Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Selectboard puts creation of trails committee on hold

After more than an hour of debate on Monday, May 8, a proposed Trails, Working Landscape and Island Committee proposal that would have focused on the Black River Islands and working landscapes has been put on hold until June.



  1. Nice article, and discussion, no mention of what the cost will be to tax payers.

  2. I'm glad this is the towns biggest concern right now

  3. Years ago there use to be a footbridge that went across the Black River from rt 11 to Muckross, just north of the old 'Mills Falls'. Now that Muckross has become a VT. State park, I think reconstructing a footbridge in that location would be good for the VT.St.park and the Toonerville trail, and Springfield. (and could probably be funded by the ST.)

    1. Sure, sure. But the taxpayer foots the bill for these trivial little projects either way. First they get stuck with the construction cost, then an eternity of maintenance costs. All so a tiny minority of the population can use it for their recreational purposes. Screw that. It's time to impose user fees. If you want to use it, then pay for it. Quit asking the rest of us to subsidize your good idea fairy's quaint little projects!

  4. chuck gregory5/11/17, 10:59 AM

    The parks people found some of the footings for the footbridge.

    I expect the average taxpayer's share of the cost will be in the range of $0.0025.

    The property tax loss which will have to be borne by Springfield's taxpayers averages about $3 per worker or $1.75 per resident, a pretty cheap price to have access to a state park.

  5. $3's here $3's there after a while all those $3's add up to a lot of money

  6. chuck gregory5/14/17, 10:04 AM

    Donald Trump is HUGELY in favor of users' fees. They have the highly-desired effect of separating the deserving from the undeserving. All the parks in Christendom used to be exclusively for the use of the gentry; the grubby children on their way to the factories could only look at the men at play. Users' fees made it clear who was who, and kept things that way.

    As for a lot of $3's adding up to a lot of money, I pointed out several years ago that to fight the "heroin epidemic" in Springfield by spending $260,000 to hire four more cops (Chief Johnston's recommendation) meant each household in Springfield would pay the equivalent of two cups of $1.39 coffee per week. When everybody chips in, good things become easily affordable.

  7. More cops is not the answer. Chief Johnston and his men are doing a commendable job arresting dealers and addicts. The root problem is, no fear of hard time. A liberal appointed judiciary that's given us a revolving door justice system. You see Chuck, we now have a utopian existence due entirely to the selfish motivations of progressive ideals. Alternatively, the opiate epidemic would disappear almost over night if we adopted the either Malaysia's or the Philippines effective solution. You see liberals can't cope with responsibly when it becomes ugly.

  8. Bob Lombard5/15/17, 4:11 PM

    I see plenty of comments on Dutarte's kill-em-all solution, but nothing yet on it's success in ending their 'epidemic'. Any news?

  9. chuck gregory5/15/17, 5:28 PM

    Giving the Philippine police permission to kill anyone they think looks like an addict or a pusher is not solving an addiction problem.

    As the tobacco companies will freely tell you, they make more money when they make more customers; therefore, they add compounds to their products (e.g., cadmium, antifreeze and maple flavoring) to make customers want to buy more-- i.e., to get them addicted. So, the first step in getting control of an addiction problem is to REMOVE THE PROFIT MOTIVE. As was learned from the Prohibition era, the criminality of an activity increases the return on the investment. I asked at the opioid abuse discussion at the library last week why Vermont didn't see waves of booze peddlers arriving, as we had seen the waves of opioid peddlers. The Chief laughed and said it was because it's available in stores.

    Which points to the second necessary step: CONTROL THE TRADE. Ensure its quality (no more Fentanyl deaths). Kill any attempts to adulterate it with addiction-enhancing ingredients (no more creation of future addicts). Kill all advertising (no more seduction of non-customers). Guarantee a lucrative income to all employees (no incentive to earn more by pilfering and selling the stock on the street, which would mean losing a really great lifelong job). And offer the product at an affordable price (no more waves of crime for the 27% of users who are addicts).

    And the third step: Pour the money that used to go into enforcement into education, prevention and treatment efforts. As was pointed out at the meeting, prevention starts with giving kids a reason to expect theirs will be a good life. Why shouldn't we spend $10,000 a year per child to prevent him/her from growing up to cost us $50,000 a year in prison?

    And, 6:12 AM, don't conflate "selfish motivations" with progressivism. You're thinking of neoliberalism.

  10. RE: Giving the Philippine police permission to kill anyone they think looks like an addict or a pusher is not solving an addiction problem.

    Aw, logic would dictate that barring a source of supply, the expanding web of addicts and dealers would instantly cease. There is no other as effective solution. None. Think the opiate epidemic here is bad now? Without draconian measures it will continue to accelerate. Only a fool would consider otherwise. Please Chuck, spend a few days at our hospital ED to learn the ugly truth of your folly.

  11. chuck gregory5/16/17, 11:37 AM

    So, 8:32, why is our hospital ER not clogged with alcoholic overdoses? 1. It's legal. 2. The purity of the product is regulated. 3. People who have a problem and would like to deal with it don't get arrested if they admit they're users. 4. The product is so cheap they don't have to commit crimes in order to sustain their habit. 5. While the profit motive is there, sellers do not make exorbitant profits in return for taking exorbitant risks, so their incentive to create more addicts is reduced (in fact, the state liquor stores cannot advertise liquor, although beer and wine ads evidently are permitted). 6. Selling is a regular job, which can be lost if the employee pilfers the stock and sells it on the street or sells to the unauthorized. The higher the pay, the greater the incentive to stay straight. 7. Ditto for the store owner. 8. We are saving billions in the law enforcement costs that would be necessary if alcohol were again made illegal. 9. Legalization in other countries has shown that usage rates do not rise after an initial spike and subsidence following legalization.

    Finally, you can't stop the sources of addictive substances. If God swept up all the heroin into the sky, addicts would simply turn to something else. Who'd have ever thought PCP would become a substance of choice for abusers?

  12. George T McNaughton5/16/17, 4:02 PM

    What in recent history would suggest that cutting off the source of supply, rather than cutting off the demand is an efficient way of controlling use?


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