Eagle Times Staff
MONTPELIER, VT — The Campaign for Vermont Prosperity (CFV) has released poll results identifying the top issues that Vermonters care about.
“Vermonters’ consistent negative ratings of the economy, infrastructure, schools and housing costs — especially among independents — means that elected officials and policymakers should focus first on problem solving and ‘basic’ quality of life issues,” said Keith Frederick, one of the pollsters involved in the project.
The results released Tuesday, Dec. 5, show that Vermonters identify housing, cost of living and public safety as the top issues they care about. Further, respondents gave highly negative ratings on key issues, such as 77 percent giving the availability of affordable housing the lowest possible score. Infrastructure and general economic sentiment also found poor ratings with 73 percent and 69 percent negative, respectively.
Even education, which historically Vermonters are proud of, only found 34 percent positive ratings. Perhaps even more telling is that negativity toward public schools shot up to 71 percent in households with children, suggesting that parents are more likely to have a negative view of the quality of education than the public.
“The legislature, quite frankly, is out of touch with what Vermonters are asking for,” said CFV President Pat McDonald. “They have squandered opportunities to make meaningful progress on housing. Instead of focusing on creating better education for Vermont students, they are instead more interested in removing the quality educational options we have in independent schools. Instead of investing in our infrastructure and local environment, they prefer to spend big on carbon reduction.”
More results will be released by CFV in the coming weeks that will dig into some of the top issues the legislature has advanced in recent years and the specific policy differences between the legislature and governor on many of those initiatives.
The results can be found at tinyurl.com/bdh23k8a.
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