As heard on 11/5 Hot Off The Press
By Guy Page
As we wait until Thursday afternoon for the results of Tuesday’s Central Vermont Career Center $149 million bond vote, I see a connection between the tech center and Zohran Mamdani winning the mayoral election in New York City.
It’s about hope. Or rather, hopelessness.
A lot of those young people that formed the core of his voting support were disgusted, disappointed and depressed by their own future in New York City. They saw older folks making bank and owning homes. They felt shut out. They’re rent serfs, paying thousands of dollars a month, huge cuts out of their paychecks, money they’ll never see back. They’re hungry for a piece of the pie.
Here in Vermont, there are many young people in their late teens and their twenties, pounding nails, driving trucks, sitting in offices.
They know they know how much money they make.
They know how much it costs to buy a house.
They know right now it’ll never happen for them. They’re angry.
We need to give these young people hope.
As Dave Soulia said yesterday in our Hot Off The Press interview about ACT 250, we need serious reform so that affordable housing can be built by the free market without tax money.
What a concept! Here’s the thing – when you look at the people on the Vermont Senate committee that scotched significant act 250 reform a couple years ago, almost all of them owned a big house out in the country.
They already had their piece of the pie. Their corner of Eden.
Young people working hard want to own their own home. To raise a family. And they’re shut out in Vermont just the way they are in New York City.
So you gotta make housing more affordable AND you’ve gotta teach bankable, buy-a-house skills. That’s the point of a bigger, better Tech Center. We need them to replace the retiring plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and auto mechanics.
On the other hand…. look at Vermont’s record for educating students. Read today’s Vermont Daily Chronicle: Mississippi students are doing better than Vermonters.
Are you serious? Mississippi?
Are we wise to entrust tech ed to a school system that is already failing students?
And there’s the question of paying for it. If you haven’t noticed, Montpelier, taxpayers are already scared you’re not getting the message about taxes. That you’re always just looking to buy with someone else’s money the bright and shiny object in front of you. While taxpayers wonder if they afford to stay in their homes.
Meanwhile young people in New York – and maybe here in Vermont, too – are looking at our economy and government and thinking, ‘All we’re seeing is what doesn’t work. Let’s try anything else.’