Balint talks housing with Rutland City leaders

Article originally published as “Balint talks housing with city leaders” by Gordon Dritschilo

April 7, 2023

Rutland Herald

Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., got an earful about housing and infrastructure from local officials Friday.

Balint met with Mayor Michael Doenges and several members of the Board of Aldermen at The Hub Co-works Friday morning for informal discussions about local economic development issues. The meetings were held with two local leaders at a time to avoid having a quorum of the board in the discussion at once, which Board President Michael Talbott said would violate open meeting law.

The discussion, as it had during the election and in much of the general recent public discourse around economic development, repeatedly came back to housing.

“My big vision is to grow the population here,” Doenges told Balint. “The challenge is we don’t have anywhere to put anybody.”

Balint asked Doenges and Talbott how “greater” Rutland City felt about more development, saying she has seen repeated themes in similar discussions around the state.

“The tension always is a critical mass of people who understand we need more housing or we’re going to die on the vine and another critical group that does not want housing, does not want more people,” she said.

Doenges said Rutland lacked that particular tension.

“The election shows very positively people are ready for change in Rutland, which is weird,” he said. “There’s zero resistance to growth right now, outside maybe a tiny, vocal minority.”

Doenges said the bigger challenge was making the city “welcoming.” He said Rutland’s advantage is that it is the perfect community for people who can work from anywhere and want to live in a place with abundant outdoor recreation resources.

“Those pieces of the puzzle are great, but if we don’t look like the sort of community that’s going to support that lifestyle, it’s not going to work,” he said.

Doenges and Talbott said the Creek Path was one development aiding in that effort, but that the connection to the recreation center at the former College of St. Joseph campus needed to be completed. Talbott said the Rutland Recreation Community Center was thriving, but “disconnected” from the city.

“I guess you could walk or take a bike, but it would be very treacherous to get there,” he said.

Talbott said he envisioned the final segment, which would run from River Street to the rec center, as something similar to the Riverwalk in Winooski. He said the boardwalk included in the design puts the estimated price tag at $4 million.

“That last segment’s going to be really expensive and out of the city’s reach,” he said.

Doenges said he has pledged to leave “no grant unturned” as mayor, and Balint said all sorts of federal money would be coming the state’s way via the Inflation Reduction Act, and that part of her goal was for her office to serve as a resource to towns applying for that money.

Balint said one of her greatest concerns was the mental health crisis and asked how that was manifesting in Rutland. That discussion came back to housing as well. Doenges said transitional housing was a major need in the city, but that particular need was ultimately part of the overall need for housing.

“Any type of housing that gets built here frees up another type of housing,” he said. “That ripple effect is really important.”