Editor’s note: This commentary is by Frank Cioffi and Seth Bowden, president and vice president, respectively, of GBIC (Greater Burlington Industrial Corp.)
[I]n the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, we awoke to a Vermont we could hardly recognize. Our infrastructure was washed away, our homes rotted, and our communities fractured. We saw the devastation in every corner of the state. We saw families broken. And we chose to do something about it.
Every day in Vermont, we are waking up to the same disaster. It is the aftermath of poverty, addiction, joblessness and incarceration. Because we have been able to drive past it, or to lock it away, or to not talk about it, we have been derelict in our duty to come together and do something to fix the creeping destruction of our communities and in our families.
We are faced with losing a generation if we do not take broad and immediate corrective action.
Joblessness and economic dislocation go hand in hand with failed education strategies and low socioeconomic outcomes. And it’s not that jobs don’t exist, it’s that we haven’t created a workforce who can meaningfully participate.
This is our daily failing infrastructure: the human loss of opportunity and potential. And we need to come together as a state to solve it.
Key employers throughout the state have sounded the alarm; they are struggling to meet their workforce needs. Moreover, they are concerned this is a growing problem and some have expressed a reluctance to grow their businesses here with this known constraint. In many cases these employers are close to writing off Vermont. If and when they do, they won’t broadcast it. They will simply make internal decisions to shift operations and we will learn what they have done when it is too late.
Every year 40 percent of Vermont high school seniors go on to no further education. Three thousand young Vermonters. They are our children, they are our community, they are our potential. Vermont owns them, and they own us. Some find opportunities through skills they have learned, but too many are forced to accept a life of economic hardship. A life of not being able to provide for themselves, let alone a family, disproportionately suffering from lack of care or from addiction. And far too often single mothers and children face additional challenges.
This is our daily failing infrastructure: the human loss of opportunity and potential. And we need to come together as a state to solve it.
Despite these challenges, at GBIC we remain optimistic. Vermont is a small state, and it provides us opportunities to make effective and meaningful change. If our state’s community leaders and policy decision makers understand the situation and the stakes of a disaster, Vermont is capable of working together to find a solution.
The issues are big, but we feel that there are concrete steps that Vermont can take that will move the state in the right direction. We’ve outlined the challenge, and next month we’ll examine actions that can help to shift the curve.
