The ‘Future of Vermont’ could be history

CHRIS GRAFF COMMENTARY ~ A Summit on the Future of Vermont is scheduled for May 11 (yesterday) at the University of Vermont. The summit is the final step in a nearly two year long effort by the Vermont Council on Rural Development to take the temperature of today’s Vermont and plan for tomorrow’s Vermont. VCRD created the Council on the Future of Vermont to accomplish this task. I was one of the members and truly enjoyed the opportunity to listen to Vermonters talk about Vermont. The Council heard from some 4,000 Vermonters in one form or another.

The experience reminded me of a comment by Supreme Court Justice Wendell Phillips Stafford when he spoke before the Commission on Country Life in 1931: “It is always a perilous thing to let a Vermonter get started on the subject of Vermont.”

If we learned one thing in our 18-month journey it was that Vermonters love Vermont and have some very strong feelings about their state.