Just attended the VFP meeting for Windsor County here in Springfield . Total waste of time, I thought a plan would be presented for how this group expected to achieve their goal of increasing our population by 20%, but no. They are seeking inputs from attendees but no one had serious input. Much ado about how we did this small thing here or there and isn’t that wonderful....lots of feel good talk. No acknowledgment of the high tax, high regulatory burden here and of course absent a plan to make VT more business friendly, none of their goals have the remotest chance of succeeding.
I would guess their motivation is, in part, to give cover to the bad policies. By ignoring the policies that drive people out of the state, it allows people in power to pretend that there are serious people who think their policies will succeed and that some of those people might be successful in persuading at least a handful of people to move here - at least some small thing about which to claim victory.
No, of course this group’s proposals to vastly increase the state’s population is not serious. A few people will move here for family or retirement reasons but those will always be a very small percentage of any population change. Most people move for economic reasons and given the longstanding anti-business, high tax and heavy-handed regulatory environment Vermont has promoted for many decades as Rob has outlined in many of his columns, it seems a complete fantasy that any significant number of people will choose to move here. I wonder what this group’s motivation is for promoting such a pie-in-the-sky scheme now and how much funding they are putting into it?
Just attended the VFP meeting for Windsor County here in Springfield . Total waste of time, I thought a plan would be presented for how this group expected to achieve their goal of increasing our population by 20%, but no. They are seeking inputs from attendees but no one had serious input. Much ado about how we did this small thing here or there and isn’t that wonderful....lots of feel good talk. No acknowledgment of the high tax, high regulatory burden here and of course absent a plan to make VT more business friendly, none of their goals have the remotest chance of succeeding.
Thanks for attending and letting us know what happened. Much appreciated!
I would guess their motivation is, in part, to give cover to the bad policies. By ignoring the policies that drive people out of the state, it allows people in power to pretend that there are serious people who think their policies will succeed and that some of those people might be successful in persuading at least a handful of people to move here - at least some small thing about which to claim victory.
No, of course this group’s proposals to vastly increase the state’s population is not serious. A few people will move here for family or retirement reasons but those will always be a very small percentage of any population change. Most people move for economic reasons and given the longstanding anti-business, high tax and heavy-handed regulatory environment Vermont has promoted for many decades as Rob has outlined in many of his columns, it seems a complete fantasy that any significant number of people will choose to move here. I wonder what this group’s motivation is for promoting such a pie-in-the-sky scheme now and how much funding they are putting into it?