Originally posted by GoremanX I'll tell you what, Northern Vermont is the awesomest place to live free and get along with everyone. Being right near a decent-sized University means people are totally open-minded and a vast diversity of people are here 9 months out of the year. They even embrace my Quebecness, which is rare.
Well, people being from Quebec never bothered me.
There's kind of a reputation they don't like anyone *else* though.
I haven't spent a lot of time that far north, so I wasn't aware of any really big border tension.
College towns are a pretty likely kind of destination, in general, they tend to have the work for my sweetie, and there's enough going on without being all big-city, which is good. As long as you're fortunate enough to have a good circle of friends, not bad at all. I think it'd be a good place for us.
Cheerful thought, though, Vermont: They seem to be doing good stuff with that state, in general: preserving and revitalizing town centers instead of encouraging sprawl, green stuff, and it'd frankly be a whole less stressful not having to worry so much about the state government flaking out and doing mean and/or stupid things every time you turn around. (Or being immobilized *by* people trying to do mean and/or stupid things.
) We could see a lot of our scattered friends by train from there, adopt a doggie or two like we've always wanted, the tourist dollars aren't quite as threatened there as in some other places we've been, which means more cash in the local economy for my little enterprises. Plenty of that niche wedding market to serve if I can get my health reliable enough to promise showing up in good shooting trim.
Lots of good possibilities. Northern New England is one of the areas we like, though. Just for me, there's coping with the winters, but I can hack that, I think. Not like there's a whole lot of choice as yet.
I really don't like all this not-knowing-where-we'll be for-how-long, but we're pretty anxious to get the heck out of the South. Wasn't our idea to come down here, anyway, but the people swinging the budget axes aren't exactly science and education-friendly, nor to this town, ...which it seems they'd just as soon strangle. (At least as an artsy college town: I'm sure the sprawl-developers like this state of affairs just fine, but it's a mess and the city's split by gerrymandered districts so the 'libruls' don't have much say in things, despite the leanings of the town. Basically, the scam is, the tax law is so set up that no matter how many businesses close downtown, the rents stay jacked way up: the big property owners write off that huge rent they aren't getting and the inflated values, fund more speculative development of other things outside town, effectively tax-free/subsidized even if *those* are empty, so only as many high-end venues and boutiques as the downtown can support (Which doesn't, obviously, account for all the space) can start or stay open... which tends to mean that the vaunted arts and alternative scene and what made the place *interesting*/livable is stifled.
Especially if they turn around and impoverish the University, and thus the students, thus, surely, those high-end boutiques, this is the picture of an unsustainable situation I don't care to stick around for, basically. It's always a hazard of artsy communities: the artsy types raise property values, then richer people want to live there, eventually the artists get priced out and you're left with mere gentrification. By the look of the place, it should be a beacon of opportunity for new and offbeat business, but 'supply and demand' won't adjust that way cause of how things are skewed.
'Taxes' are a sacred cow here, apart from regressive ones like sales taxes on food and 'sin taxes' (Which may be fine for public health, but they're *designed* to cut off their own revenue stream and thus never meet budget expectations, while taking yet more money out of the poorer folks' budgets, again depressing local business) That's before we get into who of course has to deal with the social tensions and scapegoating that arise in conservative communities when this kind of stuff inevitably results in less-than-happy people.
(Anyway, not meaning to start a debate on the rightness or wrongness of the politics, but suffice it to say that I don't think the undeniable and ongoing economic effects on a place like this are a situation I want us to get stuck in. We're both really considering cutting our losses and getting back to sovereign U.S. territory.
Simple facts: this state legislature passed a bill to claim they reserve the right to ignore Federal law, particularly including civil rights law, whenever they darn well feel like it. For all the time and resources and effort that have gone into sweetie's degree, we're playing 'chicken' with time and way too many factors to even be sure it'll get finished down here. (Yeah, it's pretty stressy.) These bones and hands and heart still have plenty of 'part of the solution' left in em, but aren't quite up to that *after* being treated like we're 'a problem.'
) 'It could only be worse in Texas,' right?
Might actually end up PMing you with some questions if you're very familiar with Nothern Vermont area, though, Goreman.