The Governor announced Wednesday, the first of what he hopes will be hundreds of new green jobs in Vermont at his Sheffield Wind Project "Ribbon Cutting Ceremony".
According to the Governor, Sheffield's Wind Project will create 10 fulltime jobs.
(First Wind's Website says it will be 3 or 4 part and full-time positions)
At a cost of about 100 million dollars to build, (1 million in state dollars and 60 million in federal subsidies) that works out to just ten million dollars for each position created. That sounds like a bargain.
What the Governor is forgetting is that, likely as a result of this project being built, Sheffield lost the King George Farm Private School in Sheffield, a long time opponent to this project - due to the noise, health effects, and environmental damage. The school spent nearly four hundred thousand dollars in legal fees.
KGFS was an employer with 1 million dollars a year in professional salaries and also brought another one million dollars into the community purchasing goods and services. They also paid fifty thousand dollars a year in taxes. That is just one of the industries we have lost.
The Governor would be wise to take some advice from former Governor Jim Douglas, when he coined the phrase, "Vermont Scale". It creates good business, good neighbors, and good policy. These large projects do just the opposite.
Greg Bryant
PO Box 36
Sheffield, Vermont 05866
802 745 7491
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