As the Legislature looks to cut $25 million from next year's budget ($28 million if they adopt the package the governor outlined Saturday), the least you could do while sitting there on your buttocks in front of the computer is help.
The list of possible cuts includes Vermont promotional items, which means state agency staffers won't be getting new fleece vests with the state logo next year. We all interact with state government in our daily lives, making us all eligible to be experts in our own minds about what items the state live without. What do you recommend be cut from the state budget?
To start things off here's mine:
As a rough estimate it seems to me that in the last 10 years we have gone from having four traffic lights in the state to having 2.4 million traffic lights, one every 12 feet except on Williston Road where there is one every 4 inches. I can't help thinking that we're all set on the traffic light front for now.
Hinesburg just got its second traffic light, and it is a fine addition. People coming off the Charlotte Road can actually get onto Route 116 without waiting until the dead of night. But now there is talk of a third traffic light, and that's pushing it.
This one would go on Route 116, at the Estey's hardware plaza. The new bank going in just past the plaza would have to pay for installation, but the state would be doing the studies and presumably paying the upkeep. I'm offering it up on the chopping block of expenses.
How about you? (Keep in mind that your ideas - and mine - are at best ill-informed and probably bad.)
- Terri Hallenbeck
