ANGELO LYNN

As 2024 draws to a close and 2025 opens a fresh chapter, the sense of renewal and rejuvenation, of starting with a fresh slate, has a strong cultural pull. In Vermont, and more specifically, in Addison County, that yearning to improve the common good is likely to be focused on familiar themes: creating more affordable housing, providing adequate daycare, building an educational system that ensures good outcomes at reasonable costs, and helping figure out a health care system that doesn’t bankrupt the state.

As we embark on those broad goals, as well as more personal ones, let’s first take stock of our successes — of which there have been several.

• On housing, Addison County has made significant progress. In Middlebury, workers recently broke ground on the 218-unit Stonecrop Meadows residential neighborhood off Seminary Street Extension, which will be phased in over the next few years. Vergennes moved ahead with a $100,000 loan to developer Peter Kahn to build a 14-unit apartment building adjacent to a 10-unit building that opened this past June. Kahn is also working on a 74-unit workforce housing complex on land behind the city’s police station. And building regulations in Bristol and Vergennes are being adjusted to allow builders more flexibility and less red tape. At the state level, Act 250 reforms were enacted, and have helped, but more needs to be done in the upcoming session.
• Nor has the construction of other major infrastructure been dormant. In Middlebury, a 7,000-square-foot expansion of the Town Hall Theater will be completed this spring. The $7.5 million project will add new rehearsal and set designing space, as well as new spaces for arts-education. An outside plaza that will connect the original building to the new expansion is set to host free performances. (See our recap on Infrastructure projects, the second of our Top 10 stories of the year in today’s issue.)

This past May, Middlebury residents, by a vote of 956-200, also backed a $17 million bond to expand and remodel the Ilsley Library. Work on the new library starts in earnest this spring and will continue through the summer of 2026.

Middlebury College will see the opening of a new residential dormitory this coming summer and has plans to replace the existing Battell Hall dormitory with a significant new art museum.

In Vergennes, a $25 million senior housing project will be completed within a few months and will house up to 82 seniors. It fronts the city’s green and will merge 40,000 square feet of new construction with a 10,000-square-foot restored facility at 34 North Street, which was formerly known as Vergennes Residential Care. The new facility offers the prospect of older area residents moving out of existing larger homes, which will add to desperately needed housing stock.

• Much progress has also been made on providing day care facilities with the Otter Creek Child Center breaking ground this fall on a 13,000-square-foot expansion at 150 Weybridge Street. The new center, funded in part by Middlebury College but with several other collaborators — OCCC, Let’s Grow Kids, the Early Care and Learning Partnership, Building Bright Futures, Champlain Valley Head Start and others on the Community Childcare Expansion Team — will provide for 77 new childcare spaces for a total of 139 daily spots at the facility. The $10 million project will create 28 new jobs and look to open in the fall of 2025. Other smaller facilities have also come online since the passage of Act 76 in 2023, a law funded by a new payroll tax that invests $125 million in sustainable public funds into the state’s childcare system.

All of these accomplishments are testament to what can be done when community members and local institutions, along with appropriate state action, work together to make our communities stronger.

Such successes also make solutions to the problems ahead seem more plausible. Two of the more concerning issues are creating an affordable health care system and a more sustainable education system.

Progress on both fronts has been slow.

A legislative-commissioned report on how to address the state’s failing health care system (Vermonters pay the most on health care of any state in the nation) drew rebukes from the University of Vermont Health Network and smaller hospitals that were targeted for significant cost-cutting. And the Green Mountain Care Board has been under attack by the hospitals for not rubber-stamping their skyrocketing budgets.

Two stats partially explain the problem: The average monthly premium for a typical health care plan, post-subsidies, is $243 in Vermont, the sixth highest in the nation, including the District of Columbia which is highest at $773. New York is second highest at $410, while Connecticut is seventh at $233. The national average is $111. Making things worse, Vermont’s two major health care insurers, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Vermont MVP, will be increasing their health care premiums between 11%-22%, more than double the national average in 2025, which is 7%.

Part of Vermont’s problem is the state’s aging demographic which experiences higher medical costs than a younger population. Other contributing factors to the state’s high health care costs include a workforce shortage that has led to the hiring of higher-cost traveling medical workers, a shortage of long-term care facilities and nursing homes, and the use of expensive specialty drugs like the diabetes and weight-loss drug Ozempic.

What are the solutions? Diagnose the problem, which the recent report did; agree on a prescription; then have the political will to take the medicine. Vermont is on the first step. The Legislature and the governor have to agree on a prescription, then present it in a way the public will accept.

On the education front, double-digit increases in school taxes saw the defeat of many school budgets across the state in 2024. Problems are exasperated by high health care costs and a declining number of students in many rural districts. The latter could be partially addressed by creating more workplace housing. In Addison County, there are a total of 511 affordable housing units with a waitlist approaching 200-plus households. Addison Housing Works reports they have approximately 40 apartments that become available in a given year with, on average, about 350-400 applications for housing annually. More housing is needed for middle-income families.

That follows reports that the county has hundreds of jobs that go unfilled each year because of a lack of housing.

If we could build the housing, jobs would be filled, employers would generate more economic activity, schools would have fuller classrooms (hence drawing more state aid per teacher), and the state would have more tax dollars to operate government and a healthier overall demographic to support the state’s health care system. According to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency’s needs assessment filed this past August, the state needs to build between 24,000-36,000 new housing units to meet demand over the next five years.

It’s not Vermont’s only problem, but if we could figure out a way to fast-forward a good number of those homes, we’d be on our way to solving some of the state’s other major issues as well. Then we could turn our attention to personal resolutions, like going to the gym more frequently or donating time to a favorite nonprofit. Of course, don’t hesitate to flip the order. Working on the personal is important too.

Angelo Lynn