Letters to the Editor (8/20/25)

‘Lucky to Have Seven Days‘

I was in Burlington recently to pick up one of my daughters and grabbed the Connections Issue of Seven Days [July 23].

A day later, I found myself sitting by my pool, reading it for over an hour and loving it!

I not only loved the idea of the issue, but it also felt so good to have a viable, interesting newspaper in my hands!

Paula Routly’s [From the Publisher: “Pen Pals“] on Ruthie Furman struck a nerve, and then it just went from there with the cool pay phone story [“Can You Hear Me Now?“], which I later saw was picked up by the Associated Press; the psychic connection piece [“Above and Beyond“]; “Van Life”; the farm sharing [“Cultivating Connection“]; etc.

Glens Falls, N.Y., where I have lived since 1990, is in a bit of a news desert right now, sadly. The Post-Star, which I worked for as a reporter and editor for 15 years and contributed to consistently since 1990 until the freelance budget dried up last year, is now chain-owned and clinging to life — barely. It makes me so sad.

And the local weekly, which could fill the void, isn’t really stepping up to do so, choosing to run controversial front-page letters to the editor over news content that people need.

So, reading your paper was refreshing and fun, and I wanted to send a shout-out. Keep up the good work! Vermonters are lucky to have Seven Days.

David Blow

Queensbury, N.Y.

Blow is a communications professor at Vermont State University-Castleton.

RIP, Ruth

I taught with Ruthie Furman at Champlain Valley Union High School. She definitely was one of a kind and a super person in every way. I think she would quietly love the fact that you wrote about her in the Connections Issue [From the Publisher: “Pen Pals,” July 23]. Fabulous!

I always looked for her letters to the editor and searched out her name in the annual list of Super Readers. I would jot her a note — snail mail only — saying that I found her again in your pages.

Thank you for writing such a beautiful piece about my friend and colleague.

Jane B. Holt

Hinesburg

Message to the Mayor

I was surprised to read about the relatively low annual salary that the city allots to urban park ranger Neil Preston [“Tent City,” August 13]. Given the extraordinary difficulties and the dangers that he faces daily, he should be making at least as much as Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, who does not personally encounter such issues.

With his hard work, helpful manner and plain old common sense, Neil does the best possible job that anyone could do given the impossible challenges that he faces — a claim that, with certainty, I cannot make about our current mayor.

Ned Preston (no relation to Neil)

Burlington

Accurate Data Needed

I’m glad Seven Days clarified that there are no facts supporting the outrageous claim that the mutual aid feeding program’s move from the sidewalk by Burlington’s Marketplace Garage led to a decrease in negative behavior at the garage [“Burlington Council Debates Crime ‘Data’ From Parking Garage,” August 5]. I’m disappointed the article framed the city council debate as “bickering” and an attempt to score political points. It was not.

Progressives set the record straight to counter the false narrative, previously published in Seven Days, that implied the food program’s relocation to City Hall Park would cause negative impacts there. No evidence supports that.

The new story makes it clear the claims were made up. Progressives set the record straight because, as I said at the meeting, “The implication that the feeding program will lead to even more problems in City Hall Park than we had before they moved to the College Street sidewalk is not based on accurate and fair data. But it gets reported in the media. People tune in to our meetings. Unwarranted fears are stoked. It reinforces the false belief that downtown is unsafe to come to. This is not what our downtown needs to attract people. Despite our problems, downtown is safe. The Festival of Fools is proof of that.”

Progressives are not bickering. We want solutions, and as I said in my unreported meeting comments, “We need accurate and fair data. Otherwise, we are apt to make policy and operational decisions that are harmful, wasteful and non-impactful. Let’s not make that mistake with the feeding program.”

Gene Bergman

Burlington

Bergman is a Progressive Burlington city councilor from Ward 2.

More Public Transport

[Re “Out of Service?” July 16]: I am a senior citizen who takes buses almost every day. It was a really unpleasant surprise when Green Mountain Transit announced it was cutting down and eliminating some bus routes starting mid-June 2025. The bus I usually take, City Loop No. 8, is now running only once an hour. The other buses I take are airport bus No. 11, Essex Junction No. 2 and Williston No. 1.

Riding those buses, I haven’t noticed fewer passengers. No. 1 is full or almost full when I am on board, and during the school season bus No. 8 is full with students.

The media advises us to take public transport instead of our own cars to reduce the pollution, but how can we do it if bus routes are reduced? Even when I had a car, I only used it for work and would take buses all the other times.

Having a good public transport is essential for everyone, and there shouldn’t be any cuts. On the contrary, there should be more buses driving more often and to many more destinations. For example, the South Burlington library is pretty far from the bus station. Introducing a shuttle bus would be of great help.

The elimination of buses and bus routes is not the only problem — there are many bus stations without a cover and often not even a bench to sit down. It’s very difficult in winter, when bus stations are piled up with snow. I once hurt my knee when coming out of the bus, landing on a rock that was covered in ice and snow.

We desperately need more buses to take us where we need to go, as well as covered bus stations. So much money is spent on fireworks, space travel, firearms, etc., I am sure there must be enough money to support the public transport.

Vesna Dye

Burlington

Nectar, the Man

[Re Soundbites: “Who Killed Nectar’s?” August 6; “No Encore: Nectar’s Closes for Good,” July 30; Soundbites: “Closing Time at Nectar’s?” June 11; “‘We’ve Been Hit Hard’: Nectar’s to Close for the Summer in June,” May 8]: I have truly appreciated the excellent coverage of what Nectar’s has meant to the music scene in Vermont, but before Nectar’s was on the radar in a big way, there was Nectar Rorris himself, behind the counter serving up hot turkey sandwiches, an anchor for Burlington.

Nectar likely helped more people than the welfare department — people who needed a job, a meal, a place to live, a loan. Nectar was there, solid, dependable and willing to lend a hand. All heart. I hope he is remembered for this, too, as well as the best place for lunch, where you could stay as long as you wanted in a comfy booth and smoke cigarettes until the law forbid it.

Nectar was Nectar’s.

Sally Ballin

South Burlington

Editor’s note: For more about Nectar’s, search the Seven Days archive for Dan Bolles’ November 25, 2015, cover story: “It’s All Gravy: Burlington’s Landmark Nightclub Turns 40.”

City-Run Nectar’s?

[Re Soundbites: “Who Killed Nectar’s?” August 6; “No Encore: Nectar’s Closes for Good,” July 30]: In response to the shutdown of Nectar’s, I’d like to suggest a solution: Why not have the city government take over and run Nectar’s? There’s nothing radical or unprecedented about the City of Burlington running a popular music venue, given that it owned and operated 242 Main for 30 years. And I would argue that a venue like Nectar’s, one that’s synonymous with the general idea of what Burlington is, contributes far more to the city’s bottom line than its own financial numbers would indicate.

Without venues like Nectar’s, Burlington loses its aura as a cool, desirable place to live. And if Nectar’s has seemed like a shadow of its former self in recent years, why not try to revitalize it under new (public) ownership? Especially since the final shutdown of Nectar’s was due to a dispute with a landlord. The city has already forced the sale of one Handy property (184 Church Street) for the greater good of the community. Surely, there’s a way to make all this happen with enough political will.

I, for one, am sick and tired of passively accepting the loss of important places and services due to “the market,” which is every bit as much a human-created institution as laws and governments. The Burlington renaissance began with then-mayor Bernie Sanders (whose administration founded 242 Main) refusing to accept the market dictating that we couldn’t have nice things. If we want Burlington’s glory days to return, we need to rediscover that energy.

David Wilcox

Winooski

Another Word on Suter

Thank you, Seven Days, for [Life Stories: “‘Nathan’s Superpower Was Connecting People’: Nathan Suter, February 14, 1973-May 13, 2025,” July 23]. Nathan was the driving force behind creating the very first Vermont State Middle School Track & Field Championship in 2024! His gift was the “superpower” ability to collaborate with anyone and anybody to create opportunities for everyone involved with Vermont track and field.

He knew how to subtly command a room and compel people to do things that they previously weren’t inclined to do — especially stuck-in-their-ways Vermont middle school coaches!

That he secured the University of Vermont as the venue for a first-ever Middle School Track & Field Championship and orchestrated a community of coaches, parents, athletic directors and athletes is exactly why the 2025 (and beyond!) state track meet championship was named after him — such a great tribute and honor!

Very fitting that Montpelier won the championship this year!

Gary Russell

Bristol

Editor’s note: Russell is a social studies teacher and track-and-field coach at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School and the football coach at South Burlington High School.

RECs Are Dirty

The July 2 issue of Seven Days had an article by Kevin McCallum about an error the Burlington Electric Department made that cost the owners of the McNeil Generating Station nearly $1 million in the missed sale of renewable energy credits [“Up in Smoke“]. More serious problems are facing Burlington Electric and McNeil than this financial loss, however.

The sale of RECs is based on the premise that burning wood is carbon neutral, and McNeil’s use of wood is one of the reasons the City of Burlington prides itself on becoming a net-zero city by 2030. Both contentions, however, are the result of a carefully crafted deception by the biomass (wood-burning) industry.

Burning wood puts lots of carbon dioxide into the air — more than coal, in fact — and all that CO2 contributes to global warming. The pollution, however, is not assigned to McNeil but, instead, to the landowners whose wood was harvested, transported to McNeil and then burned. McNeil and the City of Burlington are made to seem clean, even though without the McNeil operation no wood would be harvested or burned.

The RECs are dirty, worse than coal, and Burlington will never be a net-zero city as long as McNeil keeps burning wood. Hiding that pollution in a clever bookkeeping scheme will not change those facts. The real problem facing Burlington Electric management is not that some RECs could not be sold; the real problem is that they can be sold at all.

Leendert Huisman

South Burlington

McNeil Malarky

[Re “Up in Smoke: A Mistake at the McNeil Wood-Burning Plant Cost the Burlington Electric Department Nearly $1 Million,” July 2]: Kevin McCallum’s continued investigation into the McNeil Generating Station leads to the obvious conclusion: McNeil should be closed for economic and ecological reasons! Why?

1. McNeil consistently loses a lot of money. McCallum reported last year that “McNeil has operated in the red in all but two of the past nine years, racking up a total of $29.2 million in losses” [“Burning Cash: Opponents of Burlington’s Biomass Power Plant Zero In on Steep Financial Losses,” August 14].

2. McNeil is the largest single source of carbon emissions in Vermont (approximately 453,000 tons/year).

3. McNeil is the state’s largest source of industrial air pollution (per the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), emitting a toxic cocktail of chemicals in addition to CO2, including ammonia, arsenic, benzene, chlorobenzene, formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid. Yikes!

4. McNeil is set to lose even more money. It is very probable that McNeil will lose future renewable energy credits ($3 million to $4 million).

Burlington’s Net Zero Energy Roadmap omits McNeil from its equation (rationale: It’s renewable energy! We don’t have to count all the pollution!) But burning wood emits more greenhouse gases per kilowatt hour of energy than the dirtiest fossil fuels. It’s malarky to state that biomass is renewable “because trees regrow.” Forests are efficient carbon sinks, and it takes decades or perhaps even centuries to regain that strength if they are cut down.

I hope I am not the only one who is reading the writing on the wall: McNeil is a pollution nightmare and a money pit. Burlington can do better!

Leslie Swackhamer

South Burlington