A Voice for Wagner

I am writing to ask why the Wagner in Vermont festival in the lovely town of Brattleboro was not on your Magnificent 7 list [August 20]. I attended Die Walküre and Siegfried on Wednesday and Friday, respectively. This struggling festival presents first-class performances every year in the month of August and deserves more support from the performing arts communities in Vermont.

One Way to Lower Health Care Costs

Hannah Bassett’s “Legislation, STAT!” [Ways and Means, September 3] is an excellent recap of the work by our representatives to try to bring down health care costs. The example of forcing down prices charged by hospitals for outpatient drugs was enlightening. It is noteworthy to this physician that the article focused on Vermont hospitals, with little mention of independent physicians. Why? Over the past 40 years, health policy has emphasized consolidation of care around hospitals, and thus clinicians have very few possibilities to provide care except as an employee of a hospital or health system.

Vermont has the fewest ambulatory surgery centers of any state in the nation: New Hampshire has 29; Vermont has two. ASCs are much less expensive places to perform surgery with high quality and infection rates of almost zero. If the legislature wants one policy to substantially lower health care costs, may I suggest a payment policy of site neutrality. This would require that an insurer pay the same price for a procedure regardless of whether the procedure were done in a hospital or an ASC.

Vermont physicians want to provide care to our communities in the safest, least expensive ways possible. We need our hospitals to provide care for sick and complicated patients, but not for most routine care. There are better ways to provide the highest-quality care at a lower cost than a hospital-centric system. Moving to a payment system of site neutrality and opening the doors to ASCs would go a long way toward bringing down costs.

Teach Independent Thinking

[Re “Early Dismissal: A National Food Service Company Started a Food Fight When It Fired a Popular Williamstown School Chef,” September 3]: The Williamstown school situation is unfortunate, and to me it’s not about some large, out-of-state corporation coming in and mucking things up. Rather, it feels like we’re living in a nanny state. A random Vermont Agency of Education rubric decides what company provides food service to a school supervisory union, and a school loses a devoted friend of the students and staff who saw to it that they were well fed for 12 years. Why doesn’t that decision lie with the good folks of the community whose kids and neighbors attend that school? Is Joshua Dobrovich the only school board member not under the bludgeon of state education bureaucracy?

Our kids are taught to a rubric, measured by a rubric, governed by a rubric. Teachers are bound by a rubric, scored against a rubric, reprimanded or rewarded according to a rubric. “Treat everyone the same so no one gets left behind” was the mantra, and here we are with one of the highest per-student costs and lowest student performance results in the nation. Seems everyone is left behind — independent thought is squashed from preschool all the way to the school board. More’s the pity.

‘Real People Writing Real Stories’

[Re “Feeling the Love: Why Super Readers Choose to Pay for Seven Days,” September 3]: Somehow I missed the invitation to share why I am a Super Reader, so I thought I’d do that here.

In 1997 I dropped out of college in Indiana and moved to Vermont to marry someone I met on the internet. While that marriage didn’t work out, my love for Vermont did, and I’ve lived here ever since.

At first, I was a Burlington Free Press reader (Sunday edition). I was aware of Seven Days and thought it looked cool but didn’t feel the need for more than one paper. Seven Days stayed on the list of things I wanted to get to “someday.”

In the early 2010s, I picked up Seven Days spontaneously one day while walking out of Healthy Living. I went home and read it cover to cover and was instantly hooked.

During COVID-19, when real journalism truly seemed to become an endangered species, I became a Super Reader. I started out at $10 per month, or $2.50 a week, feeling that is what I would pay if I had to put it on the belt with my groceries each week. I have increased that over time and am now at $50 per month — about what I pay for my various streaming services. This feels more than worth it to support real people writing real stories in my community.

Thank you, Seven Days, for continuing to provide real journalism in this age of aggregated content and clickbait garbage. May we never take you for granted.

Missing Freelancer

Congratulations all around [30th Birthday Issue, September 3], but you overlooked one group that has contributed to your publication’s success for the past 30 years: the contributing writers. These non-staffers from various walks of life add a dash of seasoning to your weekly fare.

I was fortunate to have been a fairly regular contributor two decades ago, back in those glorious pre-smartphone/pre-social media days, and being published in Seven Days was a real achievement for a writer.

The editing process (at least three sets of eyes scoured each submission) was a humbling experience. Holy shit! But the finished pieces sparkled.

EV Exploration

I enjoyed the impressions Paula Routly gave on planning a road trip and experiencing the locations where electric vehicle chargers are found [From the Publisher: “Recharged,” August 27]. I, too, have been lost in shopping malls while waiting for my car to charge when heading to Boston.

But my trips to upstate New York often sent me to cities that are not known as exciting or interesting to visit, such as Syracuse, Schenectady and Albany. I found great new little shopping areas and even got to know the folks working at small businesses and restaurants on these trips. New York State clearly invested in EV chargers to help small businesses and allow these towns to grow and attract visitors.

Let’s do the same thing in Vermont! Investing federal funds in EV chargers could surely help our small towns and villages to attract more visitors and build out their economies in a low-carbon way.

It is a relief to know that on September 4, Gov. Phil Scott announced that the remaining $15.8 million promised to Vermont for EV chargers will be released by the Federal Highway Administration [“Vermont Receives Disputed EV Funds,” September 4]. Let’s let our legislators know we want to avoid sprawl by investing these funds in Vermont village and town centers that seek to attract the new EV economy and can use the business!

Vermonter’s View of Montréal

Written from an anglophone perspective, “Montréal Used to Be Canada’s ‘Sin City.’ What Happened?” [August 13] overlooks that there is no equivalent to puritanism in francophone upbringings. Shutting down the red-light district was about municipal corruption, not private morality. (Google Pacifique Plante and Jean Drapeau).

Just six years later, premier Jean Lesage’s newly elected provincial government began Québec’s Quiet Revolution.

Five years hence, the preliminary report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism revolutionized Canada.

Two years afterward, the 1967 World’s Fair presented Montréal as North America’s francophone cultural and economic metropolis, where bilingualism accommodates unilingual francophones instead of unilingual anglophones.

This is what happened to Montréal during 13 eventful years six decades ago.

Governor Needs a Plan

Thank you, Derek Brouwer, for your article “Tent City” [August 13]. It was compassionate toward unhoused people who have no other available shelter than a tent. It highlighted the dilemma Neil Preston faces daily: the increased number of homeless people thanks to Gov. Phil Scott’s motel evictions, coupled with the lack of affordable housing.

Although the governor is quick to write off this dilemma as Burlington’s “failed progressive policies,” it is the governor’s nonexistent policy and planning that have resulted in homeless people ending up in Burlington’s public parks.

He promised to provide five shelters statewide last winter. Two were provided for a limited number of families. They were apparently well run but nowhere near enough, even before the evictions. There were no shelters specifically for individuals.

Governor, I appreciated your leadership during COVID-19, but you knew the federal American Rescue Plan Act funds would dry up. Why did you not direct your staff to prepare for the closing of the motels that housed, among others, medically vulnerable people and pregnant women with small children? And now you blame Burlington?!

It is your total lack of forethought and, dare I say, care for the most fragile among us that has created this humanitarian crisis. What do you plan to do as winter comes? The faith communities, nonprofits and City of Burlington are stretched beyond being able to alleviate this human predicament.

You are Vermont’s leader. What do you plan to do?

‘Vermont Can Do Better’

Your August 27 article “Is Homelessness a Local Matter?” tellingly outlines Vermont’s massive homeless problem. It also makes it clear that as long as Gov. Phil Scott fails to do his job, homelessness will remain a local, largely unsolved matter.

Only state leadership can address our homelessness crisis. It’s past time Gov. Scott got off his self-satisfied high horse, stopped pointing the finger at our overwhelmed cities and towns, and worked to create realistic solutions.

The state’s motel program has proved a partial Band-Aid. The legislature this year passed funding for nonprofits to run the program. Gov. Scott vetoed it.

The result? Hundreds were expelled from motels until at least the snows of winter. Scott’s “solution” has been to blame local jurisdictions and to push an ill-defined, nonexistent program for more shelters.

In the meantime, people like my friend Brenda (a pseudonym) are sleeping in the woods or in corners of our towns. Brenda, who is clean and sober, walks with crutches after one hip surgery and awaits another. She has no money or transportation and lives in a tent miles out of town. For food to survive, she relies on those of us who have encountered her along the way.

Until Gov. Scott steps up to provide some leadership, Brenda and hundreds of other Vermonters will camp outside with no end in sight. The fortunate rest of us will be left to live with the encampments and do what little we can individually to help the homeless.

Vermont can do better.

Not Coming to Burlington

[Re “Tent City,” August 13]: My granddaughter and family recently visited Burlington with great excitement, as the education program at Champlain College seemed to be exactly what she wanted! They were very impressed with the college and tour but wouldn’t consider it due to the evidence of drug use and mental illness exhibited by the many homeless in the area. They called us on a beautiful August Saturday night from Church Street, wondering where everyone was! The once-bustling street was eerily empty!

They soon figured it out when they stopped for dinner and were denied use of the bathroom due to the homeless issue! Dinner was followed by a previously planned evening activity at an escape room, where they found the door locked. They followed instructions on the door to phone upon arrival to gain entry. Everything they did felt generally uncomfortable! They were appalled by the abandoned buildings and homeless encampments in parks and along the bike path, coupled with open drug use and frequent exhibitions of serious mental issues, with one person getting in my daughter’s face and begging.

I checked the police blotter and was shocked at the daily activity in your once-beautiful city. Sadly, Champlain is off the college list, along with future pleasure visits, due to the terrible decay of your city that has occurred since our last vacation there five years ago!

Call the Guard?

If Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak says she needs help from Gov. Phil Scott to address the drug and crime problem, maybe she should request Scott to call out the Vermont National Guard [“Tent City,” August 13]. Or she could do the same from President Donald Trump. Only thing she wants is more money to most likely study it to death.

This article appears in Sep 17-23 2025.

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