Qualification: During my 17-year tenure as owner/operator of a Vergennes eatery, I engaged with countless area organizations. I spent many years in collaboration with the John W. Graham Shelter helping their residents reengage with the workforce. I also proudly supported countless local nonprofits, civic organizations, and youth groups through donations, time investments and promoting their programs through our business. In addition, I spent several years as a board member of CSAC and The Boys and Girls Club. Prior to being elected, I worked for several years with statewide and national small business groups on a broad range of policy development in Montpelier.

Education funding: I have believed for a longtime that Vermont needs to re-address how our property taxes, school funding inputs, and supervisory union structure interact. I am currently working on a bill that will start this conversation. My mindset approaching this bill is, in part, to treat it like the restructuring of a business. In my opinion, we currently have too many storefronts, too much middle management, not enough customers, and the product being delivered isn’t what it used to be. We need to establish statewide class size standards, decide what educational buildings are worth reinvesting in and which are cost prohibitive, and how we can utilize more centrally-located facilities for specialized education programs such as healthcare, trades, agriculture, hospitality, and other high demand professions.

There needs to be more clarity as to how public dollars may or may not be guided to private entities. I see retaining some of these existing relationships around the state as key, but we must make sure that if these institutions and any others that may emerge and receive public dollars, that they are operating in an inclusive and nondiscriminatory manner. Lastly, we currently see many student support costs like mental health, school meal programs, etc. fall on the line items of our local school budgets, and I feel these should be funded through the budgets of other state agencies. This would transfer significant pressure away from property taxes. Yes, I realize this still needs to be funded if moved to other buckets, but consolidating these programs and spending will ideally result in savings.

There is currently an immense amount of money circulating in our educational system. For the first time, our Ed Fund dollar amount has surpassed the sum of the General Fund. This was shocking to me. I don’t believe the statewide educational system needs more money; I believe what is there must be used more effectively.

Housing: Having spent my first 2 terms on the Housing Committee, I would like to first point to a few policies that I worked hard to implement. The Vermont Rental Housing Improvement Program provides significant grant money to rehabilitate out-of-code units or add new units to an existing property, which has resulted in thousands of rentals going online in just a few years. The Homes for All program (AKA, Missing Middle) provides subsidies to builders to keep the purchase price of a new home affordable for Vermont residents buying their first home and roughly 140 units have seen this investment thus far. We have also seen the removal of Act 250 permitting redundancies in areas that have municipal water/sewer and administrative capacity to responsibly oversee the development. Streamlining this process is a big win for housing in areas like Vergennes.

Moving forward, I want to focus efforts on enhancing infrastructure in rural areas that lack such so we can see more units go up faster. I believe communities that do not have the necessary hook ups to qualify for these exemptions should also receive state and federal aid to assist in these major infrastructure investments.

Lastly, I want to incentivize property owners/landlords to engage in traditional long-term tenant leases and veer them away from the short-term rental market as this has been a major stress on our statewide inventory.

Climate crisis: I believe the overall mission behind the Clean Heat Standard is valid. As one of the legislators who favored the commission of the study that will be delivered to the legislature in the coming months, I was firm in my belief that we didn’t have enough information to implement such a large program. I have a great deal of concern over the preliminary numbers. That being said, the volatility of the global market and the cost of heating fuel spiking in recent years has me extremely concerned. I would ONLY consider supporting it if it is cents, not dollars, and if it significantly helps fixed-income seniors and middle-class folks upgrade old/inefficient heating systems. This policy must also address reining in price spikes as is done with other utilities.

I also want to see an expansion of natural gas to rural customers as part of the bridge to a larger clean energy future. Vermont is a state of 640K+/- people, so I understand that even if we reduced our carbon output to zero, it would have no real measurable impact on global atmospheric load. But, investing in EV infrastructure, more efficient home heating, and better weatherization is logical given the direction that both the housing and automotive markets are heading.

Other priorities: Providing resources to our criminal justice system and law enforcement is key to safe and stable communities. Our state court system is significantly backed up and needs additional support. My committee passed legislation last session that provides dollars and technical assistance to help expedite the backlog of cases. Listening to our state’s attorneys, judges, law enforcement officers, and courthouse employees to better understand what they need to do their jobs correctly will be a significant part of next session’s work if elected. The number of job openings in both the state police and municipal law enforcement offices is very concerning. My committee plans on working with those entities on recruitment strategies and focusing on providing the State Police Academy with the tools to deliver the best training possible.

In addition, continuing work on how government responds to natural disasters/extreme weather events is essential and has been a primary focus for me over the past two sessions. As weather events continue to be more frequent and destructive, government needs to adapt to this new reality. So far, we established revolving loans for municipalities, stabilized funding for swift water rescue, and coordinated better communication within the emergency response network. Last year, I led a team of my committee members who worked closely with both the Senate and the Administration. I am already meeting with administration officials to frame out our next steps as these will be issues to contend with for the foreseeable future. Building off last year’s work is one of my top committee priorities.