“I hear from residents that they want to see more businesses move in, and I wholeheartedly agree with them. The way to encourage this is to support the development of our commercial and industrial areas. How to encourage local businesses to stay in City Center if and when big national anchor stores move in, risking to outprice our local businesses? We can advocate for the creation of tax incentives for local businesses to locate in our City Center and become new creative, perhaps technological-minded entities. Many VT politicians have advocated for Vermont to become a mini Silicon Valley, and why not? So I’m thinking about connectivity and free Wi-Fi, which NYC is putting into place. There are ways for the Council to look at our assets and think about ways to attract businesses to invest here and also to attract them here through the various resources that we might provide such as Wi-Fi AND a skilled and attractive workforce by keeping our schools strong.”

You can watch the entire video of the February 11 Candidate Forum at South Burlington High School at https://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/south-burlington-city-council-debate