By Neil Johnson
I’ve read over the 2017 Mad River Valley Housing Study and have some questions. The biggest being, why are we in the Mad River Valley adopting planning studies from the United Nations that were signed by Georgy Bush in Rio de Janeiro back in 1992. It was his big push for the new world order, which was initially known as Agenda 21 and later had a name change to Sustainable Development?
Why is it that every meeting in the town we seem to have one choice by a committee/planning commission, a bad choice and one that doesn’t work? When the public mentions other ideas there is no consideration for what is often wise and frugal feedback? Some are referring to this as the Delphi technique. Friends of mine who were teachers used a similar technique with first- and second-graders: Give them choice but only the ones you want them to do. This will once again be laid out by our new Mad River Valley Planning District, just like we’ve seen before, in a very elaborate multipage brochure.
Why would we want to build rental housing at $550 per square foot, more than what it cost to build Gadd Brook, our premiere ski-on, ski-off condominiums, which are the most expensive and sell for $444 per square foot? This type of insider dealing has been and is going on across our state. It is one of the many reasons why our taxes are so darn high. It also, forever, keeps people poor. You don’t get out of poverty renting; it’s generational poverty trap that people are getting rich off while keeping people poor and dependent upon the state.
We could easily have homeownership for $600 per month with some simple, easy changes in zoning and benefited by some tweaks in the environmental quagmire to make things scientifically green.
So, why aren’t we making these simple changes? Two reasons.
The first is money. People can make millions of dollars on these projects, and keep a tenant for life, huge tax credits, subsidized by the state, keeping rents and housing ownership artificially high, so there are no other alternatives for somebody to consider (it’s called a rental housing monopoly). Ask any contractor about affordable housing for $560 per square foot, and let me know their reaction. It’s all inside deals, something Vermont and socialism seem to excel at these days.
The second is control and power. The RNC and the DNC have adopted the new world order propagated by the United Nations. This is the rollout. Our zoning is directly from Agenda 21 from 1992. I didn’t believe it until I read it. This isn’t grassroots and happening in The Valley due to the efforts of our local planners. This is in fact happening world over and across our nation, run by the United Nations.
There are many other choices that make more sense than glorified sheds on landscape carts with a clever name like tiny homes. You won’t find these in the meeting though, nor will they adopt them. We could have a truly Vermont solution, tasteful, affordable homeownership for people on minimum wage for God’s sake, but the margins are small and people can’t become millionaires off the taxpayer subsidies. Planned rental properties are the cornerstone for socialist, communist housing; homeownership is the American dream.
What will we choose in the Mad River Valley? The choice is ours to make.
Johnson lives in Waitsfield.
