Tag Archives: Stowe Reporter

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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News You Should View: Local News FTW

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Apologies for another belated posting of this feature and the general lack of posting recently, but last week was kind of all over the place. Plumbing problems, likely mold issue, business trip out of town, blah blah, trying to catch up. Here we go!

When local coverage really matters. A couple weeks ago in this space, the lead item was a piece in The Stowe Reporter detailing the tremendous number of short-term rentals owned by non-locals. And now, reporter Aaron Calvin gets to follow up in what must have been a satisfying way: the town Planning Commission is considering limits on short-term rentals, and as Calvin writes, “the need for such a cap is generally agreed upon; the discussion centers around how best to go about implementing it.”

We can’t say for sure that the earlier story influenced the Planning Commission’s approach to short-term rentals, but the timing would suggest that it did. This is an excellent example of why good local coverage is so crucial.

The Commons continues to track the Trump damage. Last week, The Commons grabbed the lead spot in this space with a good piece about how Trump’s Big B**** Bill is likely to impact Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. For those just tuning in, the story quoted BMH’s chief exec as calling the bill “vicious” in its effect on rural hospitals. Well, reporter Joyce Martel followed up with an equally vital story about Grace Cottage Hospital, the state’s smallest hospital. Grace Cottage CEO Olivia Sweetnam was more measured than her Brattleboro counterpart, but she did say that dealing with the BBB “is going to be very difficult.”

As I wrote last week, every local outlet in the state should be covering their hospitals and other major health care facilities in the same way. (For example, I would suggest to my co-conspirators at The Hardwick Gazette that there’s a story in how the BBB will impact the Plainfield Health Center, a major provider of primary care health care for miles around.)

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News You Should View: A Double Pair

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Well hey, not one but TWO of our local newspapers landed a pair of entries each in this week’s news roundup. Some serious stuff, some not so serious, a healthy serving of meat and potatoes. Kind of a well-rounded buffet.

Turns out, short-term rental registries are good for something. The Legislature has tried and failed to enact a registry of short-term rentals, mostly due to opposition from, you will be shocked to hear, the short-term rental industry itself. But the town of Stowe enacted a registry of its own, perhaps because there are roughly 1,000 short-term rental properties in a town of 5,000. Seems like a lot.

Reporters Aaron Calvin and Patrick Bilow of The Stowe Reporter used the registry as a research tool. Their story reveals that the vast majority of Stowe’s short-term rental properties are owned by people who don’t live in town — and more than half are owned by out-of-staters. The story is sure to feed into an ongoing discussion of short-term rentals as part of a broader examination of housing issues in the resort community.

“Internal wrangling” continues to plague southern Vermont school board. The eye-rolling continues for Shawn Cunningham of The Chester Telegraph, whose duties include covering the Green Mountain Union School Board. It has been a great source of unintentional humor of late, or tragedy if you prefer your governmental bodies to serve the interests of the people. The Board is deeply divided on appointing a new trustee to fill a vacancy. If you read between the lines, it seems obvious that there’s a partisan divide on the putatively nonpartisan board. The apparent conservatives are throwing out all kinds of entertaining objections to a nominee who seems to be of the liberal persuasion. The result is a lot of wasted time, and a portion of the district that doesn’t enjoy its full measure of representation.

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The One Percenters aren’t discouraged by our tax system

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Every time someone suggests raising taxes on the wealthy, there’s an immediate outcry that we can’t risk driving them out of Vermont. The most frequent crier is Governor Shumlin himself, who insists that wealthy Vermonters are already fleeing the state in droves. He’s got no evidence, and studies have shown little to no out-migration by the rich after state tax increases.

Plus, there’s the well-documented fact that top earners get the best deal of anyone under Vermont’s current tax system. And now comes Lisa McCormack of the Stowe Reporter with a story crossposted on VTDigger:

LUXURY HOUSING MARKET IS BRISK IN STOWE

Yeah, turns out that while property taxes are hurting the middle class, the wealthy are undeterred from buying top-shelf second homes. The numbers:

2014 was “the strongest year in the luxury market since 2009.” Overall sales of residential units in Stowe were up by nine percent, the “average sales price was $598,870, up 10 percent compared to 2013.” And…

The median price — the point at which half of homes sold for more, and half for less — rose 30 percent to $485,000.

The market shows no sign of slowing down, according to area Realtors.

One broker describes “a really strong and stable market… [that] is showing potential for long-term growth.”

The majority of residential sales in Stowe are to second-home buyers, “looking for investment properties.” Especially at the upper end of the market. So not only are they undeterred from buying — they believe that Vermont vacation homes will continue to rise in value. Which wouldn’t be the case if the One Percent were abandoning Vermont.

Meanwhile, the rest of Lamoille County is lagging. Residential sales were up, but the median sale price actually decreased by three percent. The wealth gap widens.

This isn’t decisive proof that there’s more room to tax the rich. But it’s further evidence against the fearmongering of Shumlin and his fellow-travelers.