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When Yves Bradley, owner of the Body Shop in Burlington, decided to replace all the old, wooden windows in the building he owns, at the corner of Church and Bank streets, with energy-efficient ones, he thought he was making a wise investment — for his business, his tenants, the city and the planet.... Read more

Champlain College has spent a lot of time lately trying to sell its neighbors and the Burlington City Council on a plan to buy property near the heart of downtown, tear down a building, and construct new apartments for 200 students.... Read more

Tim Riddle knew a large housing project was planned for the woods behind his house when he moved to Malletts Bay Avenue a couple years ago. What he didn’t know was that the developer would sell the project to a nonprofit housing group, or that the $240,000 condominiums planned for the site would be replaced by rental housing for low- and moderate-income residents.... Read more

The town of Essex Junction was covered in ice, but a little before 8 in the morning a few Sundays ago, some 200 men, women and children were filing into a nondescript white building just off Route 15. The lettering beside the double doorway read: “ESSEX ALLIANCE CHURCH. Making Friends out of Strangers.”... Read more

George Plumb grew up in Massachusetts, but he has been a Vermonter since 1963. Some years ago, after settling in Washington, Vermont, he began wondering: Why did every bucolic place he’d ever lived eventually get so crowded?... Read more

Which sounds more enticing: 1) a discussion of town planning, or 2) a steaming cup of homemade turkey, sausage and vegetable stew with a slice of fresh bread and some pumpkin pie for dessert?... Read more

Ezzedine Fatnassi takes comfort in knowing that when his time comes, he can be buried in a Muslim-only section of a cemetery in his adopted hometown of Burlington.

Fatnassi, a 54-year-old immigrant from Tunisia, helped negotiate an agreement last summer that sets aside 60 burial plots for Muslims in the city-owned Lakeview Cemetery.... Read more

BURLINGTON — Even though the Queen City uses about as much electricity today as it did in 1989 — a feat of energy efficiency — Burlington can do better. It can augment and diversify its renewable-energy portfolio, stabilize electricity rates, increase reliability and reduce CO2 emissions — all without raising the cost to ratepayers. That’s the word from Barbara Grimes, general manager of the Burlington Electric Department, which is asking voters to approve a $39.6 million bond for six project initiatives on the March 4 ballot.... Read more

Everyone knows farming entails backbreaking labor. But in the 21st century, Vermont's "working landscape" itself deserves overtime pay, because there's a lot less of it than there used to be. The Vermont Housing and Conservation commission reports that almost 163,000 acres, or 11 percent, of "productive farmland" statewide were converted to "other uses" between 1987 and 2002.... Read more

BURLINGTON Do Burlingtonians want a rock- and ice-climbing wall on the waterfront, or more public gardens, picnic tables and park benches? Would they prefer a new children’s museum, sailing center, outdoor ice rink and public café, or unobstructed views of the lake on undeveloped parkland? In short, will Queen City residents give the now-defunct Moran Plant a second lease on life, or vote to tear it down and start anew?... Read more