The Vermont Downtown Action Team, and its urban planning consultants, came to Brattleboro last week to listen to area residents and offer observations and suggestions to make the downtown more prosperous.
Consultant Tripp Muldrow and his team had plenty of praise for what's going right.
That's entirely appropriate. A number of exciting changes are happening in Brattleboro right now. The Brooks House renovation is in full swing. There's new construction on Putney Road. There's the usual churn in the restaurant sector, but the eateries downtown are generally full, as are the sidewalks on the weekends.
There is a lot there to celebrate, to embrace, and to leverage for our economic future.
But the V-DAT team shared some other demographic data that gave us pause.
They said the median age of the Brattleboro area is 45 (compared to 41.5 for Vermont as a whole and 36.8 for our nation as a whole). The median household income for the Brattleboro area is $40,793 (compared to $53,422 for Vermont as a whole, and $52,762 for our nation as a whole).
And, they said, one in three households in the Brattleboro area earns less than $25,000 a year.
Moreover, the economic consultants predicted a 5 percent decline in population in the Brattleboro area over the next five years.
Consequently, the vacancy rate for housing in the Brattleboro area is expected to rise from 6.4 percent to 9.3 percent by 2018. Most of those vacancies will be rental units.
The general measure of housing affordability is that a median home is about 2.6 times the median income. In the Brattleboro area, it is 4.9 times the median income.
And, since these figures were compiled before Entergy made its decision last month to shut down Vermont Yankee in 2014, these statistics have the potential of proving even worse than predicted.
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None of this data surprises us. It reinforces what we've seen, and heard, and experienced in recent years in Brattleboro and the rest of Windham County.
It's been a long-running, sardonic joke in Windham County that we pay a “quality of life” tax to live here. We live in a place with among the lowest median wages in New England - and put up with all the hassles that entails - to live in a place that's safe and filled with scenic beauty, a place that offers good schools, strong civic engagement, and the art and culture that's all around us.
Our region is increasingly becoming a place where the only way you can afford to live here is if you bring your own money.
If you are a young professional, you're not likely to find a job here that pays a decent wage. You're expected to scrape by in a place with a cost of living not that much lower than other New England cities but with a wage scale that does not begin to cover your costs.
There are service jobs galore, but, even though Vermont's minimum wage is one of the highest in the nation, you will be hard pressed to be able to afford a place to live, a car to get you to your job, food to eat, and enough for the rest of the necessities.
And the divide between the haves and the have-nots is growing.
The ranks of the working poor are swelling. Our local food shelves and homeless shelters are finding that many of their clients have jobs but can't afford the cost of living in a high-expense, low-wage town.
So it becomes a matter of priorities.
As a community, we can spruce up the downtown and make it more inviting to visitors.
We can have more public art installations.
We can convene forums and conferences and produce reams of reports.
But none of these actions will matter if people cannot afford to live here.
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With so many capable and qualified people involved in regional planning and economic development in this region, we need a cohesive, coherent, and consistent effort to address the issue of wages as a top priority.
One bright area in our local economy is the growing cadre of professionals, many young adults, who can make their living wherever they can find a high-speed Internet connection. Several of them have mentioned the access to Amtrak's Vermonter, the train that runs to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, as the answer to a reasonable question: “Of all places, why Brattleboro?”
These professionals are quietly sitting in coffee shops and in second-floor offices making a living from a client base all over the world, and all that money is flowing into town and into the region.
Could Brattleboro be marketed aggressively as a digital hub with an appealing quality of life and a critical mass of top-caliber creative professionals?
That's only one idea about ways to attract additional wealth.
One thing is certain, especially with the Vermont Yankee shutdown looming in the future: Change is inevitable, and the change that will come from positive, bold, proactive measures will not please everyone.
Around here, that's going to be a given - enough so that it might compel reasonable people to avoid the sticky issues altogether, to kick the can down the road, as it were.
But look again and think about the statistics here.
The process of not making a decision? That's effectively making a decision. And the price of doing nothing is too high.
What are your ideas?