Tag Archives: Fox Market

The Return of News You Should View: Mostly Community News Group Edition

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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.

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Phil’s Friends: “Jesus Believed In the Flood Model”

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Poor ol’ Phil Scott. After getting repeatedly overridden by the Legislature’s Democratic/Progressive supermajorities, he’s desperate to get more Republicans into the House and Senate.

Not desperate enough to try to build a political movement or exercise influence over the Vermont Republican Party, mind you. But desperate enough to endorse some, shall we say, decidedly fringey characters posing as “common sense” fiscal conservatives.

Take Michael Boutin of Barre, last seen in this space when, as a member of City Council, he cast the sole “No” vote on the sale of Main Street’s Wheelock Building to the owners of East Montpelier’s very successful and LGBTQ+-friendly Fox Market. Boutin had earlier led an unsuccessful petition drive aimed at blocking the sale. Which is truly strange, because Barre’s Main Street can use all the vibrant businesses it can get.

Back in 2021, Boutin maneuvered to block the proposed display of a Black Lives Matter flag in the city’s downtown by offering a charter amendment limiting acceptable flags to four: the Stars and Stripes, the state flag, the city’s flag, and the POW/MIA banner. Boutin shows definite signs of far-right intolerance, I think it’s fair to say.

Boutin is not an altogether bad guy; his Facebook page is full of civic boosterism and pet photos and the occasional foray into Trekdom. But there’s one big strange exception: a video excerpt from a Christian talk show featuring, as the clip’s title puts it, “Christian Professor Disproves the Theory of Evolution.”

Hoo boy. Rabbit hole alert.

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Well, That Was a Lot Harder than It Needed to Be

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Barre’s got problems.

At last week’s gubernatorial press conference, flood recovery czar Doug Farnham threw out a shocking statistic: Barre suffered two and a half times as much damage in the July flood than any other community in Vermont. That’s on top of its perpetually troubled Main Street and its usual struggles with drugs and crime.

Even so, a handful of conservative troublemakers forced the city council to spend way too much time deciding the fate of the Wheelock Building, pictured above. The matter was finally settled this week, as council approved the building’s sale to the operators of East Montpelier’s Fox Market, which plans to open a second location in the building.

The Fox, for those unfamiliar, is a remarkable success story. Co-owners Doni Cain and Liv Dunton took a severely rundown building near the corner of US-2 and Route 14, where no one had managed to sustain a business for years, and turned it into a specialty food store and gathering place for the LGBTQ+ community and its allies.

And there’s the rub, I suspect. That handful of conservatives tried to hide their prejudice behind ludicrous procedural objections, but c’mon. It was obvious that they would rather have let the building go empty than risk seeing a rainbow flag on Main Street.

When, in fact, they ought to be throwing a damn parade for any entrepreneur willing to invest in Barre’s downtown.

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