New chief
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South Burlington hires new head for fire department
South Burlington grad premieres one-woman show
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South Burlington’s Community Newspaper Since 1977
the JUNE 9, 2022
otherpapersbvt.com
VOLUME 46, NO. 23
Residents fight housing project Development near Wheeler Park meets opposition AVALON STYLES-ASHLEY STAFF WRITER
JADE PREMONT
South Burlington resident Iris Robert graduated from the Community College of Vermont at a ceremony June 4.
Over 450 students toss their caps at community college graduation SB grad podcasts and poeticizes through pandemic AVALON STYLES-ASHLEY STAFF WRITER
Iris Robert never attended “regular” school. The 18-yearold South Burlington resident, who graduated with her associate degree from the Community College of Vermont last weekend, was homeschooled through high school until she turned 16 and then started taking college classes full-time. The pandemic turned the last two years at college, what would have been her first experience with actual classmates, into almost all virtual learning. But
like many teens who’ve weathered their adolescence during a global pandemic, Robert is resilient. After a year of writing poetry, throwing pottery, creating a podcast, tackling food insecurity among college students, reluctantly then confidently becoming a student leader, and earning her associate degree, Robert is a little nervous to graduate and a little nostalgic. “I think it’s really cool that my friends who are in public school who didn’t skip two years are also graduating this year,” Robert said, adding that since she didn’t have a high school graduation this feels
extra special. She recently took grad photos with one of her friends who lives in South Burlington, who she met at summer camp seven years ago. “It was so much fun to get together and catch up on how crazy our lives are and how we’re all going in different directions. I was like, wow, not much has changed besides us,” Robert said. No, the homeschooler trope is not true — Robert is your average poetry-loving, musical, bookworm teen. She loves Donna Tartt, a writer with ties to Vermont and See GRADUATION on page 12
A 7-acre slice of land bordering the Wheeler Nature Park that the city of South Burlington swapped in a lawsuit settlement with landowner J.A. McDonald, also known as JAM Golf, is the closest it’s ever been to actually having shovels in the ground. City officials gave the developer’s application for 32 mixed housing units their stamp of approval last year, and developer BlackRock Construction applied for an Act 250 permit — the final permit it needs to move forward — in September. While none of the planned homes are considered capital “A” affordable, BlackRock president Benjamin Avery argued the project will bring needed inventory to a starved market, with broad appeal to middle class families. But many residents are still fighting to keep the grassy parcel free of ticky tacky.
Residents fight Act 250 permit Over 125 neighbors in total have come together to fight the permit. Three homeowners associations, a separate association of residents against blasting and two local lawyers, John Bossange and James Leas, petitioned for party status and have submitted a heap of documents to the District 4 Environmental Commission reviewing the application, as well as a motion for a hearing to consider what they described as “the falsifications in the Act 250 application” and the “gross
distortion” of regional plans in a letter of support from the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. While Bossange and Leas have argued that the proposed project would radically disrupt local wildlife, negatively impact neighbors’ quality of life with blasting from construction, worsen carbon emissions and make traffic in the area unsafe, their latest beef hinges on the final criteria in any Act 250 application, which requires a project to align with local and regional plans. The Act 250 application misnomers the parcel as “suburban” when it should be labeled “rural,” per the regional plan for future land use; and as “residential, moderate density” when it should be labeled “very low intensity, principally open land,” per South Burlington’s 2016 comprehensive plan, Bossange and Leas argued in their June 1 motion. They also argued that a letter from the regional planning commission omits that the area in question is meant to “promote the preservation of Vermont’s traditional working landscape and natural area features” with “generally 1 dwelling unit per acre or less ... so that these places may continue to highlight the rural character and self-sustaining natural area systems.” As the project stands, about five units could be built per acre. “This isn’t about preserving my kitchen views, it’s about quality of life, the Wheeler Nature Park and what that has to do See ACT 250 on page 16