Demand better
Toolbox
Published: January 4, 2010
The first year of the federal stimulus was tilted heavily toward basic infrastructure improvements. Because it sought projects where work could be started almost immediately and because there's typically a backlog of public works projects waiting for money, it was an easy fit.
And at a pre-Christmas meeting to discuss priorities for Rutland County, elected city and state officials indicated that getting the railyard relocation moving forward is a top priority as the project seems in danger of stalling.
Now those are both completely worthwhile: One look at the Champlain Bridge fiasco or the Ripley Road eyesore is enough to convince that we need to get caught up on bridge repairs, and the regular water and sewer disasters in the city are ongoing reminders that we have an aging and inadequate underground system as well.
And moving the railyard to a light industrial area and out of downtown is good for the region – modern industrial space offering cargo handling facilities connecting road and rail is lacking – and the city, which suffers from having the railyard chopping apart downtown, the southwest neighborhood and the Allen Street/South Main corridor. But the payback on that project starts at least a year or two after it is finished, so it's still a long way away, particularly as it's become a political football for the Board of Aldermen and Rutland Town Select Board.
But Vermont as a whole and Rutland in particular needs a whole lot more than keeping our bridges from falling down or our railroads getting fixed, and we need it soon.
There's $135 million in low-interest bonds targeted for Vermont as part of the stimulus package; money that needs to be put to use by the end of the calendar year or it will go elsewhere. A healthy chunk is intended for Rutland County due to our economic struggles being just that much worse than the rest of the state. The problem is that it's targeted for ambitious projects (table stakes starting around a million dollars), which are in short supply.
The failure of FairPoint Communications couldn't have come at a much worse time, as during its brief tenure the company was looking to build out a broadband backbone in the county and to find business partners to show how modern telecommunications can connect an isolated rural county such as Rutland to the world. That's dead, just as the Obama administration is announcing stimulus funding for similar projects around the country. We're getting a little piece of that, but with a better plan for the future, it could be a lot more.
We seem to lack leadership with the vision to make something big happen here. Some months ago in this space, we argued that the county should get behind a push for renewable energy, by linking some of the several projects already under way into a coherent plan that would create jobs, pull down some of that federal money waiting to be used and to start giving the county a positive identity.
The one bright spot of significant size since has come in renewables, with CVPS bringing in a smart-grid pilot program, but right now, that's in isolation. And keeping the railyard project moving forward has become our ambitious goal. It's not enough. Other jurisdictions are looking at providing communitywide wireless and fiber-optic broadband and we hope to compete with functional rail, bridges that stand up and maybe an adequate airport somewhere down the line?
If, whenever the federal government stops throwing money at the economy, we are still reliant on a dairy industry that can't survive without intervention and a tourism industry that thrives on low-pay, low-skill jobs, in a place with spotty cell service and patched-up infrastructure, we're doomed to be an impoverished backwater for the foreseeable future.
It doesn't have to be like that.
We have a chance to use Vermont's green reputation and a federal government willing to support the right project to put ourselves into a leadership position on something – a niche within renewable energy seems to make the most sense – and frankly, we're blowing it. We're hung up in a turf war over commonsense improvements to a railroad track. If the county's representation put 10 percent of the work into developing a coherent renewable energy project that it's spending in fighting over the Ira wind project – the only renewable development in the county with significant opposition, by the way – we would be halfway to having a TARP-worthy proposal.
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