes to housing policy, Brown is adamant and firm. “There shouldn’t be one person living outside,” he said. 

Brenda Siegel, executive director of End Homelessness Vermont and a friend of Brown’s, called him a well-respected member of the community who gives with “all of his heart.”

She said she was saddened to hear of his cancer diagnosis. 

“I don’t really want to know a world where Morgan Brown is not part of the life that I have or the work that I do because we need him here,” she said. 

‘Every person is worth the effort’

Brown grew up in eastern Massachusetts but said he never felt connected to it. 

“I don’t say I’m from there. I say I was plopped there as a little kid,” he said. 

He first came to Vermont more than 30 years ago. He had chipped in to help a friend get their car up to Montpelier. From the first time he saw the small city, he knew he wanted to live there. 

“I saw the kids hanging out in front of City Center. I said to myself, ‘Well, if they can do that, this place is for me, you know, I’ll be accepted,’” he said. 

For a while Brown lived at Another Way, a local community center for unhoused Vermonters and psychiatric survivors. The center did not usually allow people to live there, but he had an “unofficial” arrangement, he said. 

“Otherwise, I would have been out in the woods with a tarp,” he said. 

Eventually, with the assistance of an employee at Washington County Mental Health Services, Brown was able to get a motel room, then an apartment. When asked about how his experience informs his opinions on the housing crisis, he deflected. 

“I try not to just use my own perspective. I watch and I listen to whoever’s outside and whatever. And I actually draw more on that than my own (experience),” he said.

Lately, he’s had a hard time keeping up with the local unhoused community because his health mostly keeps him at home. Brown lives in a small efficiency apartment in a multi-unit building with Cleo, a 12-year-old cat with a “voracious appetite.”

His recent hospitalization was the longest the two had been apart since he adopted her 11 years ago. “Ever since I got back from the hospital, she hasn’t let me out of her sight,” Brown said. 

He recalled one of the last in-person protests he was able to attend was the sleep-in on the steps of the Vermont Statehouse in 2021, when activists camped out at the Capitol for weeks to protest the removal of unhoused Vermonters from the motel program.

Although he stayed with them for only one night — and “didn’t get any sleep at all,” he said — Siegel recalled Brown coming by to give the protesters water and moral support, then getting a hotel room in town for them when the protest was over so they could go straight to bed. 

“He did not tell us, because we would have refused,” she said. “It was just like, I can’t quite describe it, but he would show up with whatever he had and give all of it.”

Since then, the two have kept in touch through text and email. Siegel has read Brown’s poetry out loud at various protests and events. 

“He writes beautiful poetry, and especially beautiful poetry about the experience of homelessness and the experience of watching other people go through it after now that he’s housed,” she said. 

His poetry, political writing and observations about daily life are collected on his blog, Green Mountain Meandering Missives. At times he addresses his thoughts on the housing crisis directly to Gov. Phil Scott.

“It boggles the mind how your administration can be so deliberately indifferent and uncaring when it comes to those who are being or already have been evicted from the Vermont Hotel/Motel Program without those persons having anywhere else safe and secure to go inside, day or night,” he wrote in an open letter to Scott last month.

The Legislature and Scott have clashed in recent years over whether to extend funding to the state’s motel program, which housed thousands of Vermonters during the Covid-19 pandemic but has slowly been rolled back. 

To everyday Vermonters, Brown asked them to consider doing for others what they would want done for their loved ones if they were facing a difficult situation. “What would you want for your loved ones? You’d pull out all the stops, right?” he said. 

He said society tends to classify certain people as “not worth it” — but Brown said he believes “every human life, every person is worth the effort.”

“The problem is sometimes people have given up on themselves, so we need to double down on them. We need to show them that they matter. That somebody cares for them, even if they don’t care for themselves,” he said. “And that, sometimes it helps. Without wanting something from them. They’re not obliged, there’s no expectation. I’m not a religious person, per se, but it’s God’s true love.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Montpelier advocate reflects on cancer journey, advocating for unhoused neighbors and how the community has given back to him.

Anytime the Savoy Theater in Montpelier shows the Rocky Horror Picture Show, they’re cleaning up the theater for weeks, according to the theater’s marketing director, Leah Fishman. 

The cult classic features audience participation moments, including $5 prop bags full of messy objects like handfuls of uncooked rice. But Fishman said the cleanup was well worth the trouble. 

“It takes weeks, but we never regret it. It’s always so fun,” she said. 

Rocky Horror is one of six cinematic events planned for the theater’s Queer Film Festival, a three-week-long celebration of LGBTQ+ films and shorts, both modern and classic. The festival, now in its fourth year, is one of Vermont’s many events celebrating Pride Month this June. 

Pride Month events stretch all the way from Springfield to Newport, along with Bethel, Rutland, Morrisville, Barre and Essex, according to the Pride Center of Vermont. It kicks off two days early with Montpelier Pride on Friday, which includes a parade, music on the Statehouse lawn and street art. 

Just don’t look for Burlington on the list of June events: Vermont’s largest city has its annual Pride event scheduled for September, according to the Pride Center. 

Along with town-sponsored events, local venues have planned a wide variety of Pride-themed entertainment. Barre LGBTQ+ bar Foxy’s has an amateur drag night slated for June 7, while Babes Bar in Bethel has Gay Trivia planned on June 26 with the motto “Anyone can play but it’s gonna be gay.”

One of Savoy’s screenings has a Babes Bar tie-in: “One Night at Babes,” the first of its Queer Shorts events, depicts the bar’s connections to the LGBTQ+ community and its rural neighbors, Fishman said.

Another film at the festival, the surreal trans allegory “I Saw the TV Glow,” had its Vermont premiere at the Green Mountain Film Festival in 2024, but the Savoy never had the chance to screen it. 

“We’ve had it sort of in our back pocket for a while, hoping for a chance and sort of saving it for Pride,” Fishman said. 

Fishman said the film festival was inspired by the love of “queer cinema” among Savoy staff members, some of whom are LGBTQ+ themselves. 

“We’re looking for a way to sort of share and bring new people and new voices into the theater,” she said. “Whether that be through highlighting new filmmakers or sharing stories that they love, that perhaps the community hasn’t seen yet, or engaging folks in the community in a new way and really celebrating queer voices.”

Kell Arbor, health and wellness director for the Pride Center, helped select the films this year and chose ones that would bring out a mix of “the youths and the elders.” A portion of ticket sales will go to the Pride Center as well.

Along with helping to organize Montpelier’s pride events, Arbor plans to be “DJ Kell” at a pride-themed silent disco just over the border in Lebanon, New Hampshire, on June 16. 

Arbor, whose pronouns are fae/faer, said the Pride Month festivities were even more essential this year as the Trump administration rolled back federal funding for HIV prevention and other LGBTQ+ health care in Vermont. 

“It’s hard to come in joy and pleasure when we’re living in such trauma, pain and grief — and, we need it more than ever, and the brighter we’re beaconing, the more it’s helping other people feel like they’re not alone,” fae said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Queer Film Fest kicks off Pride Month in central Vermont.

Vermont’s opioid overdose deaths fell for the second year in a row in 2024, hitting their lowest annual tally in four years, according to the latest opioid annual report from the Vermont Department of Health. 

The department reported 183 Vermonters died of opioid-related overdoses in 2024, compared with 236 deaths in 2023. The drop was paralleled by falling deaths at a national level, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Deputy Health Commissioner Kelly Dougherty said her team was happy to see the decline in deaths, but noted they remain high — higher than pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels and higher than in 2015 when then-Gov. Peter Shumlin raised alarms about a rising rate of overdoses in the state.

Health officials had been encouraged by a drop in overdoses in 2019, only for the trend to reverse during the pandemic, when Vermonters saw their lives upended in a variety of ways. Recent years have also seen a continued rise in potent opioids like fentanyl and xylazine, often in combination with non-opioid drugs like cocaine. 

The Vermont Health Department and substance use organizations across Vermont have fought back by aggressively expanding access to naloxone, a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses and prevent them from becoming fatal. Dougherty said the department has distributed naloxone throughout the state, making it available online, in schools, at job sites and even in a few vending machines. 

The department has also widely distributed fentanyl and xylazine test strips and co-created the VT Help Link, a “one-stop shop” to access services and treatment. 

Dougherty said these initiatives are reflective of a shift toward seeing opioid use and substance use disorder as a medical condition that can be targeted with harm reduction strategies. 

Vermont has a handful of community organizations that distribute clean syringes. The state legalized safe injection sites in 2024, but the first site in Burlington is still in the planning stage. 

There are limitations to the overdose data. Dougherty said deaths are falling, but little is known about whether fewer Vermonters are using opioids or have substance use disorders. 

Tracie Hauck, executive director of the drug recovery group Turning Point Center of Rutland, said focusing on death data alone could be misleading. 

“From what I see in our community, things aren’t any better,” she said. “Crime is picking up again. You’re seeing people that are struggling health wise and have no place to live and are using substances.”

Hauck said a lack of supportive transitional housing for Vermonters in recovery is a gap that can make it hard for people to stay sober. 

“A lot of people we’ve sent to rehab are homeless to begin with,” she said. “So if they don’t go to a transitional living program after they complete rehab, they’re back out on the street and there’s no housing for them.”

People without stable housing often find themselves in “survival mode,” leading them back toward substance use, Hauck said. 

“People don’t have phones. They don’t have reliable transportation. They don’t have stable housing, so they’re just in survival mode continuously,” she said. “And that doesn’t lead to real, good, solid recovery because their stress level continues to be so high.”

Hauck said a more holistic approach to substance use disorder is needed that incorporates a person’s mental and physical health, housing, and interactions with the criminal justice system. 

Dougherty echoed the need for more transitional housing along with “step-down” facilities that can help rehabilitate people after their initial medical withdrawal. 

Both urged Vermonters to look past their assumptions and judgements about drug use and consider the human beings affected by the opioid crisis. 

“These are people — 183 people who were somebody’s loved one, somebody’s friend, somebody’s family member,” Dougherty said.

Hauck said despite her reservations about focusing solely on deaths, she still favors harm reduction measures like naloxone that offer people more chances to seek help.

“I am not anybody’s higher power to decide whether they should live or die, and I don’t think any other human being is, but I just know sometimes it takes a lot for someone to go through before they make that decision to get involved in recovery,” she said. 

Hauck said she has seen people on Facebook complain about the distribution of naloxone without considering the full implications of not having it available. Anyone can risk opioid overdose when drugs like cocaine are so frequently contaminated with them.

“They’re not pausing and thinking about how tainted our supply is and how far that reaches, and to who that reaches to,” she said. “It’s not just people with substance use issues. It’s people that use recreationally.”

Dougherty said she was concerned about potential changes to the health care system being discussed at the federal level. Congress and President Donald Trump are working on legislation that could lead to Medicaid cuts. The Trump administration has proposed cuts to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 

None of the Vermont Department of Health’s harm reduction services rely on federal funding, Dougherty said. But Medicaid pays for many substance use services in Vermont, so the department is worried about cuts overall, she said. 

“We’re just bracing generally at the health department, beyond substance use, because it’s like a full-out attack on public health,” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont opioid overdoses fell in 2024 for the second year in a row.

For roughly 22 months, the former site of the Montpelier Post Office has sat vacant, a lonely looming presence at the corner of State and Elm streets. 

The building sustained significant damage from the July 2023 flood, when water inundated the streets of Vermont’s capital. It was so hastily vacated that federal employees’ items are still sitting on their desks, creating an “eerie” feeling, according to Jon Copans, executive director of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience. 

Now, the city and state are considering whether it may be worth buying the property at 87 State St. from its owner, the U.S. General Services Administration. 

“If you think about the location of this particular building and piece of land, it really does represent a transformative opportunity for our city in terms of what comes next,” Copans said. 

The commission, a private/public partnership between Montpelier Foundation, Montpelier Alive and the city itself that was developed in the wake of the July 2023 flood, has been working to lead a discussion about the potential uses of the property — including housing, parking, businesses, state offices and more. 

The General Services Administration announced it would begin the disposition process in December 2024. On April 21, it sent a letter to Montpelier and the state of Vermont about the possibility of a negotiated sale, similar to a “right of first refusal” for government actors before it becomes available to the general public, Copans said. 

Since then, the commission has been coordinating a collaborative discussion between Montpelier, the General Services Administration and the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development to determine whether this property could be a good fit for Montpelier’s needs. 

Many questions remain. Copans wouldn’t even put a ballpark estimate on the sale price of the property since there hasn’t been an appraisal on it post-flooding. In the 2024 Grand List, it was valued at $7.8 million.

Asked about the current condition of the building, Paul Hughes, a spokesperson for the General Services Administration, said via email that it has been “stabilized.” 

He wrote that the General Services Administration decided to dispose of the property “after it was deemed a high financial and operational risk.” Montpelier’s post office has since moved into the Montpelier City Center at the corner of State and Main streets. 

Copans said there was a “gargantuan” amount of water in the basement of the former post office, but “my understanding is they have done a lot of work.” Local rumors have circulated about problems with the building’s foundation, but Copans said the General Services Administration has reassured the commission that it’s still solid.

It’s also unclear if the building may come with a historic covenant to preserve its appearance since it’s a part of Montpelier’s historic downtown. Copans said many people find its Brutalist style not “particularly pleasing,” but nonetheless, its historic status is one issue that would need to be addressed in order for Montpelier to get a sense of the value of the building.

The 70,000-square-foot building, built in 1964, hosted the post office’s retail space on the first floor with room for postal activity in the back. The second and third floors had office space for federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. senators’ local headquarters. 

When it comes to how the city could make use of the building, Copans said housing was at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Montpelier has faced a housing shortage that only worsened after the 2023 flood. 

The property also comes with a large parking lot that could be developed into multilevel parking, Copans said. That could ease the need for parking on the other side of State Street, where riverside parking lots are exacerbating flood risk.

“We don’t believe that’s the highest and best use for that riverfront property,” he said. “A, it is ugly and B, it’s really not great when it comes to flood resilience to have a bunch of impervious surface right next to the river.”

Lindsay Kurrle, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said the state has a “shared interest” in building resilient communities and developing housing for workers across the state. 

“This has presented an opportunity for everyone to kind of lean in and take a look at this building and see how it could be redeveloped,” Kurrle said. 

The state has no obligation to actually take ownership, Kurrle said — but it’s facilitating the opportunity to do an assessment of the sale. There’s no risk involved at this point, she said, since the parties are just expressing interest. 

The Montpelier city manager’s office, the city spokesperson and the mayor did not respond to interview requests. 

Clarification: The headline for this story was edited for clarity.

Read the story on VTDigger here: The former Montpelier post office building is up for sale. Could it serve the city or state?.

Two-term Barre City Councilor Samn Stockwell lost her Ward 3 seat in a tight race against newcomer Don Routhier in the city’s Town Meeting Day election Tuesday. 

Routhier won the race with a vote total of 124 to Stockwell’s 110 votes. Routhier, a local business owner, campaigned on a platform of cracking down on crime and supporting Barre’s North End, a neighborhood in Ward 3 that was hit hard in the 2023 flood.

“I’m very happy that Ward 3 gave me the chance to serve them,” Routhier said Wednesday. “I do believe this is the sign that people are starting to listen (to) all the problems that we’re facing in Barre.”

Meanwhile, in Ward I, the more tough-on-crime candidate Eddie Rousse lost the race to Beth Hilgartner, an author and former minister who emphasized the need for more consensus-based city processes. Hilgartner received 201 votes to Rousse’s 173 votes for the seat, which was left open by Emel Cambel’s departure from the City Council. 

Hilgartner said via text message Wednesday that she was “grateful for the opportunity” to serve her city and neighbors.

Jeff Bergeron won an uncontested race for a City Council seat in Ward 2. Councilors Sonya Spaulding, Amanda Gustin and Michael Deering II, along with Mayor Thom Lauzon, are slated to serve their terms through 2026.

Barre voters also passed the $14.8 million budget in a year marked by ongoing flood-related fiscal challenges. Residents also voted in favor of a $600,000 ballot item for street and sidewalk improvements and the Capital Improvement Fund. They voted down a separate ballot item that would have made the city clerk into an appointed position rather than an elected role. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Incumbent Samn Stockwell loses Barre City Council seat as 2 new councilors are elected.

If there’s anything Barre City’s Ward 3 City Council candidates can agree on, it’s that Barre is struggling. 

“Barre has a really high poverty rate, and with the floods, that’s only gone up,” incumbent Samn Stockwell said. 

“I do believe that Ward 3 has been kind of forgotten,” her challenger, Don Routhier, told the podcast 802 Scoop last month. 

But on a variety of issues, the two candidates — who will face each other in elections on Tuesday — are at odds: from flood mitigation, to homelessness and crime, to the tenor of their candidacy and the way that the City Council should view Barre’s future. 

Routhier, owner of a local used car dealership, has framed his campaign around the concept of “Bring Barre Back” — back to the days of his family’s roots as business owners in the North End. 

The issue in Barre, as he described it on the podcast is “we have a lot of ideologies who have a dream, this rainbow coalition of everything’s going to happen, but it’s not.”

“We need doers. We don’t need teachers,” Routhier went on, “we need doers” taking action to address issues like crime and road repairs. 

Stockwell, a poet and social services coordinator for the Family Center of Washington County, has put more emphasis on the need for affordable housing and ways to support residents on the path toward homeownership. 

A similar battle of viewpoints has played out in Ward 1, where current Councilor Emel Cambel is stepping down. Former school board member Eddie Rousse said in an interview that supporting the police department and limiting loitering should be key priorities for the City Council. 

His competitor Beth Hilgartner, a retired minister and author, emphasized consensus building over jumping to specific solutions. 

In Ward 2, current Councilor Jeff Bergeron is running for another term unopposed. 

The election, scheduled to take place on May 13, will also have a budget vote, a vote on a street and sidewalk improvement fund and a vote on whether the city clerk should be appointed by the City Council rather than an elected position. 

‘Good Old Boys’?

Routhier declined to speak with VTDigger, saying that it was too close to the election for him to do an interview. As of Thursday, his sole media appearance has been on 802 Scoop, a local podcast, on April 16. 

In that appearance, Routhier held up an old photo of his parent’s former business, the Heiress Motel, now known as the Budget Inn. Although Routhier left Barre to go to college, he eventually returned and opened a used car sales business, Routhier Auto Center. 

On the 802 Scoop podcast, Rothier was asked if that made him one of the “good old boys,” an oft-used term in Barre to refer to an in-group of political figures. He replied that he finds the term “slanderous,” he said on the podcast, but indicated his support for current mayor Thom Lauzon, who came back into power in 2024 after a six-year hiatus. 

“Thank God that, you know, we have a new mayor, and I think with a little bit of help, we can turn the city around again,” he said. 

His vision for turning the city around includes more support for the police department and more cleaning up, beautifying and adding amenities in Ward 3, which includes the North End, one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the 2023 floods. 

Stockwell also believes that new flood-safe development should be a priority in the North End. As a City Council member, she’s been working on flood mitigation through creating new floodplains, removing bridges that contribute to flooding and seeking federal funds for flood-safe housing development and home elevation. 

But at the same time, she said, Barre should be looking for more opportunities to build dense housing downtown.

“The North End would remain a rehabilitated and restored neighborhood without a ton of apartment buildings,” she said. “I think downtown is a place to develop ‘up.’” She also said Barre should look at programs to help residents become homeowners. 

The two candidates are directly at odds on whether the city should consider dredging the Stevens Branch of the Winooski River, which state officials have warned municipalities to approach with caution, since it can worsen flooding in some situations. 

Routhier told 802 Scoop he would dredge the river and recommended it be “cleaned out.” Stockwell said there were “real reasons” that dredging can be destructive and hasn’t been the most effective method for Barre. 

Not ‘that easy a divide’

Like Routhier, Rousse, in Ward 1, said he’d like to talk to Barre Police Chief Braedon Vail about ways to reduce crime. He’s specifically interested in cracking down on loitering, particularly among drug users and unhoused people, and said he believes it creates a negative image in downtown. 

Growing up in a family of seven, Rousse said he didn’t have a lot of goals, but “you’d see (someone) loitering around that was unmotivated, and I just said, ‘That’s not who I want to be.’ And I see more and more of that now.”

Rousse has spent decades as a financial planner and representative for National Life Insurance Co. He’s also active in local civic organizations like the Barre Rotary. He cited his professional experience as giving him an advantage when considering the complex fiscal situation of the city. 

“I think I could provide a common-sense response to whatever comes my way, no matter what it is,” he said. 

Hilgartner said she tried to approach issues like homelessness with “compassion.” But beyond her personal beliefs in how Barre should address the issue, she believes the emphasis should be on a more community-driven process for tackling it. It’s something she has experience with as an Episcopal minister, where you “have to keep everybody on board” to gain funding and support, she said. 

She does have one topic that is personal to her: traffic safety. Shortly after Hilgartner, a Barre native who was away a long time, moved back in 2022, two cars got into an accident on her road, damaging the heat pump connected to her home. 

Barre’s road quality was a top complaint among residents in a 2025 budget survey, and all four candidates mentioned the need to fix cracks and potholes. But Hilgartner floated the possibility of going beyond maintenance and trying to add features to slow down drivers on Main Street. 

“There’s a 25 mile-an-hour speed limit throughout the city of Barre,” she said. “It is not observed.”

Despite the challenges Barre faces, Hilgartner said it’s a wonderful place to live. She recalled the flood in 2023, when residents and community organizations across the board jumped in to help clean up. 

“The day after the rain stopped, people were just down Main Street and in the North End with their buckets and their shovels and their boots and their gloves, and they were digging their neighbors out and trying to get the businesses up and running again immediately,” she said. 

Stockwell said one recent bright spot has been the influx of new businesses to Barre, from the Slowpoke Clothing Exchange to Foxy’s, an LGBTQ+ bar. Reflecting on the tone of the different City Council campaigns, she said that Barre had a broad spectrum of political beliefs and backgrounds, among both new and longtime residents. 

“I don’t think it’s that easy a divide, and I hope people will work together to keep Barre alive,” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Barre voters have a choice of City Council candidates with different approaches to its biggest issues.

The most fateful decision made about Barre City’s fiscal future might not be made by voters at its Town Meeting Day election on May 13. 

Rather, it’s the decisions made by state lawmakers, federal agencies and the Trump administration at large that have already affected Barre’s coffers as it slowly pulls itself up from two major flood events. 

“Our recovery and the impacts (are) not felt across just one year. We need sort of an off-ramp, and we need multiyear assistance,” Barre City Manager Nick Storellicastro said. “I mean, that obviously didn’t translate to this year.”

Voters will soon decide whether to support the $14.8 million 2026 budget proposal, representing a property tax rate increase of 5.87%. Barre City voters moved its Town Meeting Day to May in 2024 to better fit the back end of the state Legislature’s calendar. 

The budget Storellicastro helped to prepare this upcoming fiscal year had to work without the roughly $1 million in state flood aid that the city received in 2024. Barre City was one of the hardest-hit communities in Vermont during the 2023 flood event, and was hit again, less hard, the following year.

So far, the city has received only $50,000 in direct operational assistance for this upcoming fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30, from the state. 

“We’re never going to turn down money from the state. But obviously, the difference between $50,000 (and) a million is a big deal,” he said. “We probably could have used a number with six figures in it, it would have been something more meaningful.”

Barre City officials ultimately chose to make up its budget deficit by cutting its bulky waste removal service, leaving positions unfilled and raising certain city fees and taxes, among other measures. The city also benefited from a small boon: Longtime Barre resident Eugene Cozzi bequeathed a large trust to the city upon his death in 2024, $75,000 of which will be used this year to help support cemetery operations, Storellicastro said. 

However, the fate of a bill that would provide flood-affected municipalities some fiscal relief is still up in the air. H.397, currently in the Senate Government Operations Committee, has a variety of measures geared toward helping communities keep as much of their revenue as possible. 

Rep. Teddy Waszazak, D-Barre City, said that as the state’s financial situation has gotten worse due to Trump administration cuts across the country, he worked on H.397 to “put smaller pieces” of funding together for municipalities. 

He said the bill would create a new state-led flood buyout program to replace or add onto the flood buyouts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

“We need to build up our state systems,” he said. “We can’t assume FEMA will be there,” as the Trump administration has cut back on key FEMA programs. 

The bill would also create a new “municipal grand list stabilization fund,” which for five years would reimburse municipalities for lost property taxes on flood buyouts, since properties purchased by communities for flood mitigation or recovery represent a loss in potential property tax revenue.

Storellicastro told the Senate Committee on Government Operations on Tuesday that 60 Barre property owners have applied for buyouts. Of those, Barre has approved only 27. 

“Barre City is four square miles,” he said. “Anytime we give up a parcel to a FEMA buyout, that is gone forever from property tax revenue, from development, from housing, from whatever you want to call it. So we only decided to move forward with very targeted buyouts of clusters along the river because those properties have mitigation value to the city as a whole.”

Another provision in the bill would allow communities to keep a larger percentage of their local options tax, 75% rather than 70%, Waszazak said. The remaining portion goes into a state fund that provides tax relief to municipalities for state-owned property.

Town officials beyond Barre support those changes, while acknowledging they have limitations. Tom Leitz, municipal manager for Waterbury, said the extra 5% in local options tax would mean an additional $60,000 in revenue for the town. 

“I think we’ll be back asking the same questions of the Legislature in a year or two, but I’m still really happy to get an additional 5%,” he said. “That’s a big win for us.”

Liz Scharf, Middlessex Select Board chair, said the town was in the process of approving 12 buyouts that could translate to a loss of $60,000 in property tax revenue per year. 

“It’s not something we can rely on in perpetuity,” because of the five-year time limit, she said. “But it obviously would be helpful to have that.”

Yet the town’s challenges go well beyond buyout funds. Middlesex is still waiting on more than $5.4 million in FEMA reimbursement for the emergency repairs it made for the 2023 flood. The money has been coming in “at a snail’s pace,” she said. 

The delay has left Scharf with a daunting fiscal bind. 

“Usually, a town like us would have $200,000 to $400,000 of reserve funds, just for things, right? Like, ‘Oh, yeah, this broke down and we didn’t have the money for it.’ We have zero reserve funds,” she said. 

Meanwhile, “everything in our town is falling apart,” she said: the town hall, the town shed, a town-owned truck. Just recently, she got a picture from the town’s foreman of a road that appears to be sinking toward a gorge, the kind of damage that could cost thousands to repair. 

The town has been borrowing funds to keep up, but Scharf is worried its credit will max out soon.

“I don’t know what to do in the next storm,” she said. “I don’t know how we’re going to pay for the next road repairs, because we just don’t even have the money to front it.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: As Barre voters prepare to weigh in on this year’s budget, flood woes from years past still linger.

A 43-year-old Barre woman was charged Monday with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a 45-year-old Barre man last week. 

The Vermont State Police arrested Donna Robinson last week for allegedly shooting Franklin Driscoll at a home on 879 N. Main Street in Barre on Thursday around 5:25 p.m., the state police said in a press release. 

Robinson pleaded not guilty to the charges against her and is being held without bail at the Chittenden County Correctional Facility. 

Driscoll was admitted to Central Vermont Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the abdomen and died early Friday morning, the release said. 

The state police said the death appeared to be an “isolated event” between people who knew each other, so it did not pose a threat to the general Barre community. Initial witness interviews indicated that Robinson was taking the gun from Driscoll during an altercation with a different person when it went off accidentally, according to the state police affidavit. 

Robinson was arraigned in Washington County Superior Court Monday afternoon for involuntary manslaughter, along with charges of five counts of reckless endangerment, one count of simple assault and two counts of possession of a firearm while having a felony conviction. Robinson was convicted for selling heroin in 2017 and for a stolen-property-related crime in 2012. She appeared at the hearing virtually from the women’s prison in South Burlington.

Judge John Pacht denied the state’s request to also charge Robinson with burglary. At the arraignment, he said there was no evidence that Robinson had not received permission to be on the property, where at least six other people were apparently present at the time of the incident. 

Pacht, defense attorney Michael Shane and prosecutor Talon Wendel discussed the nature of the evidence for each charge, which was primarily witness testimony from people at the house during the time of the shooting. 

Shane said the case was “thin” and that Robinson had every intention of fighting it, noting that key charges appeared to rely on the statement of a single witness. 

Wendel argued that the evidence was bolstered by statements from several other witnesses, who provided corroborating testimony although they had not personally seen the actual shooting. 

Pacht said, “I think there’s going to be a lot more the state’s going to have to show as to how it occurred,” but that the evidence was “enough” at this point to justify having Robinson held without bail. He also cited the seriousness of the manslaughter offense, which could lead to a life sentence. 

Pacht and the attorneys plan to schedule a weight-of-evidence hearing within the week. 

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the judge presiding over the case. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Woman charged with manslaughter in shooting death of 45-year-old Barre man.

James Ingerson, a 54-year-old man from Hartford, died Saturday while incarcerated at Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport. 

Ingerson had reported not feeling well and was receiving care for an unspecified medical issue prior to his cellmate discovering him unresponsive Saturday morning, according to a Vermont State Police press release. Medical interventions by corrections officers and emergency medical service providers were not successful, and Ingerson was pronounced dead at 9:54 a.m. 

State police said the death does not appear to be suspicious, but plans to investigate per standard protocol. The chief medical examiner’s office in Burlington also plans to conduct an autopsy to determine cause and manner of death. 

Ingerson was the fifth person pronounced dead while in the custody of the Vermont Department of Corrections this year, according to department press releases. The first two, both in Springfield, occurred while the individuals were in their cells. Two others were detained men in palliative care at local hospitals. 

Ingerson had been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for aggravated assault and cocaine possession in Windsor County in 2022, according to the state police. He was also serving a federal charge for illegal possession of a firearm as a felon. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont man incarcerated in Newport prison dies .

Vermont officials are assessing how residents may be affected after the mass firing of federal workers who administer the LIHEAP program, which provides millions of dollars in heating assistance to low-income households in the state. 

The cuts, reported by national news outlets Wednesday, won’t immediately affect Vermonters receiving the federal assistance, according to the state Agency of Human Services. But the agency is still evaluating potential impacts to the program in the long term, Economic Services Division Deputy Commissioner Miranda Gray said via email Thursday. 

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program provided $23 million in funding to Vermont in 2025 for the winter season, which runs from November to April. That money has already been allocated to the state, according to Tom Donohue, CEO of BROC Community Action.

Officials from community action agencies, which help provide fuel oil or other heating assistance directly to Vermonters in need, expressed concern about the possibility of losing these funds in the future, given the critical nature of the program. 

Donohue estimated that BROC, a community action agency in Rutland and Bennington counties, has provided heating assistance to more than 600 households across its domain in this especially cold winter. 

“Our staff has appointments all day long, pretty much every day, Monday through Friday, and then there’s an after hours emergency number too,” he said. 

Capstone Community Action in Washington, Lamoille and Orange counties has provided more than 700 assists this season, according to Alison Calderara, the organization’s interim co-executive director. 

“These funds can be about survival for people,” she said. 

Vermont does not receive funds for cooling assistance like warmer states do, Donohue said. But Calderara said she was sympathetic to states like Arizona that could be losing immediate funds as they approach the summer months. 

“They could have 120-degree (weather), and yet they may be looking at not getting their funding,” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal government slashes staffers at critical heating program for Vermont.

The United States is in the midst of a surge in measles cases driven by unvaccinated children. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported 483 measles cases so far in 2025. If the current pace of spread were to continue, it would make this year the worst for measles in the 21st century. 

About 97% of cases have been in unvaccinated people or people with unknown vaccine status, the CDC reported. Three-quarters of cases have been in people under the age of 20. Seventy people have been hospitalized, and one school-aged child has died in Texas. Another death is under investigation.

Cases have been highest in Texas and New Mexico, according to the CDC. Vermont has been mostly spared thus far, with only one travel-related case reported by the state Department of Health. 

But health officials here are worried about one key statistic: The state’s measles vaccination rate for incoming kindergarteners has been below 95%, the critical “herd immunity” threshold that can prevent individual cases from becoming outbreaks. 

For the 2023-24 school year, the most recent year available, 93% of kindergarteners in public or private schools were up-to-date on their MMR vaccines, which provide protection against measles, mumps and rubella, according to health department data. Adults are also recommended to receive the MMR vaccine if they do not have evidence of vaccination or immunity. 

Even fewer, 91%, were fully immunized with all the required childhood vaccinations, which also include protection against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis B. 

“If we have 95% of people vaccinated, it would stop the spread,” said Merideth Plumpton, the department’s immunization program director. “Right now in Vermont, we’re below that.”

The measles vaccination rate for kindergarteners in Vermont is similar to the nationwide one, according to a research paper from the CDC. But the state has the second-lowest measles rate in New England, above only New Hampshire. It’s also lower than neighboring New York state. 

While 93% may sound close to 95%, that gap makes a real difference when it comes to herd immunity, Plumpton said. The 95% threshold is effectively a tipping point where vaccinated people act as a buffer, keeping the 5% of the community from coming into contact with each other.

“It just means that if we have a case, the likelihood that it’s going to spread is pretty high, especially if the child goes to school or child care during their infectious period,” she said.

Among all school-aged children, the rate of vaccination was higher, about 96% for the MMR vaccine. But facility-level data, which VTDigger obtained from the health department, shows that the statewide vaccination average was only part of the picture — in reality, many schools are far below the average.

About 26% of K-12 schools and 23% of child care facilities did not meet the 95% vaccination threshold for measles, the department data showed. In three counties — Lamoille, Orleans and Washington — the percent of facilities that do not meet herd immunity rose above 33%.

Vermont requires children entering child care facilities or K-12 schools to receive five vaccines that protect against nine potential childhood illnesses. Students at residential schools, also known as boarding schools, and incoming residential university students are also required to receive the vaccine against meningitis. 

But children can be exempted from those requirements for three reasons: provisional admittance for children with upcoming vaccination appointments, a medical exemption approved by a health provider or a religious exemption where parents attest to “holding religious beliefs opposed to immunization.”

For the 2023-24 school year, only 0.2% of children were medically exempted, 3% were provisionally admitted and 3% were exempted for religious reasons, according to the health department. 

Plumpton said the lowest vaccination rates tend to be found in the state’s most rural areas. “It could be a combination of lack of access and attitudes towards vaccines,” she said. 

Independent schools, which includes private and religious schools, also tend to have lower vaccination rates than public schools, according to the department data. 

Vaccination hesitancy has been bolstered in recent years by anti-vaccine sentiment connected to the Covid-19 vaccine, Plumpton said. The Trump administration has also placed the longtime anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one of the most powerful public health roles in the nation. 

Plumpton emphasized that most Vermont families still choose to have their children vaccinated. But it’s natural for parents to have questions about the vaccines they’re giving their children, she said. 

“As a parent, I want to make the best decision that I can for my child, and I can only make that decision based on the information that I have,” she said. “And we’re in an age where there’s information everywhere, so it’s really hard to know what the correct information is or where to go to get good, solid, sound, scientific information.”

She encouraged parents to check out reputable websites like Vaccinate Your Family and VaccineInformation.org, which both have thorough FAQs about the safety and efficacy of each vaccine. 

She also encouraged them to discuss their child’s vaccine schedule with their primary care provider or pediatrician. Vermont provides recommended vaccine doses for children and adults at no cost to health care providers. 

But her message to Vermont parents was clear: Measles is a highly contagious virus that can lead to severe illness and death, and “vaccines are the best defense against the illnesses that you’re getting vaccinated against.”

“They’re not going to prevent 100% of the diseases,” she said. “That’s not the way vaccines work. But they’re really highly effective at preventing hospitalization and really serious illness. And there’s a reason that we have these vaccines.” 

You can use the tool below to browse school and child care vaccination rates, or check out the Department of Health’s vaccination dashboard for a fuller picture by year and county.

Clarification: This story was updated to note an additional death under investigation.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Hundreds of Vermont schools and child care facilities do not meet herd immunity threshold for measles.

The federal government announced Wednesday that it would cut $11 billion in Covid-19-related grants to local health agencies, including $6.9 million to two departments in the Vermont Agency of Human Services. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Health, Kyle Casteel, provided a statement on behalf of the agency Thursday that called the cuts a “sudden termination” that would “negatively impact public health in our state.”

Most of the funds, about $5 million, were allocated for vaccination programs at the health department. The statement said the grants began during the pandemic but have continued to support the department’s work beyond the pandemic. 

Among the uses of the funds were to “detect and prevent the spread of infectious disease, ensure Vermonters can access vaccines, help address health disparities among the populations and communities we serve, and more,” the statement said. 

The Department of Mental Health projected losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the statement said. The programs it expects to see cuts include community-based support, crisis response and access to care for “vulnerable Vermonters,” the statement said. One such program provided team-based early treatment for psychosis to young Vermonters. 

“While these grants were always intended as temporary, the demand for mental health services remains high, and this loss of funding will have consequences,” the statement said. 

The statement said the departments were still working to understand the full implications of the cuts. 

The Covid funding cuts were the latest in a series of changes to health-related spending at the federal level. On Thursday, national news outlets reported that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services planned to lay off 10,000 workers and shut down certain agencies within the department. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal government cuts almost $7 million in Covid-19 grants to Vermont.

This is the first story in a two-part series that looks back on the impact of Covid-19 in Vermont after five years. The second story, “A visual history of Covid-19’s path through Vermont,” can be found here.

Five years ago, Vermont health officials announced the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the state. 

Since then, 1,200 Vermonters died from Covid, countless residents were infected and hundreds of thousands of Covid jabs were put in the arms of Vermonters. 

Last month, the health department announced that it would stop publishing Covid death and case data after years of daily and weekly tracking. The change is the latest shift in how Vermont now views Covid as an “endemic” disease, more like the flu or other seasonal illnesses than a pandemic that stands as the forefront of public health priorities. 

Vermonters have gotten older, but has the state gotten wiser? Are officials better and more prepared to tackle public health crises as they arise? Or is Vermont primed to repeat a cycle of needless suffering and death?

The legacy of Covid goes well beyond the impact of the virus itself. Covid has left Vermont with tools that could help address longtime public health challenges along with emerging threats — and with vulnerabilities in public trust and health systems. 

Officials at the Vermont Department of Health say that Covid was the most daunting challenge they have ever faced, but it left them with new tools and structures that they have implemented in their day-to-day work. 

They also celebrated the state’s track record with the virus. Vermont has one of the lowest Covid death rates in the nation, behind only Hawaii and Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But that’s not how Anne Sosin sees it. A lecturer at Dartmouth College and health equity researcher, Sosin reflected on how Covid revealed disparities in Vermont society that continue to today. 

Sosin said Covid has added to the “burden” of illnesses like flu and RSV on hospitals and health care workers in the winter months. It has also added a “large footprint” of disability, she said. While long Covid is the most well-known aftereffect of contracting Covid, experts are just beginning to understand how a Covid infection can cause long-term health impacts on multiple body systems. 

Covid has left Vermont — and the nation — with a lasting legacy of mistrust and misinformation, one that appears to be affecting public health response at a federal level, Sosin said. She said the measles outbreak spreading in the U.S. has been fueled by vaccine skepticism that began long before the Covid pandemic, which then amplified it. 

“We’re gonna see a lot of tragedies over the next few years,” Sosin said. “It’s going to get a lot worse before we, ultimately, recognize we have to rebuild.”

Mark Levine, the outgoing commissioner of the health department, echoed that concern in an emailed statement.

“While when compared to national data Vermont remains a leader in immunization – even with numbers I would not brag about – it worries me that the uptake on preventative measures like vaccination has declined so shortly after the pandemic reminded us why they are so necessary,” he wrote.

Pandemic-era innovations

Covid has left a mark on how the health department is able to respond to other public health challenges, staff said. 

One of those developments has been Covid wastewater surveillance, which allows state and local governments to measure virus levels in a community by taking samples at wastewater treatment plants. 

“Wastewater surveillance was done in academic institutions and for research purposes prior to Covid, but it really became a public health tool during Covid,” said Patsy Kelso, the state epidemiologist. 

The department’s public health lab is now gearing up to use wastewater surveillance to measure mpox, seasonal influenza and Candida auris, a hospital-related illness, she said. 

The scientific community is also investigating how to utilize mRNA vaccines, developed for Covid, on other infectious diseases like the flu as well. Antigen tests that can detect both Covid and the flu are already on the market. 

Helen Reid, then the state director of health surveillance, said the pandemic also revealed the need for the state department of health to work more closely with community groups that represent marginalized Vermonters. Covid had a disproportionate impact on Vermonters of color, older residents and people with disabilities. 

“The very first year of Covid really sort of laid bare what we’ve known for a long time, which is that health disparities have an impact on high-risk populations and underserved populations, and we saw that in Covid time and time again,” said Reid, who now leads the health department’s infectious disease division. 

Vermont responded by targeting vaccine outreach to those individuals, and some of that effort has changed the way that the health department continues to collaborate with marginalized communities. The health department just had its first “tabletop” exercise — an emergency-preparedness simulation — with community groups like Migrant Justice and Bridges to Health, she said. 

Sosin also noted the importance of community organizations in responding to Covid in a different way. Early in the pandemic, local efforts like mutual aid groups formed an integral part of helping to reach vulnerable Vermonters. 

“Early in the response that communities would … have a telephone tree, and they would see who was at risk, and they would shop for groceries (for those people),” she said. “We don’t sometimes think of that as public health, but those are the things that enable people to comply with public health.” 

The pandemic response at a state and federal level included a vast expansion of social programs that directly — and indirectly — affected people’s health. 

“We saw the unprecedented use of housing policy as a tool for pandemic control” with the housing of unsheltered Vermonters in motels and the moratorium on evictions, Sosin said. 

The federal government expanded Medicaid eligibility, extended the Child Income Tax Credit and provided several stimulus payments. Those initiatives had a concrete impact on child poverty in the years they occurred. 

The federal government also lifted restrictions on telehealth, which was beneficial to rural health access, she said. “Unfortunately,” she said, that flexibility is about to end unless the federal government extends it — one of many programs Sosin said was at risk. 

‘Emerging threats’

In the early months of 2025, President Donald Trump issued executive orders withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization and cutting foreign health aid. His administration announced hundreds of millions of dollars of funding cuts to institutions conducting health research, something that has Sosin worried about the country’s ability to prepare for future health challenges. 

“We need to be able to generate evidence in real time in response to emerging threats. And research institutions play a critical role in that,” she said. “The existence of research infrastructure was critical to really understanding Covid-19 and to developing tools to respond to it” — from therapeutics to testing to vaccines. 

Those threats include bird flu or H5N1, which has infected poultry and dairy livestock nationwide and sickened humans, primarily farm workers. The U.S. has also recently seen a surge in measles cases led by an outbreak in western Texas. Experts have linked the rise in measles to a decline in childhood vaccination rates. 

“There’s been some conversation around (bird flu) and its pandemic threat potential. And to some extent, I think that that’s the wrong question,” she said. “The question is not about just the pathogen and what its trajectory will be, but rather, how prepared we are to respond as a state in the absence of the policy response and federal infrastructure? How are we going to do this without the federal resources coming our way?”

She referenced newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has a long track record of anti-vaccine activism. Kennedy has recently recommended unproven health supplements to treat measles while casting doubts on the safety of the measles vaccine amid a growing outbreak. 

“There is a large political economy that’s fueled the rise of RFK and other extreme figures,” she said. 

Sosin said the “abdication” of health response at the federal level has highlighted how important state leadership will be going forward. “The state needs to prepare for the vacuum of federal leadership.”

Levine — who declined to be interviewed by VTDigger on the Covid anniversary, citing travel plans in the days prior to his departure from his role at the health department — shared similar concerns about the federal government to Sosin in an emailed statement. 

“The turbulence we are seeing in public health at the federal level only underscores the point that here in Vermont, we have to be willing to do what it takes to be good neighbors to each other and protect our communities,” Levine said via email. 

His top takeaway: Vermont, get vaccinated. Despite the state’s initial progress on the vaccine, uptake for Covid and flu shots have fallen in recent years.

“My hope is that what we are seeing in our vaccination rates is a temporary setback, and that it will not take another dire public health emergency to find out if we have learned the right lessons,” he wrote. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story was wrong about the current job title of a public health official with the Vermont Department of Health.

Read the story on VTDigger here: New technology, and mistrust, is legacy of Covid-19 for Vermont public health.

This is the second story in a two-part series that looks back on the impact of Covid-19 in Vermont after five years. The first story, “New technology, and mistrust, is legacy of Covid-19 for Vermont public health,” can be found here.

Patsy Kelso, Vermont’s state epidemiologist, remembers hearing about Covid-19 for the first time through the “routine channels.” The Centers for Disease Control and other public health entities regularly share information about emerging infectious diseases, from mpox virus circulating worldwide to Ebola outbreaks in Uganda. 

But there was nothing, at first, that suggested Covid would be the one to shut down the world. “It did take me by surprise, personally, how quickly things ramped up,” Kelso said. 

The spread of Covid within the United States was so misunderstood that the focus of many experts was on preventing transmission from international travelers. In reality, the virus had been spreading nationwide for months. 

Vermont officials recommended hand washing and staying home when sick, but masking and social distancing were not yet on the horizon for the general public. In fact, only three days after Vermont’s first Covid case on March 7, 2020, hundreds of people attended a University of Vermont basketball game. At least 20 confirmed Covid cases were later linked to the event. 

But the situation was quick to change. On March 15, 2020, Gov. Phil Scott ordered K-12 schools to shut down to prevent Covid’s spread. A flurry of other closures followed, until Scott issued a blanket order on March 24: “Stay home” and “stay safe.”  

Covid tracing in the state began with a whiteboard in Kelso’s office listing individual Vermonters’ initials and their test results. Then she had to bring in a second whiteboard. Then the entire office was sent home, and the department was forced to rapidly come up with a system for tracking hundreds of people and tests. 

On the testing side, Helen Reid, then director of health surveillance at the Vermont Department of Health, was scrambling to scale up Covid laboratory testing. Early shortages of basic testing equipment — pipette tips, plastic — hampered their progress. 

“It was hard to anticipate the scale that this would go to,” said Reid, who now heads the department's infectious disease division. “So with every new piece of information, we were sort of pivoting and adjusting our approach, and doing it pretty quickly.”

Along with supplies, the department was in desperate need of more staff. Officials put out a call early on for “basically anyone in state government who had a microbiology degree,” Reid said. Still, she recalled working extremely long hours in the early weeks of the pandemic. 

“We went from, I think it was, testing about 56 specimens a day in the early days of Covid, to our team testing 1,500 per day by the end of May, because we didn't really have a choice at that point,” she said.

As the health department scrambled, state officials tallied the numbers. Early Covid press conferences featured charts of hospital capacity and the amount of need under “best case” and “worst case” scenarios. In those early months of the pandemic, Vermont did not come close to hitting its hospital capacity. In fact, cases ebbed into the spring and summer months, and the state reported zero deaths for months. 

Anne Sosin, a health equity researcher and lecturer at Dartmouth College, recalled Vermonters in that time beginning to talk about the state as an “escape community,” protected from Covid by its relative isolation and rurality. But she said she had reason to be skeptical since her research in health equity suggested rural areas can be uniquely vulnerable to illness. 

Many people think about disease risk as “distances between houses and physical infrastructure,” but rural communities often have tight-knit bonds and anchor institutions like schools and employers that bring them together, she said. 

Rural areas also have more essential workers and fewer hospital beds and other health infrastructure. Yet she was sympathetic to those who wanted to return to their pre-pandemic lives. 

“None of us want to alter our daily lives for months or years on end,” Sosin said.

Vaccine goals

The vaccination campaign in 2021 marked a new stage in the pandemic. After rolling out the vaccine to older and high-risk Vermonters, Scott announced that May a benchmark-based plan to reopen Vermont: If 80% of Vermonters get vaccinated, he said, he would lift major Covid restrictions. 

“Admittedly, this would be an ambitious goal for most,” he said at a press conference announcing the initiative. “And to be honest, most states won’t come close to reaching it. But I believe Vermont can show the country how it’s done.”

On June 14, 2021, the state hit that goal, and Scott followed through on his promise. Once again, Vermonters enjoyed a summer light on Covid limitations. 

Vermont remains close to the top of the nation in its initial Covid vaccination rate, tied with three other states, according to USAfacts.org. Kelso praised the policy, saying that it helped limit deaths later in the pandemic. 

“I think that was a strong policy that resulted in both large uptake of the vaccine, and also quickly, because Vermonters wanted things to reopen,” she said. 

But once again, the Covid ease was not to last. 

That summer, the more severe and infectious Delta variant began circulating through Vermont. Cases and deaths surged in the fall. Then Omicron hit. The less severe, but extremely contagious, variant spread quickly nationwide. In Vermont, reported hospitalizations topped the state’s hospital bed capacity, forcing them to take emergency staffing measures for weeks. 

Scott pushed forward with reopening despite the rise. Just as Omicron began to wane, he announced the end of school mask mandates, citing the need for children to return to normalcy. 

Three years later, Sosin remains critical of this policy. She said the state leadership early in the pandemic was “fast and effective,” but “lost discipline in responding to the pandemic in later stages.” 

She argues that masking, tied with other Covid-concious policies, actually helped to keep schools open during the worst of the pandemic. 

“None of us thought that we should shut the state down the way we did in March 2020,” she said. “We knew a lot more and had many more tools to respond to the pandemic.”

Kelso took a more positive view of the state’s response, but said the restrictions and regulations were a balance that had trade offs. 

Statewide and public health policies in Vermont contributed to the state having the lowest death rate in the nation, she said, but there were downsides to some of them as well. 

“Limiting visitation in long-term care facilities, for example, really helped reduce introduction of the virus into a facility where it could then spread quickly and result in terrible outcomes, but that also had devastating impacts on individuals’ lives,” Kelso said. 

Vermont might have had a comparatively low death rate, but that’s not how Sosin thinks when evaluating the state’s performance. “I never think about it in terms of Vermont versus Texas. I think about it in terms of lives that didn't need to be lost,” she said. 

“I always think we measure this on our own terms, and we would not resort to lowest-common-denominator metrics in thinking about public health, or the preservation of human life,” Sosin said. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story was wrong about the current job title of a public health official with the Vermont Department of Health.

Read the story on VTDigger here: A visual history of Covid-19’s path through Vermont.

The Vermont Department of Health has confirmed a case of measles in a school-aged child in Lamoille County — the first to be discovered in 2025. 

The unnamed child became sick after travelling internationally with family. The risk to the public is believed to be “low,” but Vermonters who may have been exposed to the child at the Copley Hospital emergency department may need to take action to protect others, according to a Tuesday press release from the department. 

The child tested positive Monday after visiting Copley Hospital in Morrisville the day prior. Anyone who was inside the hospital’s emergency department between 3:15 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Sunday should confirm their immunity to measles through vaccination or previous infection, and monitor for symptoms through March 30, according to the release.

If you cannot confirm your immunity by contacting your health care provider or requesting your immunization records, you should call the health department at 802-863-7240, option 2 for guidance. 

Although this is the first case of measles reported in the state in 2025, there were two documented cases in 2024, one in 2018 and another in 2011, according to the release. 

This most recent case has not been linked to ongoing outbreaks in the southern United States and Québec, according to the department. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported more than 200 cases of measles so far this year, up from just 58 in 2023. 

Health department officials urged Vermonters to get themselves and their children vaccinated for measles. 

Health officials attribute the recent uptick in measles, in part, “to an increase in the number of unvaccinated people, which impacts community immunity,” the department said in the release. About 93% of school-aged children in Vermont are vaccinated for measles — below the 95% benchmark that experts believe is essential for herd immunity. 

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases worldwide and can be deadly, especially in children under 5. One in five unvaccinated people with measles end up hospitalized for the disease, according to the release. 

Symptoms of measles include a high fever, a cough, and a rash a few days after initial symptoms appear. For more details about measles symptoms, how the virus is spread and how to get vaccinated against the disease, visit the health department’s website. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont reports case of measles in school-aged child .

The Vermont Department of Health has stopped including data on Covid-19 cases and deaths in its weekly surveillance reports. 

The department posted on its website on Feb. 19 that Covid data reporting would transition to “to a format similar to other respiratory viruses like the flu.”

The latest surveillance update contains data on emergency department visits for Covid, the proportion of variants from clinical specimens, Covid levels in wastewater sampling and a count of the latest outbreaks. 

Emergency department and wastewater data suggest that Covid levels are on the decline from a relative surge in December and January.

The department said on its website that case data has become “a less meaningful” indicator of Covid trends as individual cases have been reported on a limited basis by health care settings and laboratories. Officials have warned that case data, based on PCR testing, has been less accurate since the widespread adoption of antigen testing in 2022. The department stopped publishing daily Covid case counts in 2023. 

“Reporting of individual SARS-CoV-2 infections to public health has become increasingly sporadic as testing patterns have changed (including widespread use of at-home testing),” state epidemiologist Patsy Kelso wrote in an email when asked if there was a specific justification for the more recent shift.

A higher proportion of Covid infections now tend to be asymptomatic, Kelso said, meaning they were less likely to require health care intervention that would result in a Covid PCR test. 

Data on individual test results is no longer being analyzed at the federal level or published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid tracker, a change made in 2023. The disease is still reportable on a state level, meaning health care providers, laboratories and certain other officials are required to report positive cases to the health department, according to Kelso.

When it comes to Covid deaths, the department said it stopped releasing death data because Covid has shifted from being the underlying cause of Covid-associated deaths to only a contributing cause.

When asked for more details on that shift, Kelso said 87% of deaths associated with Covid in Vermont had the disease as an underlying cause early in the pandemic, compared with 55% during the Omicron wave. Omicron has been the dominant strain of the Covid-19 virus in Vermont since early 2022. 

The final surveillance update with death data, released Feb. 12, reported that 1,258 Vermonters had died from Covid since the beginning of the pandemic, including 16 in January. The CDC continues to publish provisional mortality statistics, including for Covid, on a national basis in its database. It’s unclear what data will be published on Covid deaths from Vermont through the CDC. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont stops publishing Covid-19 death and case data.

Lauren Geiger has an ever-present reminder of why she is working toward building new housing in Plainfield, a town of 1,200 people just east of Montpelier. As she looks out of her window, she can see several neighbors who were hit by flooding in recent years. 

“I’m living next to a house that is condemned,” she said. “I’m looking across the brook at a house that is empty, where the two residents and their daughter had to leave, I’m looking out near the Brook Road, where there are a number of houses that are empty.”

Geiger and her family decided to evacuate as the waters rose quickly around her home in July of last year, although they were ultimately spared damage beyond their basement level. She feels lucky compared to some of Plainfield’s hardest-hit residents, like the tenants of the “Heartbreak Hotel” building, which was partially swept away by flood waters last year. 

Geiger is working with the owner of the Heartbreak Hotel and a coalition of other Plainfield volunteers who have one idea for how to rebuild: Developing a parcel of open land into lots that could become future housing for Plainfield flood victims and other locals with housing needs. 

The project, called the Plainfield village expansion, faces a critical juncture up ahead. On Town Meeting Day, residents will decide from the floor whether to establish a reserve fund that could become the funding mechanism for the project.

The 23-acre open space plot, owned by Plainfield Town Clerk Bram Towbin and his wife, Erica, sits well above the floodplain along upper Main Street and East Hill Road. In the village expansion plan proposed by a volunteer steering committee, the town of Plainfield would buy the land, develop it into about 30 to 40 lots, and sell them for future housing construction. 

Proponents of the plan say that the new housing could both offset lost housing stock and draw in new residents to a town that has experienced decades-long population decline. 

“I love the idea of attracting perhaps some younger families and maybe some senior citizens to an area that is not only beautiful, but walkable to the existing village,” Geiger said. 

But the plan has faced opposition too. Residents have pushed back against the expansion with concerns and complaints in town meetings and on social media. Among their key objections were that the project was going too fast, that Towbin’s involvement posed ethical concerns and that the development could change the neighborhood’s character or overwhelm the village with traffic congestion. 

The Plainfield Select Board appears to have conceded on the first point. Initially, the Town Meeting Day proposal was to fully fund the project with a $2.5 million bond. But the Select Board decided to step back that proposal, instead moving forward with the creation of a reserve fund that could allow the town to do more if certain conditions are met over the next few months. 

Arion Thiboumery, the Heartbreak Hotel owner who is coordinating the project, said via email that those conditions would be: the State Ethics Commission provides guidance on navigating the sale with Towbin; a purchase option is secured; and that a full budget and layout for the development is made public. The Select Board could then consider the purchase. 

The Vermont Community Foundation has expressed interest in providing Plainfield with a 2% interest loan for the purchase, Geiger said. In the long term, the steering committee believes the project would pay for itself with the lot sales and additional property taxes coming into the town’s coffers. 

She said the local financing offer was part of the reason for the project’s speed, since the future of the national economy and construction industry was so uncertain.

“We have to be realistic about the federal picture right now, and we have a lot of interest in this project from the state and from other grant funding opportunities and that kind of thing,” she said. “And I think that if we have to wait another year for this project to happen, I’m not sure that some of those opportunities will still exist.”

The proponents also want the project to be finished in time for federal buyout recipients to use their money to purchase lots. They and other flood victims would be given priority for the sales, Geiger said. 

Geiger also defended the project’s scope and size, noting that the committee has already changed the design based on feedback from local surveys and planning meetings. The committee is conducting a survey through March 2 to gather resident’s thoughts on how and whether the project should include tiny homes and a community gathering space. 

The town’s divide over the project shines through in the anonymous responses to the survey so far. Out of 68 respondents, about 20 praised the idea of the village expansion as a whole, while 13 voiced clear opposition to the project no matter its design, many saying that the many new homes would negatively impact the area’s character and quality of life.

Geiger remains “cautiously optimistic” about the vote next Tuesday. 

“We have definitely gotten some negative feedback, but we’ve also gotten a tremendous amount of positive feedback. So we’ll see what happens. It’ll be a very interesting town meeting,” she said. 

Flooding was not the only hit to Plainfield’s economy and character in 2024. Goddard College, a liberal arts college with a reputation for experimental education methods, announced that it would close its doors for good in April. The college pursued several buyers for its Plainfield campus before closing a deal with Execusuite, a New Hampshire-based real estate firm, in October. 

The town also recently experienced a major shift in its flagship co-op, which recently moved out of the historic grange hall at 153 Main St. and into the former location of the Plainfield Hardware store along Route 2.

The town is seeking proposals for the future use of the grange space. One group led by two local farmers, the Plainfield Granary, is seeking to raise funds to buy the building and keep it as a community center.

Geiger noted that Plainfield’s population has dropped by over 100 people since its peak in 1970, when it had nearly 1,400 people, according to 2020 Census data. She envisions a town where she can see people on the street, walking around and saying hello to one another. 

“I just think about an extension of the town, of the current village, that I could walk to, and there’d be a little green space there, and maybe eventually a playground and gardens and orchard, or these things that are envisioned in the plan. And to me, that just seems like such a sweet possibility for us locally,” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: On Town Meeting Day and beyond, Plainfield residents chart a new future.

Rock of Ages, a Barre-based granite company, has ended its quarry tours and shuttered its visitors center, effectively ending public access to its operations after more than 100 years. 

The company posted a notice about the end of tours to its website last week, citing the need to adapt to “evolving site regulations and operational needs.” Rock of Ages and its Canadian parent company, Polycor, did not respond to requests for further details about the closure. 

The quarry has been in operation since 1885, according to the company’s website. The granite industry played an essential role in Barre’s economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and over a dozen granite-related companies remain in operation in the central Vermont city, according to the Barre Granite Association. 

Rock of Ages has attracted visitors since at least 1924, when the company built a “Retiring Room” for guests to observe the quarry in action, according to its website. It introduced tours in 1930. The company paused its tours in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, but resumed them in 2022. 

Heather Pelham, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, wrote in an email that the closure was a loss for the “entire state,” since tourism helps to fuel the state’s economy and employs thousands of workers. 

“When guests come to enjoy our attractions, they visit our downtowns, eat in our restaurants, stay at our inns and collectively, they contributed $282 (million) in state and local tax revenue in 2023,” she wrote. 

She added that central Vermont still has many cultural “gems,” historic sites, and recreational opportunities to offer visitors. 

The Barre Granite Museum, which typically opens from May to October, remains an option for visitors to learn about the city’s granite industry. The Vermont Historical Society operates the Vermont History Museum in Montpelier and the Vermont History Center in Barre. 

The Millstone Trails Association maintains several trails that pass through and around Barre’s inactive, former quarry sites. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rock of Ages quarry ends tours and closes visitors center.