BRATTLEBORO-If our town is going to resolve the deep problems that have dominated our attention for years, we will need leaders who understand the complexities we face, know the concrete realities of town governance, and have the ability to listen and find consensus among our deeply divided citizens.
Oscar Heller has those qualities.
Oscar has years of Representative Town Meeting membership and he has served for the last six years on its Finance Committee. He is currently the chair. This service has given him a deep understanding of the fiscal and operational systems of town government.
He is an easygoing, nonjudgmental person who is good with people, hardworking, and detail-oriented. This experience and these personal qualities make him by far the most qualified candidate to fix our budget process and get the budget on track again.
BRATTLEBORO-Lawmakers are responsible for making the rules to protect us all and provide the best conditions for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." David Gartenstein's experience as a prosecutor of people whose experiences in society have led them to abuse those rules has grounded him in the importance...
Voters in the four WSESD towns have some terrific choices for school directors this year. (Ballots are available now until Election Day from Town Clerks.) I hope Tim Maciel and Kelly Young will be elected to continue their work serving our children. They have done well pushing for relevant...
It appears the lure of the Ring of Power under the golden dome in Montpeculiar has captured Brattleboro Rep. Emilie Kornheiser. The white-hot prospect of inheriting the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee seems to have blinded Rep. Kornheiser and consumed the integrity she brought with her to the State House. Rep. Kornheiser is now carrying the water for retiring chair Janel Ancel and the Ways and Means Committee (and in the process making Republican school choice/private school...
Please share this proclamation from the Windham Southeast School District in honor of our teachers: In celebration of Teacher Appreciation Week, the WSESD school board takes great pleasure in recognizing the extraordinary achievements of our teaching staff. By any metric used, Vermont public schools traditionally rank among the best in the nation, and the schools in the WSESD are clearly no exception. More than any other factor, we enjoy this success mainly because of an exceptionally talented and dedicated teaching...
Our Vermont legislators recently commissioned a state-of-the-art study to investigate how best to apportion funds to schools equitably. Unfortunately for the students of Vermont, it detailed serious inequities in school funding. This study unveiled an outdated distribution of funds to its districts. For 20 years, the tax structure in Vermont has skewed away from fully supporting our most vulnerable students and families. Nearly 60 percent of Vermont schools have been underfunded, leading to higher tax rates, fewer educational resources, and...
Regarding the Windham Southeast School District withdrawal articles on the town ballots, I would like to wait a few more years to see how this works out before we disrupt everything again and start over. The COVID-19 pandemic makes it hard to compare anything, and so far the current board has been open, inclusive, effective, and progressive. As membership changes over time, the liabilities of a large board not closely tied to the local communities might be more clearly revealed.
Voters in Brattleboro, Dummerston, Guilford, and Putney: Approval of the proposed operating budget for WSESD means the tax rate will go up $0.013 per $1,000 of valuation - a little over a penny. This would result in a $13 annual tax increase on a homestead assessed at $100,000; $26 for a $200,000 homestead, $39 for $300,000, etc. The ballot language required by the Legislature reports a 4.5-percent increase in spending per equalized pupil, but this is not your school tax...