Cassandra Hemenway
The first forum held by the newly formed Foundation for a Resilient Montpelier began with a community meal and ended with a song about the river. About 100 people gathered at the event, deemed “A New Day in Montpelier,” to brainstorm how to make Vermont’s capital city more resilient to floods, climate change, and other pressures.
The foundation is a “new action-oriented organization,” according to its website, recently created by a merger of the former Montpelier Foundation and the former Commission for Recovery and Resilience, born out of the flood disaster of 2023 and several forums similar to the one at the Montpelier Performing Arts Chapel at College Hall on the Greenway campus, April 30.
Lauren Hierl, vice chair of the foundation’s board, said the focus of the newly merged group is for Montpelier to be “as resilient as possible where there’s just constant change.”
As in prior forums, it began with reports on what has been accomplished since the last event (creation of Montpelier Neighbor Net and a more robust emergency plan; obtaining land along the Winooski River to be reverted back to flood plain; planned removal of several dams to lower the water level; coordinating with other river-focused groups for regional work; and more). It then moved into break-out sessions where participants pick a topic and brainstorm solutions to the myriad issues facing Montpelier. The evening mostly focused on flood resiliency, but economic vitality, housing, homelessness, civility, and other topics came up as well.
The crowd broke into three groups to discuss specific topics: a strong civic culture, a vibrant downtown, and a resilient community. Participants then gathered again to report back to the larger group about the ideas generated in the smaller discussions.
The vibrant downtown group discussed celebrating local night life and theaters; having a welcome center with public bathrooms; and celebrating the river and bridges that are so central to the community, among other topics.
Hierl said the group focused on civic culture discussed the resilience aspect of neighbors helping each other and pointed to the Montpelier Neighbor Net as an example of how neighbors show up for each other. This group also talked about ways citizens can engage with city government, creating a database of volunteers, how to get more young people involved with civic life, and they acknowledged the critical role that local churches are doing in terms of feeding and sheltering those who need it.
Another point that came out of the civic culture discussion, Hierl said, is to identify issues that are important and complicated “so we can feed ideas to our leaders instead of waiting for them to tell us their ideas.”
Ideas from the resilient community group ranged from Dan Jones’ suggestion to create infrastructure to support a food economy, similar to the Center for Agricultural Economy in Hardwick; protecting the Montpelier wastewater treatment plant from flooding by raising Dog River Road (an idea that came out of the original forums after the 2023 flood); finding permeable alternatives to asphalt in order to allow the downtown area in the flood plain to absorb more water during rain events along with planting trees and a riparian border where parking lots now sit along the river; ensuring needs are met for all community members, and more.
One participant named Will said he would like to see the community not only be resilient but take it further by becoming “anti-fragile.” Another said he’d like to see residents invest in more energy-efficient furnaces and water heaters, using the rebate incentives available through Efficiency Vermont, and move those items out of basements when they need to be replaced.
Alaya Morning noted that, as a renter, she “can’t make these kinds of choices.” Morning said she grew up in Montpelier, moved away, and has been back for four years.
“In both places I’ve lived the landlords don’t live here; they live in another state,” Morning said. “I’m curious how that impacts the decisions that are made.”
Paul Costello, a foundation board member, closed the meeting telling the group “There’s a narrative that we’re divided and will be defeated. We can’t buy into defeat. We have to be clear about what we’re for. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t a patriot for this community.”
Katie Trautz, foundation board member and executive director of Montpelier Alive, closed the meeting with the song “Hallelujah,” by MaMuse.
Trautz noted the difficulty caused by the river flooding, but, she added, “it’s important to live with our rivers, to adapt to our rivers.”
Costello said the foundation will collect the ideas generated at the April 29 forum and bring them back to the community at a second forum in early June.
