‘Bombs Away’ On Affordable Housing
Editor, Vermont Commons:
The U.S. Air Force has selected the Vermont National Air Guard Station at Burlington International Airport as a possible site for its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. The primary areas of concern among South Burlington residents are environmental degradation, the loss of affordable residential property, and resident safety.
Although increased environmental degradation from the greater exhaust, noise, and higher HAZMAT load of the F-35 is guaranteed, the foremost concern is about noise. The F-35 is a much more powerful jet than the F-16, and is expected to run two-to-four times louder, at approximately 120 decibels. The Air Force has already run into trouble with the noise issue in Valparaiso, Florida, where they were twice sued by the town in order to establish that the F-35 was too loud to fly over that community. Citing a shortage of planes, the airport has refused Arizona residents near an air base the opportunity to judge the volume of the planes via a fly over, instead promising to provide computer models of the aircraft’s volume. South Burlington has made a similar request for a fly-over.
Concurrent with the inevitable expansion of the airport’s 65-decibel noise-level contour, additional affordable homes in the Chamberlin neighborhood, one of the last bastions of affordable housing in South Burlington, will fall within the airport’s noise-mitigation program. The average home in South Burlington sells for around $315,000, while in the Chamberlin neighborhood it is approximately $220,000. The airport adheres to the most draconian interpretation of noise mitigation: buying the homes and razing them. One hundred and fifty homes already fall into the existing DNL contour. Once these homes have been destroyed the land becomes the property of the City of Burlington and is re-zoned commercial. In short, as the DNL expands, the affordable neighborhood disappears.
Though more ephemeral, there are also reasonable concerns about the risks of conducting the product testing of heavily armed fighter jets over a densely populated residential area that is home to several schools.
There is a great deal more to the issue, including the questionable viability of the entire F-35 program. Please visit www.f35insouthburlington.blogspot for more information.
Juliet Buck
Burlington
No Tears For Sweden
Editor, Vermont Commons:
I’m writing to question the integrity of Anders Holm, who in his letter to the editor (Raising Taxes in Vermont: Sweden’s Chilling Warning, Vermont Commons, Mud Season 2010), argued against the Swedish model of social capitalism (as opposed to America’s casino capitalism) and gave dire warnings if Vermont attempted to implement a more equitable system of taxation and health care system.
He trots out the old and decrepit mythology that the money-makers will flee Vermont and entrepreneurs will fold their tents and head for greener pastures. The rich, in their pique, will abandon their multi-million dollar McMansions and move back to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Mr. Holm writes: “In contrast to having no real choice but to implement a Swedish-style healthcare system . . . a far better option is to acknowledge that business is the engine of an economy… Vermont needs a fundamental shift in attitude regarding permitting and taxation.”
In other words, folks, forget about single-payer health care and tax fairness; let the good ol’ market work. I can hear cheering from Governor Douglas, Alan Greenspan, and The Business Roundtable.
Mr. Holm asserts that because of its social/capitalist ways, Sweden has plunged to twenty-fifth in the “national standard-of-living rankings.” He neglects to make any attribution for that statement.
I will avoid that error. In a comprehensive assessment of the lives and wellbeing of children and adolescents in economically advanced nations, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Center found that The Netherlands was on the top of the list and Sweden second. The survey considered material wellbeing, health and safety, educational wellbeing, family and peer relationships, subjective wellbeing. The USA was eighteenth!
The welfare of children, I believe, is a far better barometer of a society’s viability than whether the billionaire owner of Ikea chooses to avoid taxes in his homeland.
Al Salzman
Fairfield
Federal Dairy Fiasco
Editor, Vermont Commons:
I am convinced that, were Vermont's dairy industry no longer a part of the federal milk program, your farmers would be better off. All of the economic reasons why Vermont (and other states with similar topographies and growing seasons) originally became a dominant dairy region – primarily, the obvious issue of comparative advantage – have been overturned by the federal effort since the 1930s to save the "little dairy farmer." The effect has been the complete opposite, because it eliminated the economic advantages and, in the process, encouraged dairy farms throughout the nation where there were many fewer reasons to have them.
I once tried to explain it in a Senate hearing to senators Pat Leahy of Vermont and Rudy Boschwitz of Minnesota at least 30 years ago. My comments would have had no less effect had I made them in Swahili. Both men, believing themselves to be protecting the dairy farms of their respective states, just looked confused. Sen. Boschwitz said, "Sorry, I just don't happen to agree with your analysis," as if he had spent a years studying the issue.
In my judgment, you guys should look into that. You can tie it into the raw milk market, but that should not be the main thrust.
Good luck!
Richard Wilcke
Bethlehem, Kentucky