A welcoming Orange County needs Sen. Benson
I love our farm. My decision to return to Vermont came to me in the middle of a potato field in war-torn Afghanistan, where women were tending their soil as they had for centuries. After years in Afghanistan, I yearned for a relationship with land. Orange County is home in a way no other place could be.
But when I look around our communities, I also see what’s missing. I rarely meet anyone younger than I am. As one of the few minorities in our town, I know how welcoming we can be, but we’ve been making policy choices that shut other people out. Families who might make our towns more diverse and more alive can’t afford to come. None of this is inevitable. It comes from choices made in Montpelier. State Rep. Monique Priestley has often made the wrong choices.
Act 181 threatened our farm and future farmers. When we need someone in Montpelier to listen, Sen. John Benson was the first legislator to sit down with us. He has been present ever since, wherever the law’s consequences are being decided.
This summer, the Two Rivers Ottauquechee Regional Commission (TRORC) released a plan that the state’s Land Use Review Board found to include rural mandates that were discriminatory and exclusionary. Sen. Benson repeatedly advocated for us at regional planning meetings. Recently, he wrote to TRORC documenting their Open Meeting Law violations and the hardships their policies would impose. He also outlined a 2027 agenda to make meaningful public participation a priority.
I like Monique Priestley personally. But she voted for Act 181, then voted to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto. She supported a property tax bill that raised average bills 13.8% in a single year. As the consequences unfolded, she was absent.
Representation isn’t only how you vote. It’s whether you show up afterward to deal with the impacts. John Benson has voted in the interests of farmers, families, and affordability, and kept showing up for us.
If we want a rural Vermont where young people stay, newcomers are welcome, and the next generation can afford to make a life here, we need Sen. Benson.