by Kevin Ellis

The North Branch of the Winooski River is quiet and clear now. Beautiful really. 

It doesn’t look like the raging, angry torrent that destroyed homes and businesses in the state capitol just four weeks ago. It doesn’t look like the river that made life untenable for dozens of residents of the North Branch apartments on Elm Street. Many of those people had to be relocated to the Barre Auditorium, usually beloved for its high school basketball playoffs, now transformed into a Red Cross shelter. 

The adrenaline and passion of that first week have dissipated. The volunteers have gone back to work and their lives. Traffic has returned. But we are not back to normal. People still need to do business downtown. Strangers, many of them from Texas, South Carolina and elsewhere, are cleaning up these buildings, drying them out. 

At the Pavilion office building, which houses the governor’s office, massive dryers run 24-7. State office buildings from the DMV to the Secretary of State are decimated. Those government services have been relocated. State government is operational but not in the usual location. If the pandemic was Phase 1 of remote work, this is Phase 2. 

There is almost NO commerce going on in downtown Montpelier, save for the places that didn’t flood. The Skinny Pancake is open and making food for free for local workers. Sarducci’s, the old reliable Italian restaurant, is open and working. So is Shaw’s grocery store. They were above the flood line. The North Branch cafe, because of its granite basement, is open and serving food.

Ever so slowly, the hum of emergency generators is giving way to the surge of screw guns. Subfloors are being installed. Sheetrock is going back up. Plans are being made for the comeback. Bear Pond Books, Bailey Road, Capitol Stationers, the Savoy Theatre, the Aubuchon Hardware Store, the Pink Shutter, Capitol Grounds Coffee, and others are all coming back. 

Over on Langdon St., the Langdon St. Tavern, Onion River Outdoors, Roam, Bent Nails Bistro and J. Landon’s Antiques are all closed. They are cleaning up. 

We have all seen and documented the determination and optimism of these downtown merchants and landlords. Behind the optimism, there is a trauma that will be felt for years. You can see it in their faces and hear it in their voices. They will tell you if you ask them. This recovery, this survival really, is tough and demanding work. And it’s expensive. 

Some have their heads down, determined to get the insurance company or the politicians to pay attention. They have to hit their computers to apply for grants under the governor’s new $20 million grant program, the Vermont Community Foundation program, or the Montpelier Alive/Montpelier Foundation fund. 

They are torn between the sheetrock dust on their face, the sewage smell in their stores, and the need to get that grant money. It’s crazy, they say, that there wasn’t more help. No checklist to tell them how to deal with this – again. No National Guard. Most of them are on their own, figuring it out with family, landlords, friends, and contractors. 

Carlo Rovetto and his wife Melissa don’t know how they can reopen because their staff chops veggies and preps food in the basement of their Positive Pie restaurant. They feel neglected by the city and state governments. 

“We pay a lot of taxes to the city and the state and this keeps happening over and over,’’ said Rovetto, who has been downtown since the mid-90s. “I cleaned out our basement with a bunch of high school kids. It was totally dangerous. Where was the help from the government?’’

I was standing the other day with Karen Williams, the owner of Woodbury Mountain Toys, a downtown mainstay, when three guys from the State Health Department went door to door telling restaurants what they could keep and what they must throw away. They wore clean t-shirts and were there to help. But something in Williams snapped, three weeks of frustration got the best of her. 

“Now they show up,’’ she said. “Three weeks later?’’ It was understandable. 

It is just really really hard, all around. And the work is just beginning.  

The non-profit Montpelier Alive has announced a series of public forums to discuss what happened and what comes next. They will be led by Montpelier citizen Paul Costello. This is a good thing. Costello is a steady hand who can insulate this process from a city government that is focused on picking up the trash, turning on the power, and doing the basics of municipal government.

These sessions should lead to some very hard decision making, including:

• Why do we continue to build along a river that floods?
• Should we tear down certain buildings that exacerbate the flooding?
• Should we acquire certain buildings that no longer serve a purpose? I am thinking of the dry cleaner at the corner of Main and Barre Street, the gas stations on Memorial Dr., and the buildings on Stonecutters Way. 
• How do we let the flood waters go where it wants between our buildings?
• And how do we design a downtown that can thrive economically and environmentally in a climate change world?

These meetings will succeed if people bring their best thinking. The leadership of the city – the city manager, the city council – is not built for jobs like this. The structure of city government is still built for the 19th century. It’s built to pick up garbage, deliver clean water, and plow snow. It was never meant for this. 

But now it must change. We must change. We must innovate. The Dutch have been dealing with the North Sea for generations. New Orleans with the Gulf of Mexico. Let’s hire some of the experts out there to help with this redesign. 

Let’s form a blue ribbon commission of leading Montpelier citizens to take on the issue of the city’s future. We have the know-how and the ability. The city government doesn’t have the time or the expertise. The commission should meet monthly, take testimony, meet with experts from around the world, and issue a report with recommendations for the city’s future. 

We have a chance to modernize Montpelier. Let’s take it.  

I know most of the people downtown. I eat at their restaurants and go to their movie theaters. I urge you to do the same. Give to their Go Fund Me’s, give to the Montpelier Alive fund, and above all patronize them when they come back to life. Buy local. Eat local. Resist Amazon. When you pay $3 for a coffee at Capitol Grounds, just round up to 4 bucks. It is the difference between them being in business and not. And if they are not, this will be a very very different place and not for the better. 

The author is co-host of Vermont Viewpoint on WDEV and a former Vermont lobbyist and journalist. He lives in East Montpelier. Republished from kevinellis.com.