Letters to the Editor (4/10/24) 

What Burlington Needs

[Re "Burlington Council Advances South End, Memorial Auditorium Plans," March 11, online]: I do hope everyone realizes that the Memorial Auditorium block plan was voted on: Unanimously, city councilors have approved the budget item with the amendments that allow Memorial Auditorium to be torn down. That is something a majority of residents do not want.

We had a citywide survey a few years ago, and then the mayor vetoed the idea that we must keep Memorial Auditorium (as a memorial)!

I know everything is justified by "affordable housing," and I, too, believe in affordable housing, but every project mentioned would be 80 percent market rate and 20 percent affordable. All these things are pushed through with the word "affordable." Unfortunately, all other considerations are lost.

We do not need a 100-room hotel; we do not need hundreds of expensive, often poorly built market-rate apartments. Yes, there is a housing shortage, but what we need are subsidized apartments that cost less than $1,000 a month.

Housing for the homeless should be separate from housing for the disabled and elderly. If you read ["The Fight for Decker Towers," February 14], then you know.

Well-insulated walls between apartments are also what we need. The latest press releases tell us that hundreds of apartments are being built. How many will be affordable for workers who have little money? Very few. One hundred? Two hundred?

This may turn out to be a bad decision. Please prove me wrong.

Charlie Messing

Burlington

Consolidation Is Necessary

[Re "The Deepest Cut," March 27]: Small schools are an anachronism, a relic of the past that Vermont can no longer afford. If the parents of students in small schools were burdened by the full cost, they would close them immediately. Yet instead, the entire state is asked to support this luxury. Vermont's school-age population is declining, and more schools will be operating well below capacity and at a high cost per student. The subsequent increase in taxes will accelerate the demographic decline as businesses flee and young families find taxes eroding more and more of their income. It's time for a complete reassessment of school infrastructure. Consolidation isn't a "nice to have"; it's a necessity.

Robert Perry

Warren

Unequal Education

"The Deepest Cut" [March 27] details the continuing long-term fallout from the Vermont Supreme Court's well-intentioned but poorly implemented Brigham decision calling for "equal educational opportunities" across Vermont.

Act 127 has been a particularly egregious violation of the Brigham principle of equal education. Roughly 25 percent of Vermont school districts have average class sizes of 15 students or less. And yet, in order to support these smaller districts and their advantageous student-teacher ratios, Act 127 financially penalizes dozens of other school districts with much higher average class sizes — now approaching 23 children per class — including South Burlington,Colchester, Mount Mansfield Union and Lamoille South, among others. No wonder voters in many newly penalized districts recently rejected so many school budgets.

If the standard under Brigham calls for an equal education, how can anyone consider Act 127's support for unequal teacher-student ratios (and penalization of larger class-size districts) to be anything but a direct violation of Brigham? As Alison Novak examined, it's even hurting some small schools like Roxbury.

It's time to revisit Brigham altogether, end the opaque Montpelier-determined tax formula and return school financing to where it belongs — the local community. Let each community control more of its own destiny, including, if necessary, the hard choices around tax-base expansion and consolidation or closure of schools, instead of Montpelier forcing these actions via the current state-controlled education-financing regime.

Cory Cowles

Shelburne

Fight for Independents

"Gig Deal" [March 27] failed to mention that the new U.S. Department of Labor rule would misclassify independent contractors as W-2 employees, potentially ending tens of millions of freelancers' careers.

If the new rule takes effect, my copyediting business is done. The rule says that because my work is integral to the work of the publishers that hire me, I should be a W-2 employee. But my clients are unlikely to have the budget or need to hire freelancers as W-2 employees. I'd just lose them — and all that income, with nothing to replace it.

Freelancers agree the worker misclassification is wrong — in both directions. The U.S. Department of Labor regulation goes in only one direction: forcing true and happy independent contractors into W-2 work neither we nor our clients want.

Around 70 million people in the U.S. earn their living as freelancers. Think writers, editors, photographers, wedding vendors, small pet-sitting services, travel nurses and hundreds of other professionals. That's why freelancers everywhere are fighting this regulation. Three lawsuits against the regulation have been filed by those fighting for the right to remain independent contractors, not to be employees with bosses, without control over working conditions or work content.

What can you do to protect us? Urge your U.S. representatives to vote yea on H.J.Res.116 and your U.S. senators to vote yea on S.J.Res.63, resolutions that aim to protect the careers of independent contractors by stopping this harmful regulation.

Sheryl Rapée-Adams

Montpelier

Media Memories

[Re From the Publisher: "Listen Up," March 20]: When I was a kid, we used to come up to my Vermont grandparents' home twice a year. There were two daily papers in Burlington then. One of them might have been the Burlington Daily Times. The Burlington Free Press, a daily since 1848, was the other. The beginning of the end was probably when Warren "Mac" McClure sold the paper to Gannett just before it published USA Today. It made him more money than he could give away in his long life of philanthropy. The steamboat Ticonderoga restoration, the Lois McClure canalboat project, the McClure wing of the hospital and many more community projects bear his name. Is the loss of a daily paper offset by these good works? Maybe not when the daily paper is 16 pages, including about six pages of content from USA Today. This amazing hot mess cost $2.50 a day the last time I looked.

The death of print media is not limited to daily papers. In Milton, the Milton Independent reported on town events and issues thoughtfully and thoroughly. It even published some of my fire scene photos. We had an amazing editor and reporter who investigated and broke important stories. She wrote about them in a crisp, concise style that was a delight to read. After she left, the paper went virtual and essentially disappeared.

What happened to this wonderful writer? She was stolen by Seven Days. We miss you, Courtney Lamdin!

Gregory Burbo

Milton