ORLEANS COUNTY – The Caledonia Senate seat is currently held by Bobby Starr who is retiring at the end of this term.
Candidates running for the seat this year are Aime Conrad Bellavance, a Republican from Newport Town; Samuel A. Douglass, a Republican from Troy and Katherine Sims, a Democrat from Craftsbury.
Question: Tell us a bit about your background, why you want to fill the position and why you are a good candidate for it.
Bellavance: I was born and raised in Hardwick. I joined the service and left, then came back to Vermont. I currently live in Newport, in Orleans County. I’ve raised my two children here independently since they were young. I’ve been on the Newport K-8 school board for 10 years. I’ve worked as an engineer at Columbia Forest Products, where I did a lot of problem solving, a lot of working with people to make the manufacturing more efficient.
Douglass: I was born and raised in the Northeast Kingdom (NEK) and now live in North Troy. I work as a crisis intervention specialist and with suicide prevention. I am running because Vermonters are struggling and having to choose between buying heating oil and groceries; they can’t buy a home in the town they grew up in. A younger perspective may help come up with innovative solutions to solve the underlying problems and overcome the hopelessness I see.
Sims: Sims has served two terms as a state representative for Orleans County. She’s worked on the House Ways and Means Committee and was also the co-chair of the Rural Caucus. She founded Green Mountain Farm to School, which is a nonprofit working to get more local food into schools through collaboration with local farmers. She has worked as a grassroots organizer for NEK Broadband to help bring high speed internet to the Northeast Kingdom. She believes her experience, relationships and track record will help her tackle some of what she sees to be the greatest issues facing Vermont. She said this list includes affordability, housing and economic rural development.
Question: Taxes keep rising as we address the needs of an increasingly complex society. What’s the right balance between meeting the needs of the population and keeping taxes manageable? How does funding schools fit into that?
Bellavance:I strongly believe that there’s room with school budgets, to see that we’ve become top heavy in our school systems. Our supervisory unions have multiple levels of superintendents. Do we really need that? Ultimately, the primary goal is a fair and equal education for all our students. By looking at the school budgets, looking at our needs, what we need to provide everyone a fair and equitable education we just have to do our best to be fair to the taxpayers. I would like to take the education tax away from the property tax. That would be a great solution.
Douglass: Education funding is very complicated. Vermonters feel they aren’t getting the quality of education they pay for. School choice is a controversial topic. We need to find innovative ways to lower school budgets, perhaps by reducing statewide mandates.
Sims: Sims said that last legislative session she voted “no” to pass the yield bill and “no” again on its override. She said the bill would have meant double digit property tax increases that Sims said, “Vermonters can’t afford.” She said she is in favor of implementing cost containment measures, and moving to a simpler school tax formula which has more standardized cost-per-pupils rates across the state.
Question: What do you see as the solution to creating affordable home ownership and rental options for Vermonters? How does that work to make Vermont attractive for young people?
Bellavance: We need to curb short-term rental purchases of multiple houses for companies like Airbnb, taking them off the market for Vermont residents. Existing vacant buildings should be converted into apartments. I’m not sure what the developers can do as far as affordability is concerned.
Douglass: There is a solution for affordable housing. Developers can build an affordable, energy efficient modern starter home for $75,000 to $100,000, but the cost can double because of state environmental regulation. Act 250 repeal or reform is needed, while keeping some environmental protection. Young people need these solutions to be able to have homes.
Sims: A lack of available units of apartments and primary residences is a major part of the issue of Vermont’s housing, Sims said. As the co-chair of the Rural Caucus, she has overseen state investments in programs such as the Vermont Housing Improvement Program and a missing middle revolving loan fund. She worked on reforms to Act 250 in order to make it easier to construct housing in villages and downtowns.
Question: Gov. Scott seems to be having difficulty striking the right balance between funding housing for homeless people and reducing spending on programs to house the homeless, what do you see as possible solutions to help Vermont’s homeless population?
Bellavance: Why do we have homeless people in Vermont? What is the root cause of that? Is it because of Covid-19, did they lose their income? We need to do more. We need more short term living situations for homeless people. Governor Scott proposed a tiny homes program with a rent-to-own option. That’s what we need to offer. Rent is very expensive, from what I understand, so a rent-to-own agreement between a tenant and landlord would be an avenue.
Douglass: I work in crisis intervention and see a lot of homelessness people. We need to be sure we are helping Vermonters and not people from elsewhere taking advantage of our programs. We need to offer programs that support the younger generation’s self determination.
Sims: Sims said that she believes in finding a more cost effective solution to the homeless population beyond the motel voucher program which provides temporary housing for eligible people experiencing homelessness in participating hotels and motels. She said ideal solutions address some of the root causes of the issue such as mental illness and substance abuse. She said she is proud of the legislators’ work in using settlement money from opioid companies to invest in expanding substance abuse disorder treatment and recovery programs.
Question: How can the state meet the challenges of maintaining infrastructure of roads, bridges, water and sewer systems as weather events are increasingly destructive? As more vehicles become electric and the gas tax becomes less effective at funding those needs, how can that funding gap be filled?
Bellavance: That gap is already being filled in some places. The registration for an electric vehicle is around three times the amount of the registration for a gas vehicle. In the field I work in, the registration for a propane truck is around two thirds the registration of a diesel vehicle. It’s not a penalty because these people were paying that before in the federal excise tax. I don’t know how it’s going to evolve, but I know there are steps being made to take care of that.
Douglass: I am a fundamentalist. Governments are formed to provide public services that include roads, the military and border security. We need to be providing those things first and that includes flood mitigation. We need to be proactive and not reactive, keeping our legislators accountable to dealing with the issues after the immediate response has happened. Legislators must be listening to the experts rather than lobbyists or facebook posts.
Sims: Sims said that last term she sponsored a bill which was later passed under act S.310, an act relating to natural disaster government response. Included in this bill was a climate resilience and disaster mitigation fund. This fund will help make money available to high poverty rural communities beyond immediate response after floods. This money can go towards work such as expanding culverts, repairing roads, and river corridor restoration. This mitigation work will help save towns money that would be spent on costly disaster cleanup in the future.
Question: Please share your perspective on how the issue of abortion should be addressed in our state and country. What specific policies do you support to ensure women’s health and reproductive rights are adequately considered?
Bellavance: In 2022, the right to abortion became a part of Vermont’s constitution. I personally believe an abortion is between the woman and her close family, friends or whatever her feelings are. It’s not something that’s part of my senate campaign because it’s already been resolved in the state of Vermont.
Douglass: I don’t have much of an opinion. Abortion is a non-issue since there’s now a constitutional amendment that a majority of Vermonters support. This issue distracts from crises that Vermonters are facing: affordability, dealing with the explosion of crime in the NEK and the issue of what’s coming over the northern border.
Sims: Sims was proud to vote “yes” to the reproductive liberty amendment Proposal 5 which enshrined reproductive autonomy in Vermont as a constitutional and fundamental right. She doesn’t think the decision of when and whether a woman should have a family or seek an abortion should be something a politician should be weighing in on.
Question: Is there anything we haven’t asked you about that you’d like to share and might be important to your constituents?
Bellavance: In our current legislative body, the sitting supermajority has a tendency to put programs in place without knowing how to pay for it. That is the wrong way to do that. The legislative bodies in Montpelier need to make the full cost of bills known before they become law.
Douglass: The most important work I’ve been doing is with dairy farmers and fire departments. Most fire departments have never had a sitting legislator come to speak with them. It concerns me that they aren’t having their voices heard in Montpelier. The same for dairy farmers. I’d like to be on the Agriculture Committee with Bobby Starr being gone so that Orleans County is represented.
Sims: She is excited to continue listening and working within the purple district of Orleans. The largest issue she’s been hearing from her constituents is that of affordability of living. She will continue to try and lower the cost of childcare, housing and healthcare. She is interested in reducing the tax burden for the average Vermonter and will continue to advocate for exempting social security income from taxation.
Samuel A. Douglass did not submit a photo.
Candidate responses are summarized here. Complete video programs of the recorded interviews are available at HCTV.US, the HCTV YouTube Channel and can be downloaded from the HCTV Vimeo page.