If not for $70,000 in Covid-19 relief money last year, Dick Lawrence said, the Caledonia County Fair “never would’ve made it” to this year.
That money came from a pool of $500,000 given to state fairs. This year, Lawrence, the event’s director, has more to look forward to: another half-million dollars for fair associations in the state budget for the 2022 fiscal year, which begins July 1.
“I hope we can make some additional improvements with it,” he said.
Few funds in the 459-page, $7.2 billion budget signed into law last week are earmarked specifically for the Northeast Kingdom.
But plenty of projects in the region — including the fair — may be able to tap into pools of money that are generally reserved for areas of interest.
Those pools include programs centered on household income, and they could have “greater benefit to this area,” said Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Regional advocates have paid strong attention to the broadband bill lawmakers passed in May, which supplies $150 million to expand internet access statewide. The Kingdom, chronically lagging in high-speed internet service, will likely get a big chunk of that money.
And leaders in the region believe the budget bill’s less flashy appropriations may also make a splash.
Take nearly $200 million sectioned off to address homelessness and housing insecurity and boost the state’s stock of homes for lower-income people.
That includes $94 million given to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to fund homes and shelters, especially for those in the state hotel-voucher program who will be displaced. About 2,300 Vermonters are now housed in motels, and one-third of them are on the verge of being forced to move out.
Lawmakers gave the housing program “more funds than they typically do,” said Patrick Shattuck, director of Rural Edge, an affordable housing provider in the Kingdom.
“So all of the housing agencies are sort of ramping up for more production,” he said.
His agency plans to ask the board next week for funding for a nine-unit development in St. Johnsbury.
“That was a result of the increased focus on housing,” he said. “The goal would be to get that funding, to close on that property and have renovations complete … by the end of the year.”
The budget also includes millions for rental assistance programs, a move of “huge importance” to Rural Edge, Shattuck said.
“Especially with the lifting of the eviction moratorium, it’s so important to people across the Kingdom in maintaining their housing and to the private landlords who need to be paid,” he said.
During the state’s emergency order, renters were protected from being evicted, and now analysts are trying to assess the potential impact of its expiration last week on the eviction rate.
His agency will help people, for free, at its office in Lyndon if they don’t have internet service or aren’t sure how to connect.
Northeast Employment and Training Organization, the state’s weatherization service provider in the Kingdom, will receive money to weatherize 40 homes in the region, said Martha Stevens and Debbie Russell, the agency’s executive directors.
That money comes from the federal American Rescue Plan Act and Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The state budget details some $50 million from the rescue act related to weatherization, heating and home energy.
Of that pool, $4 million goes to the state Department for Children and Families. The regional group’s directors said that money will be shared among the five weatherization agencies over a two-year period, but exactly how the money will be used has “yet to be determined,” Stevens and Russell said via email.
A total of $11 million is going to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development for brownfield revitalizations. Kitchel said that money could clean up two “significant sites” in the Kingdom, one in St. Johnsbury and one in Lyndon, and ready them for new uses.
The site in St. Johnsbury is the town’s long-blighted, 105-year-old armory — a building local officials have been trying to redevelop.
“We’re excited and pleased to hear the leadership in Montpelier identifying the important brownfields in our more rural parts of the state and dedicating time and resources to get these things redeveloped,” said Joe Kasprzak, assistant town manager in St. Johnsbury.
“We much prefer to revitalize these buildings and get them back into use and back into historic significance than … of building properties on the outskirts of town,” he said.
For Lawrence, the Caledonia County Fair head, the new state funds could help the fair replace dairy barns or get a permanent building for the fair’s goat program, which now is housed in a tent.
He said he isn’t sure how exactly the $500,000 will be divided among the 14 fairs and field days around the state. But is he optimistic about the money?
“Certainly,” he said.
