yeah, I gotcha - more a question about op's statement in the title

and how would you? your average vermonter doesn’t have a kiln or drying set up. most of us just season.

As far as I understand it, the goal is to encourage people to vote without party-based momentum getting in the way of their actual preferences. But I agree, I don’t like party affiliations either.

how do you figure? it seems to me like making 3rd party options more viable gives way to more representation of the will of the people.

it would also be nice to have high speed rail service. NYC service is awesome, but it’s a lengthy ride.

I think it should be required to house at least a majority of its students. I think we're in agreement on that point.

I think that a moratorium such as that would fit with the rhetoric we get from city council, but I don't think it will happen. It's crazy to me how little vertical development is allowed, and at this point I think that it's a hard sell for investors.

I think the onus of responsibility should really be on the city to ease up on the zoning nightmare here and allow more housing to be built. I'd be curious to see what percentage of the housing stock is occupied by students. Additionally, once you start implying that it's the private sector's responsibility to house people, how do you look at hotels or people with large houses/lots?

that's a fair point - in that case I think the homestead deduction should be standardized statewide and there should be different deductions for business and non-homestead with non-homestead being necessarily taxed at a higher rate than homestead. I don't think it makes sense to group non-homestead with business/rentals.

I'm sure enforcement would be difficult.

one of the huge issues with this is that the non-homestead rate includes businesses and therefor is prevented from increasing, so I believe in certain counties it’s actually lower than the homestead rate. personally I think that there should be a non-resident tax rate as non-homestead is inherently flawed and it can drive up rents.

as an example, look at Athens:

http://tax.vermont.gov/property/education-property-tax-rates

the burlington city council provided essentially no metrics to back up their decisions to restrict short term rentals, but one of the few points I found interesting is that they were estimated to only “take up” about 2-4% of the housing portfolio.

I want to be very clear that I’m not defending the guy or LEOSA -I just wanted to point out that LEOs have a very specific protection in this situation that isn’t extended to other civilians.

I think LEOSA (which I find to be an infuriating law) would preempt that unless the individual bar specifically prohibited firearms (which it probably doesn’t because it’s nigh impossible to get a ccw permit as a regular schmuck on NYC).

You sound like a fucking moron. We already have one of the most explicit enumerations on the right to keep and bear arms in the Vermont constitution. Article 16. I'm fully in favor of that as am I in favor of both of the propositions mentioned by OP.

You should educate yourself.