Archive - Oct 2006 - Editorial

Ferrisburgh’s on the right path; Midd should follow

Ferrisburgh town selectmen are thinking ahead. Earlier last month the board appointed a committee to study whether the town should buy a key parcel of land that abuts the town elementary school and the planned site of a new town office building and meeting center. The 34-acre parcel, town leaders believe, is so important to the future of the village that the opportunity to buy it — rather than allow a developer to build a handful of houses on it — should not be passed by.

Such a proposal is not inexpensive. The asking price for the farmland owned by the Hinsdale family of Charlotte has been $750,000, and the appraised price is around $650,000.

Benefits to the town include providing extra room for the school to expand; parking for school or town offices; safer access to the school; a new site for a larger post office; playing fields; a town green and other options. Importantly, town officials note, the area is the last large open parcel in the village with good septic soils.

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Policy issues aside, Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor Matt Dunne has a singular issue that strikes a bipartisan chord: He believes the lieutenant governor’s salary of $61,000 per year is significant enough to warrant a full-time effort from the elected candidate. He notes Lt. Gov. Dubie is gone almost two-thirds of the year working as an airline pilot.

He doesn’t begrudge Dubie his job as a pilot, and he freely admits that prior public servants in the lieutenant governor’s post also worked part-time at other jobs (Howard Dean was a doctor while being lieutenant governor and Doug Racine helped with his family’s South Burlington auto dealership, to name two). But he makes two valid points: the position’s salary has been raised significantly since Dubie became Lt. Gov., and, more importantly, he wants to serve the state full-time because he believes there is more than enough work to do to help Vermont and Vermonters grow and prosper in the new economy.

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In our election-year tradition of endorsing candidates, we offer our views not as much to encourage votes for these particular candidates as to provoke our readers to question the support of their own preferred candidates and to think through the reasons they support one candidate over another.
Our own views are shaped by the multiple interviews we have had with the candidates at the Addison Independent offices, extensive reading and study of their programs and accomplishments, and the routine observation of their ongoing work either at home or in Montpelier or Washington. Our goal is to help our readers be informed, and we encourage any healthy debate that fosters that outcome.
We begin with the race for the U.S. Senate.

Bernie Sanders for U.S. Senate

In an election year in which the vast majority of Americans are eager to elect a Congress that won’t continue to rubber-stamp President George W. Bush’s radical agenda, an in which the balance of power in the Senate may tip to the Democrats, incumbent Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is the clear pick for the seat being vacated by Sen. James Jeffords.

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