I am running for the office of Mayor of Montpelier, Vermont because it is past time for our city to confront the hard climate, political, and economic challenges ahead.

Recent reports on our city’s water system failures persuaded me that we need action now across the board. We need to pay serious attention to our infrastructure, our preparations for climate emergencies, our local and regional economy, our housing crisis, our mental health, and our declining workforce.

We also need to create a higher level of city accountability for infrastructure, expenses, and durability, while shifting our collective focus to the mounting challenges that are currently being ignored.

I am not entering this race to oppose any candidate but, rather, in the belief that our City Council and its administration need new leadership. It is past time to begin preparing Montpelier for the predictable crises which climate science and economic analysis show are here – today.

I offer my candidacy in order to give the citizens of Montpelier a different voice in determining a new, resilient direction for our city. This effort will be hard. It is time to do the hard work required.

Montpelier has the size, resources, community strengths, and geographic location to adapt to the worst of the threats coming our way. We must, however, harness our collective strengths into a civic commitment towards a local future that will nurture and sustain coming generations.

We can all see the climate crisis growing around us with destructive storms, the demise of our winter sports and the prospects for much hotter summers. Many of our downtown businesses feel we are already in recession and they fear they cannot survive the burden of higher taxes, which will, in turn, force them to, yet again, raise their prices.

However, the administration persists in planning new taxes. Half of our local business’s pre-Covid customer base is now working from home rather than eating downtown or shopping there, creating increased economic stress. Our working people don’t earn enough to afford to live here. Our city is crying out for a new approach to our future.

Many in town may know me as a longtime advocate for building a resilient local future. For years, I have been offering ways to direct our collective energies towards the rapid changes in the climate and the economy.

I led the Energy Committee in the 2014 commitment to a Net Zero Future.

In 2016 I created the Sustainable Montpelier Design Competition that engaged hundreds of our citizens in imagining a future and resilient Montpelier.

In 2018 I founded the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition, which attempted to model alternative transportation and leadership approaches to our auto centric downtown.

All this work has been directed toward finding ways to transition our small city into a positive and dynamic future.

I found it frustrating that our city administration and Planning Commission have given no attention to those innovative visions developed over several years with strong community participation. This kind of non-engagement has been the hallmark of our city’s lack of responsiveness.

Instead, Montpelier has become mired in ambitious, expensive plans that have little or nothing to do with the issues facing us. For me, the time and millions spent on the Garage project and the Elks Club property, and potentially the Confluence Park, are excellent examples of such misdirected ambitions. It seems we are being governed through rear-view mirrors rather than looking at the present and to the future.

Now, with the growing certainty of more catastrophic storms, utility outages, economic disruptions, and political gridlock, I believe the time has come for a more dynamic approach to our probable future.

I believe our citizens want a resilient and humane city that can respond to the wide variety of now visible local challenges. It’s time to take action about what needs to be done to secure a future in which, I believe, Montpelier could be an island of safety and sanity for all its citizens – and even a model for other small cities around the country.