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How to build a utopian community in White River Valley

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A mega-wealthy buyer gathering up parcels of land is news that will cause unease and even strike fear into most small town residents — except maybe a local real estate agent or two.

Well, that’s what is happening in the White River Valley as a Utah businessman recently bought almost a thousand acres in four local towns. David R. Hall, a Mormon developer, has $100 million set aside to spend, and says he’s just getting started.

newvistavt 1The ultimate goal is NewVista  a settlement he wants to build, composed of 50 diamond-shaped communities of 15,000 to 20,000 people each.

 

Over the next 30 to 50 years, Hall hopes to realize plans by the Mormon religious leader to create an integrated community that could house as many as 20,000 people within a few square miles. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Hall said he was hoping to purchase enough land to create a large contiguous plot on which to base his development, which he hopes could provide a model for an environmentally friendly, sustainable way of living.

[…] In 1833, Smith [Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism] and his followers imagined something they called a “Plat,” or “Plot,” of Zion — a city on a rectangular grid that would integrate all needs of a community into one design.  

“That’s the fundamental background,” Hall said. “We’re of course doing all the engineering to figure out how it might work.”

[From The Valley News’ upgraded, snazzier than ever website]

David Hall  inherited his fortune from the family engineering business, Novatek, which makes synthetic diamond drilling technology. Novatek, a privately held company, was acquired in 2015 by Schlumberger Ltd, the international an oil and gas exploration giant.

Vermonters in Royalton, Sharon, Strafford and Tunbridge are predictably worried about what this might do to their communities. Hall claims there should be no cause for concern, and with a time frame of 30 to 50 years this guy is obviously planning long term. Eternity perhaps?

So how do you build utopia in the White River Valley ?

Now reports are that Hall hasn’t reached out to the community, but I believe he actually has, just not in the  a way you might expect. He may not be out shaking hands to reassure the general public, but buried like a shale oil deposit to pump later is his inspired “good will” gesture.

Hall said he hopes to work with the Vermont Law School in South Royalton — “The best environmental law school in the country,” he called it — and floated the idea of building a research center nearby and giving grants to professors there.

Dangling that offer in front of  a struggling law school is better than showing up at twenty years’ worth of town meeting days. Do you think, perchance, David Hall might have permits and environmental regulations in mind?

Note to self: To build a 20,000 resident utopian paradise in a small town

  • First step: buy …err invest in a law school and professors.

Q-Burking* Mountain

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In 2014, right out of the gate, reports were that Bill Stenger and Ariel Qurios’ Burke Mountain project got off on the wrong foot when a name change clashed with local sensibilities.Burkenbottle

 It’s off to a rocky start. When Quiros bought the ski area, many locals and loyal skiers bristled that he changed its name to Q Burke Mountain — a move they perceived as arrogant.

It wasn’t purely arrogance; it was just that sending a message — the winners are now in charge — to potential EB-5 investors was deemed infinitely more important than the opinion of the locals:

 Quiros says the name change is a message to investors. […] But Burke Mountain’s international reputation for chronic failure was worthless to him. He needed to change the name to associate “Burke” with his and Stenger’s success at Jay Peak, which businesspeople know is owned by Q. Resorts.fb-logo

Fast forward to this past week, where at Q-Burke Mountain hotel and conference center events are taking an interesting turn. The new hotel opening was delayed due to a multi-million-dollar dispute with the general contractor. An announcement of 180 layoffs of local employees followed quickly.

Partners Bill Stenger and Ariel Quiros wasted no time laying off the blame elsewhere:

In a swipe at the state, resort officials said in the news release announcing the layoffs that “Q-Burke Mountain Resort has worked diligently to create jobs and to retain personnel even through rough times, however, job creation, job retention, and economic development do not seem to be as important to the state as previously believed.”

It may not be easy to pass that one off with a straight face. After all, Vermont has been promoting (some might say pimping) the Q-Burke and the Jay Peak developments to potential EB-5 foreign investors. Motivated by the prospect of NEK jobs, Vermont has been marketing them around the globe as a sound investment almost from the start. In fact, it took multiple loud complaints from disgruntled Jay Peak investors and an SEC investigation before the state tightened up its accounting enforcement.

Why growl and snap at the hand that enables your EB-5 money habit? Same reason they added “Q” to Burke, a message to investors, which in this case is: it’s not our fault and keep investing. Because one season of bad weather, reports of unpaid bills and the specter of a hulking empty hotel could slow their foreign investment to a trickle-when they need gallons per hour.

And, in closing let’s return to Burke 2014 and “Q” arrogance:

Quiros understands the community doesn’t like the new name, he says. But he believes they’ll come to appreciate the value it brings, once he proves the long-term value of his plan. He thought about public perception “300 percent,” and stands by his decision.

“If I make a mistake here, I lose everything! I lose everything,” Quiros says. “Because in the world market, I don’t get the money from a bank. I get from word of mouth.”

Exactly “300 percent” right: no money from banks. It comes through the State and Federal EB-5 Immigrant Investment Program. Chances are Vermont will get over the criticism (because of the promises of local jobs). But maybe it’s a risky strategy to dump on the state after they have helped provide a steady stream of investors. T rump

And there are plenty of other EB-5’s in other states begging for foreign investors. Donald J. Trump’s got one, a huge, beautiful, luxury Jersey City Hotel and conference center for example … just a coupla minutes from Manhattan and it’s huge , HUGE!

*“Burking” : originally meaning to smother,  but which later passed into general use as a word for any suppression or cover-up.

Five hundred bugged buses

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Here in Vermont recently there has been a flurry of reports over privacy concerns with the free public Wi-Fi’s foot traffic tracking system at the Church Street Market Place installed almost a year ago. But that’s just pedestrian compared to the secretly bugged public buses in Maryland. Apparently the Maryland Transit Administration didn’t think twice of secretly recording conversations on 500 of its public buses starting at least three years ago.

busrecorde 2Here in Vermont, questions remain about the extent that Burlington’s city supplied free Wi-Fi  utilizes monitoring capabilities above and beyond the impressive shopper foot traffic tracking system. VtDigger and VPR news both had good pieces exploring the privacy issue.

Unfortunately Vermont Edition didn’t ask Burlington Mayor Weinberger about it when they had him on the program a day or two later. Maybe there will be follow-up next time allows.The only sure way around tracking at the Church Street Market Place is not carrying a cell phone or other device at all to solve privacy worries in Burlington.

But on public buses in Maryland you better talk at a whisper or not at all if you want privacy.

Probably unbeknownst to many riders, the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) has been recording sound, as well as video, on 487 of its 771 buses, starting in 2013, in the name of safety and customer service. So are cities like Atlanta and San Francisco. In fact, the ability to record sight and sound comes standard on most new bus fleets being bought by city and state transit agencies.

The MTA says secretly recording conversations on buses is just another investigative tool and in addition they are able to secretly check the bus driver and monitor customer service, these are the added benefits. Nearly all new buses come equipped for audio surveillance but how many municipalities use them isn’t often reported.

Apollo Video Technology manufacturer of the listening devices defends the eavesdropping: Chief Operating Officer April Johnson, as a way to check the quality of driver and customer service. And, they insist, the listening devices aren’t overly intrusive or in violation of riders’ privacy.[added emphasis]

The standard rationale for this, heard almost every time a privacy question is raised goes like this: “…lawmakers look to strike a balance between personal privacy and giving police the tools they need to do their job”. If all of this- increases in cell phone tracking, police body cameras and license plate detectors recording and saving data- is all about striking a balance, it seems like someone’s got a thumb tipping the scale.

Early Lisman speech praised the 1927 Commission on Rural Life

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Back when he just getting his Campaign for Vermont underway (and still pretending to be a centrist) Bruce Lisman delivered a speech titled Prosperity is at the heart of the Campaign for Vermont.

cforVIn one of his first speeches made upon entering the Vermont political scene he cited the landmark 1930’s report by the Vermont Commission on Country Life [sometimes called Commission on Rural Life] as a positive example for Vermont leadership to follow.

In November 2011 when Lisman gave the speech to the Associated Industries of Vermont, the state was still recovering from the 2008 recession and in the midst of rebuilding after hurricane-turned-tropical-storm Irene. His address is part-attack on the Shumlin administration and part-branding himself as a white knight returning, to save his home state – with the Campaign for Vermont.

And he wrapped it all around this theme :

If we are exceptional, it isn’t just because it’s so damn cold and dark. It’s because in all that we have ever done we work hard, we work smart, we adapt quickly, we solve problems, and we know how to strike a deal to get things done.

We marry our kindness and caring gene to the gene that demands practicality and frugality.

Consider this: After the flood of 1927, our State launched Vermont’s Commission on Rural Life, a three-year project to re-imagine Vermont.

From that study, our leaders recognized the challenges we face, as individuals and as a state, are sometimes bigger than we can handle alone.

We were a bit humbled, but also enlivened by the opportunities for renewal presented by accepting a bit more dependence on Federal resources.

Irene offers a parallel opportunity to re-imagine Vermont in a world that is changing; an opportunity to examine the resources available and re-imagine.

Our challenges of today call for new imagination.

The Commission was the brainchild of Zoology Prof. H. F. Perkins of the University of Vermont – who also organized the 1925 Vermont Eugenics Survey. The Rural Life Commission’s final report took three years to complete and was the work of over a dozen committees and sub-committees.

One historian, writing in 1999, summed up the report like this: Beneath the surface of its 1931 final report, Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future, however, lay Perkins’s eugenic concern for protecting and nourishing Vermont’s “old stock.”

Over the years the eugenics component may have faded historically; to some readers, the report may generally be regarded (when regarded at all) as simply a multi-faceted government report from many years ago. Sections of the final report were working plans for rural rejuvenation and development. One chapter suggests the state should develop itself as the destination for tourists and summer residents – perhaps the birth of the modern tourist industry.

The report has all that – but with a little minor research the darker side emerges quickly. Not much about tourism surfaces when you Google it and the top search results center exclusively on Vermont Eugenics. And eugenics , according to the report authors’ intro, was the intended essence of it. As they explained in the introduction to The People of Vermont section: Thus, the center of interest from the beginning was in the people. The interest in land utilization, agriculture, forestry, and summer residence was in the background.

Governor-wannabe Bruce Lisman grew up in Burlington, graduated from UVM, and in recent years served on its Board of Trustees. It is possible he wasn’t familiar with the darker eugenics aspect of the study, or perhaps simply discounted it in favor of the convenient 1927 Vermont flood parallel to the ongoing Irene recovery for his talk.

And no one even batted an eye back in 2011 during Lisman’s speech favorably citing the Rural Life Commission’s report that, in part, promoted eugenics.

Now, five years later, Donald J. Trump wants to “build a wall” and without shame expresses openly anti- immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments in the Republican presidential primary. I wonder what kind of headline Lisman would get today, if he praised the eugenics-tainted Vermont Commission on Country Life’s 1931 project to re-imagine Vermont.

Is there such a difference between demonizing adherents of Islam or dehumanizing Mexicans (Trump) on the one hand, and making sure that “undesirables” don’t pass along their genes (Perkins, with recent praise from Lisman)? Is this the kind of thinking – or at best, thoughtlessness – we want running Vermont?

If that’s the way the country and our state decide to go, maybe the Canadians really ought to consider building their own wall.

Peter Galbraith: “Galbraith to enter Democratic Primary for Governor”

Business, International, local/regional, National, Uncategorized, ,

After weeks of hints and waiting, Peter Galbraith, yes Peter Galbraith will announce today that he,Peter Galbraith will enter the Democratic gubernatorial primary race.PGalbraith3

After extensive consultation with Peter Galbraith, Peter Galbraith has concluded the time is right to offer Peter Galbraith’s leadership to the state of Vermont. Peter Galbraith will be holding a news conference at the Vermont State House today.

Former Vermont Democratic State Senator Peter Galbraith has retained former Republican Roger Albee as Peter Galbraith’s campaign treasurer.

Neal Goswami of Vermont News Bureau tweeted that Peter Galbraith’s announcement was emailed to him by Ian Moskowitz who recently was political director for the New Hampshire Democratic Party and most recently emailed Peter Galbraith’s gubernatorial announcement email.

Peter Galbraith will be joining Sue Minter and Matt Dunne who entered the race prior to Peter Galbraith’s announcement later today.

Bruce Lisman pitches his southern strategies

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Republican Bruce Lisman once again looks to a state down south to find one of his bright ideas for “fixing” Vermont. LISMAN_CHUNK_OUTLINES.indd

Lisman, who is campaigning in the Republican gubernatorial primary, wants to cap Vermont’s budget growth and to that end he casts his budget cutting gaze due South, this time to North Carolina.

In asserting that he could find real savings in Medicaid, Lisman pointed to North Carolina, where auditors found potential for $180 million in savings over a biennium. He said his Medicaid reforms would not unfairly strip benefits from those in need.

Lisman’s suggested southern strategy, according to reports, involves changes that are roiling North Carolina’s Medicaid program. And it is neither fast nor painless, and it is all very controversial:

Hardest hit will be the family practitioners and pediatricians who are supposed to take the lead in providing better medical care for about 1.7 million low-income children and adults in North Carolina. […] In fact, a 3 percent cut in North Carolina’s Medicaid rates, originally slated to start in 2014, took effect Jan. 1 – and doctors may have to go back through last year’s billing and pay that money back.

“This would wreak havoc with the finances of any business,” a statement from the N.C. Medical Society says.

The last time Lisman looked south for inspiration, he found a statewide jobs program from Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana. In this instance, while on one of his Vermont “good Ideas” listening tours, the crowd listened to Bruce praise a D+ rated program from Louisiana.

And it’s as if Bruce didn’t bother or care to do much homework on this one either. A non-partisan research group gave the program a D+ rating. The state-subsidized private-sector jobs created at an annual cost of $1.1 billion had few performance standards, no wage requirements, and according to the state’s own evaluation, subsidized workers unable to afford their own health insurance may fall onto the rolls of Medicaid, negating any positive economic benefits. 

Soooo…Bruce, let’s see how would that work?  Your “good idea”  jobs program is likely to fill up Medicaid rolls at the same time you slash away at Medicaid benefits. Looks like your “new direction” for Vermont might be circular.

So go for it Bruce. A little havoc — kind of like your era on Wall Street circa 2008. No worries for a one-percenter as long he keeps his state’s budget capped at 2% growth?

Matt Dunne wants a little Bernie buzz?

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As of now, Matt Dunne is the one to beat, at least in terms of money raised. Vermont News Bureau’s Neal Goswami reports that Dunne now has more than $430,000 in cash-on-hand — the most of any gubernatorial candidate — for the remainder of the primary season and into the general election if he wins the nomination. Dunne’s Democratic primary opponent, Sue Minter,  currently has $328,500 cash on hand which is nothing to sneeze at, either. So this current advantage may not make Dunne a front-runner, but he can hang his hat on it for now.

Right now, it looks like the Dunne campaign hopes to piggy-back on turnout and fund raising among the Bernie Sanders voters. Should Sanders win or lose the nomination the enthusiasm for change he fueled is likely to spill over to some degree into November.newbuzzmenu

Dunne had already moved to mark out a share of that territory with his refusal of corporate donations. Said Dunne when he gave back about $16,000.00 in corporate donations “inspired by Bernie Sanders and his ability to compete with a people-powered campaign.” 

Good strategy, but the announcement likely produced fewer bangs for his bucks thanks to the scene-stealing skills of Peter Galbraith. At the news conference called by Dunne, Galbraith ‘reluctantly’ commented on whether he may or may not enter the gubernatorial primary race.

The other day Dunne’s campaign manager pitched or those voters again  – linking Bernie’s enthusiastic voter base with Dunne’s fundraising philosophy:

“There’s a wide mix, including a great deal of in-state Vermonters who have made small-dollar contributions,” Nick Charyk said. “We have contributions from Vermonters in every county in the state and a lot of Vermonters who have never made a contribution before who have said, ‘my first contribution was to Bernie [Sanders] and now I’m donating to Matt.’”

Whoever wins the gubernatorial primary – Dunne or Minter – better build a good turnout firewall: Republican Phil Scott not only has excellent statewide name recognition with all voters but can also count on support from some Democrats even in a presidential year. Senator Dick Mazza (D, alleged) is already fundraising for his favorite Republican friend. And Senator John Campbell, Scott’s other Democratic BFF may even be counted on to help out the Republican in a pinch.

And former state senator Peter Galbraith has warned us he is waiting in the wings and may enter the primary race – joining the performance already underway.

NRC praises ‘flexible’ strategies

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Once in a while, just to see what I can see I’ll take a look at the US NRC blog. It is a special place where it almost seems believable that everything nuclear is always under control, always has been and always will be  — forever and ever.FukushimaMeltdown101113 However, a recent NRC post, on the anniversary of the Fukushima disaster tells me  “…great strides” have been made in the past five years. The NRC is getting even better!

A key lesson from the accident was that plants must be prepared for events not contemplated when they were designed and constructed. Plants’ strategies to address external events must be flexible enough to deal with variety of circumstances.

VYkidpoolAll that would be much more reassuring if  images of Entergy’s half dozen or so  kiddie pools full of tritiated water at Vermont Yankee weren’t still fresh in the mind of Vermonters.VYkidpool2 Granted Entergy’s plant is not operating but this can’t be what the NRC meant by flexible strategies.

 

 

Phil Scott swims with the GOP

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Last November Phil Scott was reported to support the growing call for stopping planned Syrian refugee immigration. Shortly thereafter he had to clarify his position to say that he had meant “pause.” Scott’s awkward swing at the anti-immigration issue didn’t look too good for a first-time gubernatorial candidate.

Not that he was the only state executive to weigh in. In the panic and unease following the early-winter terrorist attack in Paris, amid reports and rumors of a connection to the Syrian conflict, the Republican governors of Maine and Massachusetts and others said they would halt efforts to relocate Syrian refugees to their states.

Phil Scott and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Lisman both expressed a similar desire to hold off allowing Syrian resettlement in Vermont. Both were rebuked by supporters of allowing vetted war refugee immigrants to come to Vermont. Among the critics was Governor Shumlin, Democratic gubernatorial candidates Sue Minter and Matt Dunne, who said Scott and Lisman were “playing to our worst fears.”

Scott responded, saying in part “[…] I probably should have gone a little further to explain that I don’t understand the situation and I certainly don’t feel like we can pause or stop the refugee program in its entirety,” and from there proceeded to backtrack.

In very short order, Scott also suggested his position had been “misinterpreted” (VPR published the transcript of the interview), and found himself clarifying that he didn’t understand the refugee vetting process, was worried about security and wanted a “pause” not a “ stop.” He even helpfully added that “pause” meant “to stop, take a breath, explain the process and then resume.”

Belatedly he arranged for Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn to “get a couple of people together to explain it [security vetting process] to me.”

I say he backtracked, but looking back to last November it appears more like he just squiggled around awkwardly after sticking his neck out a bit and luckily for him finessed the issue –down the memory hole — away in a few news cycles.

So what might cause the normally cautious Lt. Governor to uncharacteristically speak out against I mean, come out in favor of a “pause” on war refugee immigration to Vermont? In this particular bit of clumsy international-state policy pronouncement, he may have spent down a little of the Phil-Scott-is-a-great-guy credit he accumulated with Democratic crossover voters.

It should now be obvious that while Phil Scott and Donald J. Trump are very different politicians, they both belong to the same Republican Party.

And since national polls show Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to say that some religions’ teachings promote violence, there is broad support in the party for these views.

In a survey conducted in January, Pew found that 65 percent of Republicans or those who lean Republican want to hear blunt talk about Islam, even if it includes blanket statements about the faith, while 29 percent prefer that politicians be careful not to criticize the faith as a whole.

Only 22 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic want politicians to use sweeping statements to criticize Islam, while 70 percent prefer more nuanced approaches.

So Donald J. can go around the country yowling “I think Islam hates us.” and find himself soaring in the polls. Vermonter Phil Scott hasn’t done that, but given Trump’s primary victory here, you can make the case that even in Vermont Scott is now swimming in the same fetid pool of GOP voters. And to win the governorship he must appeal to those Trump voters.

Multiple choice: Snyder, Lisman or Scott

Business, local/regional, ,

Okay time for a pop quiz:

Who said the following?“It is time for a new model.  It is time for customer service government.  The role of government is to treat you, the citizen, as the customer and look at life through your eyes and say ‘How can we help you succeed and how can we get out of your way.’”

A.) Bruce Lisman (R, Wall Street)  wsi 1

B.) Rollo Tamasi

C.) Gov. Rick Snyder (R, MN)

D.) Lt. Gov. Phil Scott (R, VT)

E.) none of the above

Answer:  C.)

It is Snyder’s governing philosophy as he explained when he first became Michigan governor. He also issued assurances that  radical streamlining of regulations aka ‘getting government out of the way’ wouldn’t be detrimental to the health and safety of the public or to the environment.

The city of Flint Michigan’s lead tainted drinking water, caused in part by Snyder’s administration, probably was in the back of many people’s mind when reports surfaced that we are having a toxic water crisis right here in Vermont. It is much smaller scale but just as bad for those affected.

We are already seeing how our state agencies and government officials will cope with the short term issues-supplying drinking water, testing wells, etc. In the long run an examination of how the contamination was allowed to happen and future regulatory policy corrections will likely be explored by the next governor we elect.

It is probably worth noting that both Vermont Republican primary candidates for governor are expressing strategies for governing eerily similar  to Snyder’s.

In fact Lisman’s recent editorial about what he calls the “valued customer citizen” could have been cribbed directly from the Michigan Governor’s remarks. “First, I’d ask you to re-imagine our state’s government – one that treats its constituents as valued customers and sees employers as strategic partners,” said Lisman.

And  like Lisman, Lt. Governor Scott has a vivid imagination. “Imagine if we had a governor’s office that treated every sector in the same way,” he says. But all sectors are not the same.

Financial sector regulations are designed to guard against poisoning the economic wellbeing of the state. However, in a different sector, say the chemical industry, unique rules must prevent poisoning people, water, and the economy. There was plenty of bailing out done but there was no need to distribute bottled water during the credit default swap crisis.

And speaking of the chemical industry: Lt. Gov. Scott had a chance to practice the industry-friendly philosophy he preaches when he cast a rare tie-breaking vote in the Senate. That 2015 vote probably pleased the chemical industry. His “Yes” vote killed a bill that would have strengthened recently enacted regulations (Act 188) controlling toxic chemicals used in children’s toys.

Scott opposed the changes, so as not to ‘create uncertainty’ for the industry, and suggested the existing weaker regulations should be “given a chance” so we could “see what happens.” It is worth stressing his choice was between strengthening the existing rules governing “chemicals of high concern to children” in toys or keep the law in its present form, which is considered weaker.

Hard to know exactly what form governor Lisman or governor Scott’s re-imagined government might take, but a quick glimpse at the havoc wrought from Snyder’s Flint-style customer service gives a frightening preview of the experiment.

Re-imagine that.