Apologies for the unannounced two-week absence of this feature. I’ve been out of town a lot lately. Had time to crank out the occasional blog, but not to do a survey of News Content from our state. But, just when you thought it was safe… I’m baaaaaack.

Most of our honorees this week hail from the Vermont Community News Group, which includes several weeklies in Chittenden and Lamoille Counties. Its newspapers routinely punch above their own weight in creating solid content on a shoestring budget.

It can’t happen here. Oh wait, it just did. The good folk of Manchester just discovered that Donald Trump’s unconstitutional ICE crackdown is no respecter of affluence. As the Manchester Journal‘s Michael Albans and Cherise Forbes report, ICE swooped down on a notorious den of iniquity, oh wait, “a small housing development in Manchester” and arrested two unrepentant criminals, oh wait, “Jamaican mothers of school-age children who worked as Home Health aides, as their families looked on.”

Right, a small housing development in frickin’ Manchester, the front line of America’s war on brown people. You know, the thing about the ICE crackdown — well, one of many things about the ICE crackdown — is that they’re not targeting the real criminals or gang members. Those people are too hard to find. ICE is going after people with jobs and responsibilities, people who keep a schedule and have a routine, people who may not have their papers in order but who are assets to our society and our economy.

Just a little light blasting. The News & Citizen’s Patrick Bilow updates the long-running saga of a proposed industrial park near the Morrisville airport. The development would involve removal of “a large wooded knoll near the center of the property,” which would involve a lot of blasting and debris transport, which might involve the release of potentially harmful silica dust into the air. I don’t know enough to weigh in on the controversy, but I do know this: Area residents depend on their local newspaper to keep them in the loop on subjects like this. The people of Morrisville are lucky to have The News & Citizen on the job.

The good news: Your property value is up. The bad news: So are your taxes. Recent home sales in Hardwick have brought returns “double, with some even triple, the 2016 appraised values,” as The Hardwick Gazette’s Paul Fixx reports. That’s nice if you’re selling. If not? Your tax bill might cause a bit of sticker shock. The town’s tax rate is down, but its grand list has seen an even bigger increase. “Because of that,” Fixx reports, “Hardwick’s tax bills have increased by roughly 15% on average.” Ouch. Town officials have “heard from disgruntled taxpayers” and are trying to “explain the process and resolve their concerns.” Again, an important story for local residents that would go unreported if not for the presence of a quality hometown paper. (Disclosure: I’m on The Gazette’s board. but I promote this story because it deserves it. I don’t benefit financially in any way from my position.)

We built it, and boy, did they come. Work has begun on reinventing I-89’s Exit 14, the chronically congested and crash-prone interchange that connects the freeway with Burlington to the west and its ever-growing suburbs to the east. The exit is located in South Burlington, and that city’s weekly The Other Paper, has published an informative piece by Liberty Darr focusing on SoBu’s role in transforming Exit 14 into something not only friendlier to vehicles, but to pedestrians and bicyclists as well. It included one sentence that made me say “Ruh-roh” in my head:

While traffic on I-89 grew nearly 12% between 2000 and 2019, the group spearheading the studies are projecting and planning for a nearly 8% traffic growth rate between 2025 and 2044.

Mmmmm, sounds like a recipe for failure. It’s hard to see Chittenden County’s growth slowing down anytime soon. There’s also the well-established principle of “induced demand,” which says that improving roads and highways improves traffic flow in the short term, but actually increases congestion in the medium and long term because more people drive there. I-275 in the Detroit suburbs is a classic example: It was designed to more than meet traffic demand for decades, but what it actually did was trigger a construction boom along its entire length. Today it’s the most panic-inducing freeway in the region with four lanes in each direction, lots of exits, and average speeds substantially above posted limits.

Thus endeth the sermon. Now back to our regularly scheduled content.

The troubles of a resort townie. From Stowe Reporter correspondent Sabrina Staab, a nice, balanced, insightful story about what it’s like to grow up in, and be a native of, a community overwhelmed by tourism. This isn’t the usual flatlander-blaming; it’s a sensitive piece about how living in a resort town can force you, in the words of one Stowe native, to be “constantly adapting to change — new restaurants replacing old favorites, and larger, more modern buildings taking over the rustic, homey buildings we grew up with.” As Staab puts it, “Just because you live in a beautiful place doesn’t always mean it feels like it’s yours.”

Rabbit rescue! Our final CNG entry comes from Liberty Darr, this time writing for The (Charlotte) Citizen. She recounts the rescue of 14 rabbits by the Merrymac Farm sanctuary. We are rabbit owners of long standing, so stories like this make, you should pardon the expression, our ears perk up. This was a sad case of an elderly owner could no longer properly care for her menagerie, a situation that in our graying state “is getting increasingly more common,” Darr writes. Best wishes for successful lagomorphic outplacements.

Notes from the central Vermont food scene. Doubtless Seven Days’ foodies will jump on these stories in the near future, but you saw ’em first in your local outlets. Good news: The Montpelier Bridge‘s J. Gregory Gerdel reports that the excellent Red Hen Bakery has outgrown its Camp Meade home. Sometime next year, it will move to a new and larger location about a half mile west along Highway 2. Bad news: The owners of East Montpelier’s Fox Market overextended themselves when they opened Foxy’s in downtown Barre. As the Times Argus’ David Delcore reports, they’re closing Foxy’s for good and curtailing operations at Fox Market. Fingers crossed that they can turn things around. The expansion was a bridge too far, leaving the owners in a bad place: “Our personal savings are in shambles, our business debts are mounting, and [Foxy’s] has yet to pick up in any meaningful way,” said co-owner Liv Dunton. Best wishes for a worthy enterprise that’s become a welcoming haven for all in central Vermont.