Phil Scott addresses BBA students

Andrew McKeever

GNAT-TV News Project

MANCHESTER — With the election now down to the home stretch, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott paid a visit to Burr and Burton Academy Friday, Oct. 14 to address an all-school assembly, answer a few of the student’s questions and be interviewed for a news program run by the school’s students.

Scott, a Republican, is in a close race with Sue Minter, his Democrat rival for the post of Governor. Minter served in the outgoing Shumlin administration as the Secretary of Transportation before stepping down a year ago last September to organize her bid for the governorship.

Scott gave a 10 minute-long address to the school’s students and faculty in the BBA gym, where he touched on the central planks in his campaign’s platform. Those included working to make Vermont “affordable” — stabilizing if not lowering the state’s tax burdens on its residents,  focusing on growing the state’s economy to provide more job opportunities for those living here and promoting the importance of maintaining school choice as the state’s educational system consolidates under act 46, a statute which encourages school districts to merge into fewer, and larger entities.

Unless present trends in state spending are reversed, “costs will continue to rise faster than our ability to pay, “ Scott told the audience, adding that this was the “painful reality” faced by Vermonters.

Educational costs and the issues posed by a declining number of students in the state’s public schools were also highlighted in his talk. Too much money was being spent on administrative costs, leaving for classroom and educational costs that directly benefitted students, he said.

School choice was a topic he stressed as the state undergoes an educational overhaul under Act 46. Under the terms of the statute, when different school districts contemplate merging, they have to offer the same enrollment option for all districts. One district cannot offer unlimited school choice if that option is not available to all the districts considering a merger.

But Scott said that school choice should be available to all.

“One size doesn’t fit all,” he said. “Parents should have the right to choose the public school that best meets their child’s needs.”

This would help attract more young families and their children to Vermont, and help out with the demographic challenges faced by the state’s aging population.

When it came the turn of the students to pose questions to Scott, the first was one that dealt with whether or not the controversial candidacy of the Republican Party’s nominee for president, Donald Trump, would have a negative effect on individual state races like Scott’s campaign in Vermont.

Terming that situation, heightened in recent days by the release of the now well-known “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump was recorded boasting about his ability to leverage his fame to impress women and enable other advances, Scott, terming that the “elephant in the room,” noted that he had long ago announced, well before Trump was nominated, that he would not support Trump’s candidacy or vote for him.

A lot of Vermont Republicans were similarly frustrated, he said, and troubled by the spillover effect Trump was having on others offering their service to the public.

“We have this growing lack of faith and trust in government and our leaders … what we have to do is act appropriately in our own backyards to prove that we can do better so we can be proud of public service.”

Another question dealt with affordable housing, or the lack of it, in Vermont, which the student questioner noted was a deterrent to younger Vermonters being able to visualize staying and working in Vermont after their formal schooling ended.

Scott drew an analogy with the solar industry as a way to stimulate more construction of low-cost housing, citing the tax incentives that have sparked the expansion of solar arrays across the state.

“The reason they are there is because of the tax incentives — it’s lucrative to do so,” he said, referring to the solar developments. “They are developed because they are profitable.”

A similar approach should be tried to encourage more affordable housing, he said.

Other questions dealt with Pre Kindergarten education, Vermont’s business climate and reputation and whether or not F-35’s, the advanced fighter jets being deployed by the Air National Guard, should be based in Burlington.

Following his talk, Scott went t the Riley Center where he was interviewed by Miles Glazer for the school’s news program. That interview can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/187415873.

Andrew McKeever -GNAT-TV News Project

Lt. Gov. Phil Scott addressed students at Burr and Burton Academy Friday, Oct. 14, as the election campaign enters its final stages.