Monday, January 10, 2022
The rental housing bill, S.79, would have established a statewide registry of rentals and created paid inspector positions through the state Division of Fire Safety, replacing the volunteer health officer positions now used in most Vermont towns.
Advocates for the bill said it would help ensure that Vermont’s rental housing is safer and would make it easier for tenants to find a place to live. The bill — which included short-term rentals in its registry proposal — won legislative approval last spring. But Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the measure on July 2, saying its added bureaucracy would discourage apartment owners from offering their units for rent.
Patricia Preston, the executive director of Vermont Council on World Affairs, announced her intention to seek the post being vacated by Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray, who was elected in 2020 and is running for Congress.
“As Vermont's next Lieutenant Governor I will work tirelessly to build the trust and cooperation we need to solve our most pressing issues to make Vermont the state we know it can be,” Preston said in a video announcement.
Preston, who is running as a Democrat, joins Rep. Charlie Kimbell (D-Woodstock), who announced his candidacy last week. Others who’ve expressed interest in the position include Sen. Joe Benning (R-Caledonia), former Democratic representative Kitty Toll of Danville, and former Democratic/Progressive lieutenant governor David Zuckerman, who served two terms before making an unsuccessful bid for governor in 2020.
Tags: Patrica Preston , Charlie Kimbell , Joe Benning , Molly Gray , Kitty Toll , Web Only , Image
Friday, January 7, 2022
Vermont schools should stop contact tracing and PCR surveillance testing for students and staff, the Agency of Education said Friday in an email to school administrators announcing an "imminent policy shift." A new "rapid response" testing program will be used instead, the directive says.
The directive — a summary of more detailed guidance the agency said it will release next week — comes at the end of a chaotic return to school following the holiday break. Closures and COVID-19 cases piled up, as did student and staff absences, as the virus tore through Vermont communities and sent case-counts to record highs.
Tags: Vermont Agency of Education , Secretary Dan French , Vermont Agency of Education , Omicron , COVID-19 , Web Only , Image
Hanson, a former VPIRG employee, was recently accused of sexually assaulting a subordinate after a party in 2017. In a social media post last July, the anonymous accuser said Hanson initiated sexual contact when the person was incapacitated and vulnerable. Hanson, who was not a councilor at the time, allegedly told the person not to tell anyone what had happened because he could get fired.
Tags: Jack Hanson , Burlington City Council , investigation , VPIRG , Web Only , Image
Thursday, January 6, 2022
Citing the high number of school-age Vermonters vaccinated against COVID-19, Cardona tweeted that "getting vaccinated & boosted is the best way to keep our classrooms safe and schools open year-round." He again praised the state in an interview with National Public Radio.
But educators in those Vermont schools have painted a far less rosy picture. The return to class has coincided with the huge spike in cases and with changing, complicated guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Just a few days into the new year, with COVID-19 cases in the state hitting a record high on Thursday, some schools were forced to close because of high numbers of cases or staff shortages. Administrators appealed to parents to help keep schools safe by getting their children vaccinated and keeping students home if they displayed virus symptoms. And some districts had to pause contact tracing and "Test to Stay" programs — which allow close contacts to stay in school with a negative rapid antigen test — due to a lack of resources.
The state attempted to head off the chaos. Over the holiday break, officials set up 51 sites to distribute rapid antigen tests to families. Each K-12 student was eligible for a kit with two tests, which they were advised to use prior to returning to the classroom. Approximately 44,700 kits were given out, though 87,000 were available, according to Vermont Department of Health spokesperson Ben Truman. State agencies were working on distributing the remainder to schools to use at their discretion, Truman said.
Yet school closures — and cases — are already piling up. In a letter to families Wednesday night, the Winooski School District announced it would close on Thursday and Friday due to an onslaught of cases. Since Monday, the letter said, 35 people in the school community had tested positive for COVID-19. Twenty of them were infectious while in school, leading to "an extensive list" of close contacts.
The district said that it wasn't able to contact everyone who had been exposed to the virus while in school, and advised people to monitor members of their household for symptoms. Remote learning wasn't available. Instead, Winooski students will make up the missed days at the end of the school year, the letter said.
In Orleans County — where just 32 percent of 5- to 11-year-olds and 59 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose — North Country Union Junior High School went remote on Wednesday and will remain closed through the end of the week due to staffing shortages.
Irasburg Village School, a K-8 school in Orleans County, also closed on Wednesday through the end of the week due to staff absences. The Vermont Agency of Education didn't immediately respond to a question from Seven Days about other schools that had closed.
Tags: COVID-19 , Vermont Agency of Education , Department of Health , Omicron , surge , cases , virus , schools , Test to Stay , Web Only , Image
Burlington City Council President Max Tracy (P-Ward 2) said on Thursday that he will not run for reelection in March.
The current council’s longest serving Progressive, Tracy said that it's become too difficult to balance his demanding council role with his full-time work as a health care union organizer, particularly with contract negotiations looming at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
“Serving on the city council as council president, having to run for reelection while also working on the next contract in the spring, seems really untenable,” Tracy said. “I don't think I’d be able to do either role justice.”
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The number of new COVID-19 cases in Vermont is soaring amid a holiday-fueled surge, and hospitalizations are also back on the rise.
The Vermont Health Department reported 2,188 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, 540 more than the previously daily record set earlier this week. The state has averaged more than 1,000 cases daily over the last week. The true number of infections may be higher given the likelihood that some people who tested positive using at-home rapid tests have not reported the findings to the state.
Perhaps more troubling: The number of people hospitalized with the virus has spiked from 54 to 91 over the last nine days, coinciding with a marked increased in the rate of infection among older Vermonters. There has yet to be a similar jump in the number of people in intensive care units, a figure that has hovered below 20 for nearly a month.
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Wednesday, January 5, 2022
In his State of the State address on the second day of the new legislative session, Scott urged lawmakers to spend billions in federal aid wisely to ensure the state has the nurses to care for patients, the childcare workers and teachers to educate the young, and the tradespeople to build and weatherize homes.
“I am more optimistic than I have ever been that this future is within our grasp,” Scott said in a speech delivered virtually to lawmakers. “But we have got to work together so we do not squander this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to truly transform our state.”
In tones both earnest and uplifting, Scott described Vermont as strong and “growing stronger every day” thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in ongoing investments in housing, broadband, infrastructure projects and economic programs.
Tags: Phil Scott , Vermont , governor , Jill Krowinski , Becca Balint , Web Only , Image
A federal grand jury had indicted Lawrence Jackson, 50, on several drug charges late last month. He’s also accused of being a felon in possession of a firearm, specifically a revolver dubbed by its manufacturer as The Judge and described in a court document as “a particularly effective and dangerous weapon” that fires both .45-caliber bullets and .410-gauge shotgun shells.
The document describes Jackson as an “extremely violent person causing significant recent harm in the Rutland community.” Jackson used the weapon at least three times to pistol-whip people and also to threaten a woman he thought had stolen drugs from him, the document states. Witnesses also told the feds that Jackson had raped and sexually assaulted multiple women, and held down one woman and burned her skin with a butane torch.
Tags: Rutland , sex trafficking , drugs , addiction , Lawrence Jackson , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, January 4, 2022
The preliminary approval didn’t happen a moment too soon for town officials, many of whom have procedural deadlines this month for the town elections held annually in March.
With a daily COVID-19 case count that hit 1,727 on Tuesday, many of those officials are relying on guidance from lawmakers and from the Secretary of State on how to hold proceedings safely this year while adhering to the rules.
“Nobody would have predicted cases would be where they are now,” said Gwenn Zakov, the municipal policy advocate for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Zakov said the organization is on board with the rules for remote and delayed town meetings for another year. “It makes health sense, it makes logistical sense, and it’s not a huge strain on communities to make these adjustments,” she said.
Tags: Town Meeting Day , Vermont , legislature , Hinesburg , Rockingham , Australian ballot , Web Only , Image