This commentary is by a group of people who have formed Resilient Montpelier: Dan Jones, Andrea Stander, Daniel Hecht, Stephen McArthur, Lisa Burns, Greg Gerdel, Tina Muncy, Albert Sabatini, Stan Brinkerhoff.
The postwar period has been good to us here in Vermont. We didn’t have the riches of New York or California, but we had enough. Thinking we were more frugal, hardy sorts, Vermonters valued growing healthy children, dairy cows, and a culture that accepted diversity of opinion.
Fifty years ago, the state received a huge influx of counter-cultural, back-to-the land immigrants, who gave us Vermont’s famously progressive politics while building upon old-fashioned commitments to neighborliness. We felt proud and “Vermont strong.”
Now, everywhere we turn, we find people uncertain, anxious, and lacking hope for the future. Certainly, disruptions at the national level — political division, economic instability — contribute to this malaise. But here in Vermont’s capital city, as in most of our state’s small cities, we’re waking up to a host of challenges — many of them home-grown, some legacies of past mistakes and some just now emerging — without easy solutions.
The time has come to face into these challenges, to constructively exploit them as catalysts for doing things differently. Our first step must be to stop compounding our errors of the past half-century.
The time has arrived for an honest public conversation to identify the various problems and offer some context for them. Each challenge merits an in-depth discussion. How we respond will determine how we move into what is likely to be an increasingly disruptive future.
For example, we know that more homeless people inhabit our streets, and that we’re about to see a huge increase in this number. In part, the predicament stems from a 40-year-old policy of deinstitutionalization of those with mental health challenges in state hospitals. Even former advocates of this well-intentioned policy now recognize its shortcomings, due largely to our collective failure to fund local treatment centers.
A less obvious cause is the monumental lack of affordable housing. Many homeless people are working, but simply can’t find housing at a cost manageable at local labor rates — and for every person currently without a home, there are easily 10 residents facing housing insecurity in the face of real estate market factors.
Paradoxically, our proud libertarian values contribute to this problem. Many of our well-to-do city’s prevailing “Not In My Backyard” attitude, the professed desire to “preserve the character of our neighborhoods,” has shot down most attempts to build affordable housing. Our more privileged residents, and our city council’s failure to take on the housing challenge, have fostered conditions in which the very people we want to retain and attract — those who work and who keep things working — can’t afford to live here.
Compounding cultural attitudes and status quo policy inertia in cities like Montpelier is the fact that over 60% of the best land for building is occupied by parking lots, many owned by the state. In the postwar push to build an economy centered on the personal automobile, we promoted an energy-intensive lifestyle, “sprawl” that extends outward from the urban core while hollowing out the city centers. As our downtown office economies decline in response to Covid, climate change, and economic realignment, we’re now stuck with a lot of unused asphalt — wasted land. For Montpelier, policy paralysis and the state’s bureaucratic turf wars prevent building any housing on these increasingly vacant lots.
Aging and underfunded infrastructure is a common challenge. Montpelier’s fragile water system is another consequence of past errors. For 25 years, we have failed to address critical aging and design issues in pipes and equipment, presumably because repair costs would be greater than residents wanted to pay. Despite increasingly frequent water main ruptures, damage to residential plumbing, and disruption of traffic, our city government will not act.
Our city’s “50-year plan” bequeaths the expense to the next generation and to future decades when costs will be even higher while compounding the current damage.
Looming over all of this is climate change. Projections show that Vermont — supposedly to be among the “safest” states — will still face health problems, food and housing shortages, increased infrastructure wear and tear, and economic disruption, including drastic job market changes. Are we facing up to the need to adapt as well as mitigate? Not yet.
For example, what will we do if a catastrophic heat dome lingers over our area in summer? Our seniors and health-compromised residents are at risk if July temperatures go 25 degrees warmer than normal (as we had as recently as June 1 ). Few of our public buildings have air conditioning. Where can we set up cooling shelters for high-risk individuals. We need the political will to do so before a crisis occurs.
Food supply is not secure in the face of climate change. Vermont produces only about one-tenth of the food its people consume; the rest is imported, primarily from the Midwest and California. But both regions are beset by droughts and floods, projected to get worse as aquifers run dry and snowpacks melt.
Then, our food is transported here in trucks, burning petroleum contributing to greenhouse gas emissions while vulnerable to rapid cost inflation. Where are the leaders looking at ways to assure a secure, affordable, locally grown food supply? The dairy industry is declining and the land used to grow GMO corn could be better used for food or grains.
We also face changes in our local economy and job market. Our current service economy includes too few jobs that provide for essential needs. A climate-disrupted national economy will suppress demand for many of the services that form the basis of cities like Montpelier’s economy. Financial advisers, lawyers, restaurants, boutique shops and bureaucrats are not strictly essential, while those needing to live more frugally will be unable to patronize them. The result: economic instability, empty storefronts, unemployment, and lost tax revenue.
Regionally, global warming is predicted to hurt the ski industry, maple sugaring, and other agricultural enterprises. We must devise new, local markets and mechanisms for creating jobs and generating wealth.
In this context, our small cities face unique challenges. As the hubs of larger rural regions, they are the locus of many jobs and essential services needed by surrounding towns, and are the seat of governments. Here in Montpelier, the cars converging here every day increase wear and tear on our roads, but their owners do not pay for road repair here.
Montpelier has become the preferred destination for lots of in-migrating climate refugees whose financial advantages allow them to purchase second or “investment” homes in our charming town — driving up property costs and forcing ever more residents into housing insecurity or onto the street.
Our city administration appears mired in paradigms of the past; our state Legislature, predominantly made up of representatives from small towns, has little interest in providing the regional support small cities need. And taking on tough problems has never proven a good practice for officials who wish to get re-elected.
This has to change. The banquet of consequences — and choices — has been laid out. We can no longer hope for a return to normal. It is time to accept our responsibility to make the hard choices ahead of us.
This means getting to work building a future that is more durable, based on the strengths of our local communities and resilient enough to adapt to the challenges coming our way. In Montpelier, we have created Resilient Montpelier as an organizing focus to help our little city begin to prepare and adapt to the banquet we face. Organizing our local communities will be the secret to future resilience.
