I attended the recent Addison County Senate candidate debate sponsored by the Addison Independent. Perhaps the most pressing issues facing our county and state are the inter-connected challenges of ensuring that our schools are strong and fully funded, while at the same time finding strategies to provide sufficient affordable housing and keeping a lid on property taxes. John McCright zeroed right in on these issues with his opening questions.

I was impressed by all four candidates and their obvious love of this county and state. But I was also dismayed at the lack of proposed solutions put forward by Steve Heffernan of Bristol. He struck me as a good man and a much beloved local citizen, but he could only parrot the national Republican messaging with his call for less government and less taxes. Nobody likes bureaucracy or taxes, but when asked for any specific ideas on how to keep our schools open and fully funded while lowering taxes, he said he was not a policy wonk.

Fair enough, but he is running to be a policy maker, so this left me very uneasy. Landel Cochran forcefully called for banning out-of-state private equity real estate investors that buy up properties and flip them for a profit — raising housing prices and limiting permanent housing stock for everyone while profiteering. In 2021, the number of houses purchased by these investors doubled and this trend is growing. But Cochran had no concrete ideas for addressing how to lower taxes without merging or closing schools.

On the other hand, Ruth Hardy and Chris Bray impressed me with their strong track records of public service, commitment to problem solving, and efforts to support our schools while restructuring our tax system to make it more sustainable for working people. If you want public servants working to actually solve our problems, vote for Hardy and Bray.

Betsy Taylor

New Haven