Awww. Poor, poor Skip Vallee has suffered another setback in his ongoing battle to avoid free-market competition at Exit 16. This time, the District 4 Environmental Commission turned down a request by Vallee and another convenience-store giant to reconsider a January decision allowing Costco to build a gas station at its Colchester store.
The two parties, ever in search of loopholes and pretexts to keep Costco at bay, asked for a rehearing on the flimsy grounds that their party status was improperly limited on some aspects of the Commission’s hearings. Including a section of Act 250 regarding esthetics.
The Commission turned ’em down flat. And, in a decision written by vice chair Marcy Harding, injected a bit of sarcasm into its two-page decision:
Vallee had argued that he can see the wetlands near Costco from his offices at the Maplefields facility on U.S. 7 near the entrance to Costco.
“Regarding new evidence … on Mr. Vallee’s ability to see the Costco wetlands from his building, we find that this is not evidence that is either newly discovered or was previously unavailable,” Harding wrote.
Methinks the Commission is getting a little tired of Skippy’s endless petitions and appeals.
Not that their disdain will have any effect on Our Man Vallee, who vows to “seek redress in all forums available.”
I wonder how much his legal antics are adding to the cost of a gallon at Maplefields?
Regardless of the players, this case raises important water quality issues. The result of this decision is that the water quality issues have been blown off, and the environment is the loser.
Where is Sue Prent? Maybe she, like many of us, are so tired of the ugly and uninformed posts by jvwalt that we only look at this blog now when someone points out something to us.
greaseballSkippy wants more of my money in his pocket than he is getting now. He sells on both the wholesale and retail level so gets two bites at the apple and sees COSTCO as undermining his empire.
Yesterday in NJ gas was 50Cents less than Burlington. Shumlin wants to add another dime??? Something has to give somewhere in that distribution..
What ever happened to the Repukelican love fest with competition??? Skip being the king of antitrust is like the ultimate corporate AND STATE SPONSORED welfare for business…. He owns controlling interest in most of the chittenden county stations as well as his maple fields joints… (which are now selling vallSyrup) Where is the AG at this point??? When exactly will Peter Freyne come back from the beyond and do another in-depth on who owns what in chittenden county?? Most of the stations are leased and the service guys inside have no control over the prices… CABAL??
but we here all are…and even though we sometimes differ on the fine points of one area of discussion or the other, we’re all women and men of good will here.
Take a look at some of the discussions between Kestrel and myself on guns and you will see that we couldn’t be more polar opposites on that one issue, but always manage not to forget that we are generally on the same side. Even when it gets more than a little testy we manage to stay friends.
GMD does not have a “leader” per se. It is a benevolent anarchy here. First come to the front page, first served. The diaries by those with FP privileges are simply shown there in the order their authors upload them, without consultation.
JV just happens to write way more diaries than the rest of us, so it is only fair, by virtue of a system we have all accepted, that he sometimes dominates the Front Page. He spends an incredible amount of time and energy researching his diaries, and we are all extremely grateful that he has brought his dedication to news gathering to us at GMD.
Each one of us has his or her own style, which is not by assent from the others. We all have our own personal hot-buttons. On very rare occasions we do run a story by one another before uploading it, but that is the very rare exception rather than the rule.
This has not changed since the golden days of John Odum…whom we all miss; and wish he wasn’t doing the responsible thing by serving the good folks of Montpelier rather than us. C’est la vie.
We also wouldn’t be whom we are here without the contributions of our most faithful readers and commenters, like those on this thread.
So, even if tempers occasionally flare in the comments; or if one of us challenges one of you in a diary, know that you are valued and respected…and know that when the chips are down, we recognize that we are all on the same side of the big picture.