 Hello, everyone, and welcome to ongoing election coverage by town meeting television. My name is Bridget Higdon. I'm the managing editor at the St. Albans Messenger, the Milton Independent, and the Essex Reporter. This is one of many forums, Town Meeting Television is bringing you in advance of the primary election on Tuesday, August 9th. The primary elections select party candidates for the general election on November 8th. Our voters will elect state and national officials from your local state rep to the U.S. Senate. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with the issues that shape your local community. If you'd like to ask a question, you can join the webinar via the link shared via social media. You can also go ask a question verbally, so please raise your hand and you'll get your question shortly. If you'd like to submit a written question, use the Q&A feature in the Zoom webinar. You can also watch this panel on channel 1087, Burlington Telecom channel 17 and 217, as well as online at Town Meetings YouTube page. So we're here tonight with Brian Sheldon and Irene Renner, who are facing off in August for the Democratic nomination for the Chittenden North, the newest district here in Vermont for the Vermont State Senate. So thank you both for having us and being here. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having us, Bridget. Of course. So we'll get into some questions, but first let's find out a little bit about who you are. So please tell us why you're running for office and how you hope to serve your constituents. You'll have about a minute to do so right now. Brian, let's start with you. We'll start at the top of the alphabet first name-wise. That usually isn't in my advantage, but so thank you. Hi, Bridget. My name is Brian Sheldon. I was someone who was born and raised in Vermont. I love this state and I want our state to have a thriving economy. However, we need to face the real issues that hold us back from having affordable, livable communities. Some politicians today are too busy picking fights or finding wedge issues just to divide us. That's why I'm running for state Senate. As a small business owner and an engineer, I'm dedicated to solving even the hardest problems. As your senator, I'll bring everyone together in good faith with open discussions and that's how we best solve problems. The recent redistricting has given us a once in a generation opportunity to pick a senator from outside Burlington. Let's build together a coalition of community voices founded on mutual trust and respect for each other. That will show Vermont and indeed the whole country that politics can be about the common good again. I'm here today to ask for your vote so that I can be that bridge to bring together these four towns and make life better for all of the Monarchs. Thank you very much. Irene, please. Thank you, Bridget. My name is Irene Renner. I decided to run for office because residents of Chittenden North deserve a senator who has already been elected to and reliably served in the halls of government. For 17 years, I have listened to residents across Essex and worked on their behalf, devising creative common sense policies and frugal budgets. By spending time in the trenches, I learned what makes for good government. I developed a thick skin, resisted group think and won again and again by discovering and promoting the causes that the majority of my constituents care about. I was elected four times to the select board and I've also led nine successful issue campaigns at the polls. I work hard and I win often because I focus on what lots of people on the street, not just a few people in power, want and need. I'm enjoying getting to know people in the four towns in Chittenden North and I look forward to serving them once elected. Thank you. Thank you very much. As both of you just said, there are four towns in this district and so let's just quickly recap what they are for everyone who's watching. Chittenden North includes part of Essex town, all of Fairfax, all of Westford, and most of Milton. Both of you are longtime residents of Essex. So tell us a little bit about how you've been getting to know residents in the other communities where you do not live during this campaign. How have you been getting to know Fairfax, Westford, and Milton? Irene, let's start with you. Sure. Well, I've spent time in each of these towns, whether it's been at the library or the town hall or at public events, just getting to know everyday people as well as some of the folks who are in elected or appointed positions. I've attended some public meetings. I have done some door knocking. It's been a really neat opportunity to drive around towns that I had not spent lots of time in before and just appreciate the beauty and once again, the diversity of each town, which is distinct in its own way and yet I think has quite a few things in common, which is why I'm so excited about this particular district. Thank you. Thank you. And Brian, go ahead. Yeah, I've been introducing myself to Milton, to Fairfax, to Westford. As in some of the same ways that Ms. Renner has been. I've been attending meetings, I've been knocking on doors and one of the things that I've been introducing myself and asking what issues are most important to them. And as I've been knocking on doors and talking on to voters, the issue that comes up over and over again is housing and affordability in general. Business owners have jobs, but they're desperate for workers. And they can't afford to, they can't afford to live near these jobs. Young families are looking to buy their first home, retirees on fixed income. Housing really affects everyone. So I've been, as a small business owner and someone who's born and raised in Vermont, I care deeply about this problem. I've been watching businesses struggle and young Vermonters forced out of state to find housing. It's just heartbreaking. The newly formed Chittin North District needs someone with real-world experience who can build coalitions and work across the aisle to tackle this and many other issues head on. Great. Thank you. So, I feel like you'll get two years in the Senate before you got to run again. So talk just a little bit about what you would want to get passed in that two-year time frame. What is the most important piece of legislation for you? Brian, you just talked about housing. Is that your answer to that question as well? Well, housing is definitely my top priority. Well, and not because it's my top priority, but because it's the top priority of the people that I'm meeting in Milton and Fairfax and Westford and in Essex. So it's just, it's just hard, there are too many people who are, I mean, Fairfax and Milton are towns where people who live in Stowe and Burlington move to, despite the fact that because they can't afford, they can't afford housing in Burlington. So we need to build more housing. And we need to act, we need to tweak Act 250. Act 250 did a great job making rural parts, keeping rural parts of Vermont rural, but we need to modernize it so that we can encourage more walkable neighborhoods in our city centers, and build rural parts of Vermont rural, and build dense modern housing to both address the supply of housing, which is good for climate change. That leads to my second priority, climate change. The second largest cause of Vermont carbon emissions is home heating. So that's why we need to build more, when we build more housing, they should, they should continue to be built to a green standard. We should, we should like the, like the two housing bills that the governor just signed, there's money there to upgrade housing and heating of our older housing stock. That way we can make less, less use of fossil fuels. My third, my third, my third priority is to protect democracy. Our democracy is hanging by a thread. Vermont is a leader in this area. Thank you, Jim condos, but there are a few things we can do to make it even easier, even more secure for all Vermonters to cast their votes. And Irene will move on to you in terms of talking about your priorities and a piece of legislation that you can get done in in two years, please. Well, there's no magic pill and there's no magic bill. I hope to see Vermont continue to protect the rights of our most vulnerable citizens. Those who are homeless, low income, isolated. Vermont should also protect everyone with a physical body that some state governments are now imposing restrictions on based on religious beliefs that should have no bearing on a person's identity. A person's choice of a partner and a person's freedom to reproduce or not. I want to protect our rights to privacy and bodily autonomy. Children are also vulnerable in our society. It's imperative that we make it easier, not more difficult for daycare providers to stay in business. Regulations had become onerous in recent years. They need to be revisited. It's also imperative that we screen very young children for physical and mental health challenges. Providing appropriate health before those challenges manifest into learning difficulties or behavioral issues gives those children a greater chance of surviving and succeeding as youth and adults. Those caught up in addictive behaviors are also vulnerable. We're losing more and more Vermonters to opioid deaths. The governor's recent veto of H728 shows that he is not committed to meeting the needs of Vermonters and the need for additional resources. That bill would have allowed for the study of an overdose prevention facility. It would have expanded the number of needle exchange programs and it would have examined barriers to treatment access in medical insurance practices. That's a bill I would like for us to revisit in the next session, along with many others. Thank you. The last couple of years have really been swept up in the COVID pandemic and it taught us lots of things, but one of them is that there's lots of inequities in health care in Vermont. So let's talk a little bit about the increasing cost that health care has put on Vermonters, as well as sort of what we can do as the next step here to make it more affordable in this state. Brian, can we start with you? Sure. I'm a small business owner. And one of the consequences of that is that I pay for my own health insurance. I buy it on Vermont's exchange. So I can tell you exactly how much that costs be $571 a month. And I also know that that plan has a very high deductible. What this does is it makes me postpone getting care. For example, about four years ago, I was given a skin cancer diagnosis, and I didn't get an appointment to get it removed, not for four years. And when I did, it cost me $4,000 out of pocket. I know that I'm not alone in this experience. I know that these decisions are affecting many Vermonters, especially our most vulnerable. That's why I believe that health care is a human right. And then why we should work towards expanding health care to cover more and more Vermonters. And why we need to do everything we can to lower the fastest growing part of health care prescription drugs by allowing Vermonters to import drugs from Canada. Also, since I have a little bit of extra time here, I want to say our health care workers are exhausted. They've passed a lot of them coming out of this pandemic. They've been overworked, asked to work overtime, disrespected, and put themselves at risk. And they did that for us. So I just wanted to say, thank you. Thank you. Irene, what is next for health care in Vermont. I want to agree that health care is a human right, and prescription drug cross need to be brought in line. Our providers are heroically during the COVID pandemic. I don't know if they are feeling appreciated, but we need to check in with them. We continually hear that wages working conditions and patient care ratios are not keeping them in that industry. And that's dangerous for all Vermonters as we lose more and more health care professionals. The legislature needs to look systemically the problems caused by the business of health care, such as the fact that we have one in Vermont that is run by a vertical monopoly. One specific improvement we could make would be to nurture a professional permanent workforce of nurses who have skin in the game as far as patient outcomes are concerned. Higher paid traveling nurses who are not as invested in our community have been brought in degrading morale and patient care. Without intervention, without intervention and regulation by the state, the delivery of health care and retention of our health care professionals may deteriorate still further. I believe that health care also overlaps with, I believe that elder care overlaps with health care. We need to expand programs that allow people to remain in their homes as they age, rather than moving them into nursing homes, which SAP individual savings. And once that money is gone, they depend on Medicaid to pay the bills. We need to be affected by morale. We need to find new ways to keep older residents in the workforce through job restructuring and accommodations for physical constraints such as mobility or hearing challenges that kind of naturally happen as we age. A part-time position or job share can provide sociability, a sense of accomplishment and supplemental income to older workers as they mentor younger ones. Thank you. Ahead of this forum, I asked readers of my newspapers what questions they had for candidates. And I've got a question here from a Milton resident who emailed me. She said that Vermont has compared to other states in the nation, relatively diverse gun laws. But most recently, the state legislature extended the maximum wait period for a background check and also banned firearms from hospitals. So what other reforms, if any, in terms of guns, would you like to see in Vermont? Irene, let's start with you here, please. Sure. Well, first of all, I respect gun ownership as a part of our rural state culture. I support universal background checks with mandatory reporting for all firearm transfers. I support a mandatory waiting period between purchase and possession. And I support the temporary removal of firearms in cases of domestic violence. Thank you very much. Brian, what else would you like to see in terms of gun reform, if anything? Yeah, recent events have reminded us that what we all want is safety. We want to be able to go to the grocery store and come back alive. We want to know when we drop our kids off at school that they'll be there to pick, they'll be there when we go to pick them up. I think any representative in this district should be so concerned. Gun violence is not just a national issue. Alicia Shanks was shot at a school in this district in 2006. Matt took his own life with a freshly purchased gun into 2018. And Professor Reese was shot and killed by a straight bullet during my opponent's time on the Essex Select Board. Most Vermonters believe we need stronger gun safety protections than we have now. We're not as divided as we might think. But what we need are politicians with the guts to act. I'm not going to take away anybody's guns, because I can't. My high level opinion is a gun should be regulated in some similar ways as automobiles, licensing insurance, titling background checks on all sales. Everyone says that they're for common sense gun restrictions. It's just when we get to the details that the political attacks start up again. And this is what I'm talking about the attacks stop progress. So what I would like to do is ask the gun owners of our of our four towns. What common sense gun regulations are okay. And, and what aren't. Can we make background checks universal. What's the reasonable link for waiting period. I would, I would ask about red flag laws, but we passed that this by this biennium. What are the other things that you'd accept. Let's get together and talk, because doing nothing is no longer an option. Irene, you are just briefly mentioned in Brian's response there do you have anything else you'd like to add or I can say that I was on a select board that appointed a firearms discharge ordinance task force that met 17 times and presented a comprehensive report to the select board. Unfortunately, not all members of that select board were willing to take the recommendations of that task force and make any of them. Policy. The board did sit on it from a number of years before revisiting it and re looking at the maps and things, but as a member of a five member board as you can only imagine. You have to go with what the majority thinks. So my personal opinion, unlike as a representative or senator. My vote was not recorded necessarily and put on my record. It was a five member board and you make decisions as a team. Thanks. Thank you. Great, we've got about 10 minutes left here in our forum, believe it or not already time is flying by. So if there are folks listening with questions feel free to pop them in the chat at this time. Let's move on to talk about the climate. What is next for climate policy in Vermont and which initiatives to you should take priority. I've kind of forgotten where we've left off here but Brian let's go to you here with climate please. I'm happy to the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the two highest causes of climate of carbon emissions in Vermont are our transportation and home heating. There's, there's good news and bad news there the good news is is that our, that our grid is is one of the cleanest grids in the country. So we need to, we need to tackle the, we need to tackle those things first. I spoke a little bit about housing and how we should build housing to green standard, which also addresses the, the, the, the climate climate issue at the same time. And why I'm a, why I'm a supporter of the, of the wastewater project in, in, in Westford, that the, what they're doing in Westford shows that that we can, that we can build more housing and do so in a green way at the same time. In fact, not doing it is less green. So in terms of, in terms of transportation, we definitely need to move to, we need to electrify Vermont's fleet. And I support giving, I support giving subsidies to get more electric cars on the road. Mostly because most Vermonters don't buy cars new. So we need to get, we need to get electrical cars on the road now, so that they're depreciating and, and people can buy them used. So, thank you. Great. Thank you. Irene what climate initiatives should take priority for you. Oh, where to begin there is no solution that solves every problem. So of course, electric vehicles which are hot now more installing charging stations as fast as we can and yet we also know that electric vehicles, a lot of minerals to start the batteries and that that's not a permanent solution either to our woes. Innovation is always in season efficiency is always important and I don't want us to forget about those as we get all excited about renewables or the next biggest consumer item to purchase to solve this problem. I was someone who's been out front on the energy scene. Very early, I was a charter member of the Essex Energy Task Force formed in 2007. The NFL campaign, which we can chuckle about now but they were the hot item back then. And we sold 40,000 of them here in Essex to people to get them to scale down their energy use when lighting their residences. I was a hybrid Toyota vehicle in 2005, and I used to joke with the town manager at the time constantly when are we going to get hybrid Priuses for our police department because a lot of times they're idling. And he would always say to me oh you can't get the equipment that you need for the police cars. Well, that's funny because I was overseas a few years later and saw Prius police cars so I quickly texted him a photo. I think a lot of this is political will. A lot of this, as always is just making a commitment to do something and finding out how to do it. When the police facility committee was formed to study how we might build a building to get our police department out of their cramped quarters, because we had promised them for 30 years that we would do so that they would have their own standalone I alone on the select board insisted it had to be energy efficient. I was put down and marginalized and minimized every time I raised the energy question back in 2009 and 2010. So we have come a long way because when that police facility was finally spec they respect to be near net zero. Interestingly enough, during the course of those meetings by the police facility and committee and there are actually three committees long story. We were told that we would have to hire someone to ensure that that building performed properly. The police facility was constructed in the penny wise pound foolish way that some organizations operate that slipped by when came to budget time, and there was no money found to have someone work on that. So here we are years later the police facility has had some trouble being close to net zero because we did not invest as we were told to so there are so many ways that we can do important things but if we only go halfway and we don't do everything that we're supposed to do, things aren't as energy efficient as they need to be and finally I'll just say quickly, Hydro Quebec is not an answer. It floods native lands in Canada to provide green energy to us. Same thing with the McNeil generating plant on a good day it's 24% efficient because I'm told they have to use propane to dry out the wood chips that come down from Canada on the train so all of these things that we point to so proudly as making energy state are not necessarily so so let's lift the cover. Let's be honest with ourselves and let's look for things that are truly saving the planet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have just a couple minutes after and I want to get in another reader question. Who says that Vermont veterans face unique challenges. How in the Senate would you plan to help them. Brian let's hear from you. You did. You are correct Irene. What can you do for veterans in Vermont. What can I do for veterans in Vermont. Wow, that's a good question. As usual, I'm sure they have concerns that have not yet been addressed and listening to people is my forte and I believe the experts. I don't know more than they do I have not sir but I know that veterans often feel marginalized and forgotten, especially if they're disabled. So they get tax breaks locally, but there is definitely more we can be doing for them health care wise, and in other ways to help them feel part of our communities and an integral part. Thank you. And Brian on to you. Thanks project. Thanks for taking this question. My stepmother is a retired army officer. And it always makes me and my dad laugh when we go on the basis with his military ID, and they call him Colonel Sheldon. My dad was never in the military. My stepmom is Colonel Sheldon so I have two issues that I wanted to talk about in terms of veterans. We shouldn't tax military pensions in Vermont. We have lots of veterans here in Vermont. They do great things for our communities, and we should work to keep them here. One point we were one of 14 states that tax military pensions and, and this biennium we passed a compromise to reduce that tax, but I don't think it went far enough. Also, we need to make it easier for our deployed Vermonters to vote in local elections. I talked about democracy being one of my priorities. Vermont does a pretty good job here, but Vermont needs to remain a leader in voting rights. The issue is here is that if you're deployed on town meeting day to a cave in Afghanistan, you can definitely get your ballot by mail. However, oftentimes it's difficult to find a printer and envelope and post office to get that to mail that ballot back to your town on time. Have you all ever used an online signing system like DocuSign to sign a lease or buy a car? The Secretary of State's office stand up a DocuSign like system or even use DocuSign to help deployed Americans to help our deployed Vermonters so that they can vote in our local elections. Thank you very much. Let's see. We have about two minutes left here. So that's just enough time for each of you to give us a closing statement. Let's keep it to about 30 seconds or so. What final words do you want to leave with voters? Irene. I'm Irene Renner and I advocate for transparent government. I seek out constituents' opinions and incorporate their priorities and concerns into policymaking and budgeting. I've attended 100 meetings each year and summed up the proceedings and made them accessible to residents. During my 12 years as an Essex Select Board member, I never missed a meeting. I take representation very seriously. I continue to ask probing questions, call out inconsistencies, and speak up for marginalized populations. I have a business background working in technology, communication, and human resources. Among civic contributions, I deliver meals on wheels, volunteer at a food shelf, and chair a preschool board. Thank you to town meeting television for hosting, to Bridget for moderating, and to my opponent for participating as well. Thanks Irene. Brian, what final words do you have for voters here? Sure. With all the problems that we're facing, we need to get past partisanship. It's time to stop picking fights. It's time to come together and work to solve problems. I've walked door to door in every town in this district and spoken with hundreds of you. I know what concerns you and I know what concerns your family. I'm going to continue listening to everybody. I'm going to keep doing that work that I've been doing to build coalitions of community voices. Together, let's create outcomes that make a difference. Great. Thank you both very much. Again, my name is Bridget Higdon. This is Irene Renner and Brian Sheldon. They are running for to represent the Chittenden North District. And they are both Democrats in the primary this August. You can request your absentee ballot beginning on June 25, which is just around the corner. So thank you for tuning into town meeting TV for their ongoing coverage of community candidates. You can find this and more forums at channel 17.TV. And don't forget to vote of course on June 9 or excuse me on August 9, or by requesting a mail-in ballot from your town clerk's office as early as June 25. Or by just stopping by. You can just walk into your town meeting or your town offices starting June 25. Wonderful. And that's it from us tonight. Thank you all very much for joining us. And thanks to town meeting TV. Have a great evening.