Fric Spruyt represents District 9 as a member of Brattleboro’s Representative Town Meeting.
BRATTLEBORO-The turn of the year seems like as good a time as any to reflect on what we want for our collective future, as well as individual. Some are just waking up to the fact that the two are, in fact, largely inseparable.
As a young adult working on stopping things that seemed like terrible ideas, I discovered that I really needed to give a portion of my attention to the things that I actually wanted for the future.
In the context of our current national chaos (speaking of things that desperately need to stopped), I find myself leaning heavily on envisioning a future that is more sustainable, resilient, and frankly more fun.
I believe that this is the antidote to the dread that some would like to sow into our society.
I am encouraged by hearing stories like that of a town in the Midwestern plains that put up a bunch of windmills. The windmills not only make more electricity than they use, but they also provides half of the town’s tax revenue and income for the farmers who host them.
I have long believed that Brattleboro similarly has the talent and resources to become far more self-sufficient.
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Obviously, we need to look for ideas that are relevant to our circumstances.
In terms of energy, we have sun, water, and wood.
We have enough suitable roofs for solar to make a huge dent in our electric demand, if not eliminate it. Between downtown and commercial buildings we have acres of roofs, rivaling any solar field we might envision, without using up farmland. Add solar awnings over parking, and we should be able to almost double that production.
Some of these could be combined with utility-scale batteries, giving us the option to cover the town even if the grid went down.
Despite the good work of Efficiency Vermont and others, there is a lot of room for improvement on the consumption side. For instance, for a half century it has been not only possible but affordable to build housing that doesn’t need space heating in this climate.
Making these sorts of changes requires an understanding that these things are worthwhile and attainable, but they also require that we have some time and money to spare.
We also have parasitic drags on both our attention (especially online) and our finances, from some things we have control over to other things that seem largely out of our control.
For instance, our town budget is being stretched to the breaking point by expenses we thought were necessary or politically untouchable. We are at a point where services are going to get cut unless we can get creative.
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The three expenses that seem to be the most challenging are solid waste, health insurance, and the skyrocketing cost of capital projects.
At the moment we are reliant on outside contractors to provide all these services. It might be time to reconsider a long-held assumption that we couldn’t address them another way.
With solid waste, we are talking about bringing compost in house. That’s possible with recycling and trash as well. If we could reduce our volume of waste in several ways, including by being far more diligent about recycling and composting, our savings could be even more significant.
Health insurance just got much more expensive for many of us.
The possibility of the town of Brattleboro self-insuring has been suggested. The concern is that the town doesn’t have enough employees to make a big-enough pool. If it were opened up to residents as well, the pool would be much larger, in the process helping those who are victims of Congress’ mercurial approach to health care (and perhaps even giving new life to our struggling hospital).
As for town capital projects, there are a host of problems, including which ones we take on, and some of the projects are arguably more important than others.
Every step in the process seems designed to make them more expensive. Then they are often financed (with a bond) to reduce the increase in the current year’s taxes, while baking in a portion of that expense for years to come.
I am not suggesting we never finance a project. I am suggesting that we look at whether the proposed scope of a project includes things that are not worth doing and that when we have only a single bidder we consider postponing projects or at least negotiating the bid.
Food self-sufficiency is another area we might want to work toward. There are ongoing efforts in this area, but we will need far more to ensure some level of food security.
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These are just a few examples of things that could make a huge impact on our economic well-being and our level of resilience.
If only the energy being spent on rearranging the deck chairs at Town Meeting was instead focused on how we might make Brattleboro a truly thriving community.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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