I enthusiastically support both Chris Bray and Ruth Hardy to be our state senators from Addison County. Both of them are honest, and both of them are smart. Chris realizes that we won’t clean up Lake Champlain without expending some effort and some money. His proposal for a per parcel annual fee to support lake cleanup would spread the cost among all Vermont landowners, not pointing fingers at any one group, even though we know that manure runoff from dairy farms is a major source of the phosphates feeding vegetation growth in the water. For her part, Ruth Hardy is one of the few people I know who understands, and more importantly, can explain Vermont’s complicated system of school funding. She has guided the Addison Central Supervisory Union through its consolidation process and presented school budgets to local town meetings with remarkable clarity.
I have followed the two ”independent” candidates with interest. To the extent that they have taken actual positions on the issues (not much), they seem to be essentially “Republican lite.” But most of the time, they express themselves in generalities, which sound warm and appealing but don’t actually reveal how they would address the specific and often complex decisions that our legislators must face. I don’t see that elected them would do anything to alleviate gridlock in Montpelier. Far better, in my view, to increase the Democratic majority in both houses so that some of Governor Scott’s vetoes can be overridden.
The Rev. David Andrews
Washington Street Ext.
Middlebury