Fish on
Sentenced
Vermont’s popular trout season opens April 9
Driver who killed South Burlington woman gets two years
Page 2
Page 5
PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT #217 CONCORD, NH
POSTAL CUSTOMER
ECRWSSEDDM
South Burlington’s Community Newspaper Since 1977
the MARCH 31, 2022
otherpapersbvt.com
VOLUME 46, NO. 13
Staffing shortage creates disparity in nursing pay
Top honors
AARON CALVIN AND AVALON STYLES-ASHLEY STAFF WRITERS
COURTESY PHOTO
Holly Rouelle, who has led Gertrude Chamberlin Elementary School in South Burlington for 11 years, was recently named the Vermont Principal of the Year by the Vermont Principals’ Association. See story on page 12.
Petition against airport rezoning reveals widespread opposition City’s airport task force may ask planning commission to deny rezoning AVALON STYLES-ASHLEY STAFF WRITER
At least 255 people have signed a petition calling on the city of South Burlington to stop the Burlington International Airport from encroaching on the Chamberlin neighborhood. The petition, organized by an informal coalition of Vermonters,
asks the city’s airport rezoning task force, the city council and the planning commission to deny the airport’s request to rezone an approximately 11-acre plot of land from residential to airport use. Although the task force seems to be mostly in agreement, having voted to advance a draft resolution recommending the planning commission deny rezoning,
the request has shed light on old wounds in the neighborhood and on the fraught relationship between the city and the airport, which is on South Burlington soil but owned and managed by Burlington. The land at the heart of the request near Kirby Road Extension used to be dotted with See AIRPORT on page 2
Last December, as Vermonters chopped down Christmas trees, breathed life into inflatable reindeer and placed glowing menorahs in their windows, COVID-19-related hospitalizations surged. State health officials warned that a new Omicron variant had likely been in local communities for a while, becoming the state’s most dominant strain in just one week. Hospitals, understaffed and reeling from one long shift that seems to have lasted years, began to fill again. As they reached out for help from agencies to fill holes in staffing, the cost to hire a traveling nurse skyrocketed, increasing 100 percent. The high rates were directly tied to demand, sometimes changing week to week as the need grew, said Mary Broadworth, vice president of human resources for the University of Vermont Medical Center. Nurse staffing agencies, which existed long before the pandemic, recruit nurses from across the country to fill temporary positions at health care facilities, generally positions hospitals have no other way of filling and need to staff to adequately care for patients. Agencies make money by taking a portion of the payment they secure for their nurses and charging other fees. Prices for traveling nurses have risen precipitously multiple times in the now years-long pandemic, pushing some Vermont hospitals millions into debt and making
some wonder if nurse staffing agencies took advantage of health care facilities with no other choice by charging them exorbitant amounts and pocketing the difference. Now the state’s lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrat Peter Welch, has called for an intervention, believing that the staffing agencies providing hospitals with traveling nurses are exploitative and need reform. In late January, as the Omicron-fueled surge waned, Welch led a congressional charge for reform in the traveling nurse industry, sparking pushback at a perceived attempt to limit nurse’s pay and from staffing agencies who argue they’re hurting as much as anyone else, illuminating the tension in an industry where two employees doing the exact same work take home very different paychecks.
Welch letter On Jan. 24, Welch, along with Virginia Rep. Rep. Morgan Griffith, addressed a letter to Jeffrey Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response team coordinator, in the wake of the Omicron surge with “concerns that certain nurse-staffing agencies are taking advantage of these difficult circumstances to increase their profits at the expense of patients and the hospitals that treat them.” The letter urged the team to enlist federal agencies with competition and consumer protection authority to investigate the alleged price gouging of hospiSee NURSE on page 8