It’s absolutely hideous and looks like a fish tank.

The comically low salary is a HUGE barrier to entry for average Vermonters to hold office in the state legislature. It pretty much guarantees that only the Rich and well off run for office.

Maybe if people stopped voting for Phil Scott we’d have safe injection sites in VT.

Hell no.

Phil Scott absolutely hates the idea of supervised injection sites. Vermonters get what they vote for.

Last time I checked they had about $50,000,000 lying around from the pandemic money to help people with this sort of thing.

It’s a dilapidated old mill town full of alcoholics, meth, and teen pregnancies. There’s also a persistent stink from the local sewage plant. The only thing it has going for is high school football but that’s really not saying much.

The nuevo landed gentry. Someone once said that it’s Ambien for Neo-Liberals.

Home Ownership: You’re not going to find very many houses for sale in VT for less than $350,000 unless they need at least $50,000 of work.

Renting: Renting just isn’t a realistic option in VT unless your household makes at least $100,000 a year. Even then you’d just be getting ripped off by greedy landlords. Sane prices for a apartments in Vermont would run between $700 - $1500 a month.

Crime Rates: These are currently out of whack due to concurrent issues from the Pandemic. That being said, VT is still one of the safest States in the country. The only place here that you should avoid is Bennington County, and that’s because it’s effectively a Sundown County.

Where to live: If you can somehow buy a house here, then I recommend Addison County or Windham County. The Brattleboro area in particular has a number of quaint and quiet small towns surrounding it.

The rest of the Republican Party in VT is just as batshit crazy as everywhere else. The chair of the VT Republican Party for example is a far right extremist in the same vein as Jewish Space Laser Lady or Floriderp Sex Trafficking Congressman.

VTDigger really has it out for Balint and others for no particular reason. I suspect there’s a biased Editor there or something.

We can definitely house folks without compromising VT’s forests so long as we densify and use land that has already been developed upon.

There’s certainly plenty of useless strip malls and parking lots around the state that could be demolished and replaced with multi purpose buildings that include affordable rent controlled apartments (~$500 - $700) in the upper floors. Just add a residency requirement to qualify for them.

Not a Teacher, but my mother is a teacher. It feels like at least half the issues Schools are facing are due to a concerted effort by Conservatives to destroy Public Education. Whether those efforts are through inaction/underfunding or the latest manufactured Culture War “crisis”.

Regular teaching positions should start at $75k a year.

Saplings and the branches of young trees definitely explode.

Some folks live in denial. Both Springfield and Bennington are racist AF, though Bennington is much worse since it’s pretty much a sundown town. Springfield possibly has the most violent crime in the state and has a large number of active Far Right extremists.

No rent control, surge of airbnbs/short term rentals, corporate ownership of housing stemming from all those stolen PPP loans…

Here I was thinking Vermonters should reach out to Habitat for Humanity.

Good luck getting any of that with Phil Scott as Governor.

The privatization of education is an existential threat to the United States as a whole.

Not to mention that snow starts to sound like Styrofoam when you step on it.

It happens. Certain kinds of trees are more susceptible to it. Sounds like anything from a gunshot, a loud cracking noise, to popping the cork off a wine bottle. It’s just rare-er in VT.

Avoid Bennington and Springfield like the plague.

Sounds to me like you should check out houses in Putney, Dummerston or Brattleboro,