Say “Beetlejuice” three times, and you summon the man himself. 

But in East Corinth, where production on the movie Beetlejuice 2 has begun, locals are hesitant to say the word, bound to secrecy by non-disclosure agreements.

“It all kind of happens quietly,” Rick Cawley, chair of the Corinth selectboard, said of the film. “I’ve only heard about it on a need-to-know basis.”

In the late ’80s, a film crew descended on East Corinth to shoot the original Beetlejuice. The resulting cult classic depicted Barbara and Allen Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), who die in a car crash and are left to inhabit their home as ghosts. The Deetz family — including Lydia, a goth teen played by Winona Ryder — buys the home, and the Maitlands attempt to haunt them out of the property. Along the way, the ghostly husband and wife solicit the not-so-helpful help of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), ultimately finding peace with their erstwhile enemies the Deetzes.

Exterior shots in the movie were filmed in the rural Orange County town of about 1,500 residents. A now-shuttered general store, a white Masonic lodge, and a prop covered bridge all featured in the Tim Burton gothic comedy. 

The sequel will feature original cast members Ryder, Keaton and Catherine O’Hara, as well as new additions Justin Theroux, Jenna Ortega and Willem Defoe. Burton will again direct. Primarily filmed in England, the production will shoot in Corinth later this summer, according to Cawley.

On foot, this reporter trekked through the hills of Corinth, hunting for details about the new movie. But locals, roped into the production themselves, stayed mum. (A publicist for Warner Brothers declined to comment.) 

After a few knocks on the locked door of the East Corinth Congregational Church, a space the production has been using for storage, the Rev. KellyAnn Donahue poked her head out. She said she couldn’t talk about the film.

Some residents quietly pointed to the community-supported ski hill Northeast Slopes, suggesting a volunteer there may have some involvement in the new production. The barn-red covered bridge, built for the first Beetlejuice, even found a home at the ski area, where it houses part of hill’s T-bar. But the volunteer, muzzled by a legal “pinky swear,” politely declined to talk. 

No amount of shoe-leather reporting in 90-degree weather seemed enough to overcome the Hollywood gag order. Atop a green hillside on the way into town, the production team this week toiled away under the boiling sun, erecting what appeared to be a house — the house, in fact, of Beetlejuice fame. But “no trespassing” signs blocked the way up the hill, past the crew’s shiny cars with Massachusetts plates. 

Remnants of the original Beetlejuice reveal themselves in East Corinth, even if answers to a reporter’s inquiries do not. A still from the film — a car bursting through the side of a covered bridge — is tacked to a stop sign on Chicken Farm Road. A poster outside Corinth’s white Masonic lodge, transformed in the movie to Miss Shannon’s School for Girls, shows another frame. 

Beetlejuice tourists descend on Corinth from as far away as California to see the sights, according to Jennifer Spanier, library director at the town’s Blake Memorial Library. Superfans find their way into the library, looking for more lore. 

“I’ll be like, ‘I bet they’re a Beetlejuice person,’ because maybe they’re dressed a little goth, or they just look like they aren’t from here,” Spanier said. 

She, too, has been sworn to secrecy due to peripheral involvement in the sequel. 

“It’s called ‘Operation Blue Hawaii’ or something like that,” Spanier said of the production’s covert dealings. “It’s a code name.”

Finally, after all that marching up and down East Corinth’s humble main street, the story seemed destined to break open: a truck, idling outside the library, with a director’s clapboard stenciled to the door. The crew!

This intrepid gumshoe sidled up to the driver’s side window, gesturing inquisitively at the man eating french fries inside. He lowered the window. 

Sixteen years in the business, and the man had encountered few places as … quiet … as East Corinth. 

“This is like no man’s land,” he said. He’d parked beside the library to get some Wi-Fi — cell signal being finicky at best. “There’s nothing to do around here. At all.”

The man, from Massachusetts, declined to provide his name, explaining that he’d signed an NDA, and his union contract prevented him from talking to the press. But under the cloak of anonymity, he spoke with candor — not about the film, but about the sleepy hamlet it had brought him to.

“Unfortunately, it’s Corinth. That’s how you say it, right?” he said, emphasizing the second syllable. “There’s only one store in town.” 

Asked how he imagines the town will handle the hubbub when shooting finally begins, he chuckled. 

“It’ll be a circus.”

Rick Cawley, chair of the Corinth selectboard, recalled the first Beetlejuice back in the 80s.

“Everybody was interested to say the least,” he remembered of the East Corinth shoot. The production crew erected a faux house and manufactured a barn-red covered bridge. 

Early in the original film, Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis fall through the bridge, dying and becoming the film’s central ghosts in the process. 

Strange as it may sound for a famous Tim Burton production to appear in the roughly 1,500 person Orange County town, Cawley said Beetlejuice wasn’t a total surprise. The frequently photographed East Corinth village epitomizes quaint Vermont town with its white-steepled church and Holsteins on the hillside. Plus, The Survivors, a 1983 comedy featuring Robin Williams and Walter Matthau, filmed in Corinth a few years prior, Cawley said. That production even enlisted the help of his husky-mix, though the dog didn’t feature in the final film.  

When Beetlejuice came to town, it was “just a little blip,” Cawley said, though the film struck a chord with a certain population in town. “A generation younger than me were kind of enthralled because it was this quirky, cool movie.”

More recently, Cawley got a call from a location scout for Warner Brothers, inquiring about shooting the sequel. The production has since gotten Corinth’s road crew, fire chief and constable involved in pre-production, assisting with traffic control and prop building. 

“We like getting on the map,” he said. “It’s kind of cool.”

In small towns, periods of time are marked ‘before’ and ‘after’ big events. In Corinth, one of those events was the filming of Beetlejuice, Amy Peberdy, a town resident, said. 

“Now all we have is, ‘Remember the Covid years,’ ” she joked. 

Peberdy moved to town the year after production on Beetlejuice wrapped. Locals had stories of famous actors walking into their kitchens to change into their costumes, she said. “It was that kind of production.”

Over the years, Beetlejuice-specific tours have come through town, Peberdy said, and posters around town labeled the various sights from the movie.

“People would go up to the signs and ‘Ahh,’ ” she recalled, “like they were some kind of religious relic.”

Recently, Peberdy has spotted action on the hilltop where the Beetlejuice house stood: big equipment, earth moving. She expects a forthcoming call for extras, though shooting has not begun. 

In the Tim Burton-directed film, Barbara and Allen Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), die in a car accident, and are left to inhabit their home as ghosts. The Deetz family — including Lydia, a goth teen played by Winona Ryder — buys the home, and the Maitlands attempt to haunt them out of the property. Along the way, they solicit the not-so-helpful help of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), ultimately finding peace with their erstwhile enemies the Deetzes.

Shot in characteristic Burton style, the movie is spooky-but-whimsical, often featuring gothic special effects that appear consciously low-budget. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Like a ghost cloaked in NDAs, Beetlejuice 2 quietly begins production in East Corinth.

A Vermont state representative’s home was vandalized with paint soon after hundreds of people were required to move out of motels on Thursday.

“Isn’t it nice to have a home” was written in red capital letters on the garage door of Democrat Martin LaLonde’s house in South Burlington, according to Police Chief Shawn Burke.

LaLonde reported the graffiti around 9 a.m. on Friday, Burke said, and police are investigating. The letters could be seen through an apparent fresh coat of white paint later in the morning.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate declined to extend a pandemic-era program that used federal cash, which has since run dry, to expand the number of unhoused people who could stay in the state’s hotels and motels.

The program’s end — and the waves of evictions anticipated this summer, starting with some 800 people on Thursday — has divided Democrats, with some in the party’s left wing calling for more funding to stave off a predicted surge in homelessness. Advocates and service providers have also decried the decision, noting that shelters are already full, leaving those exiting the motels with limited options. A total of about 2,800 are expected to leave motels in the coming months.

South Burlington police officers conducted a canvass of the neighborhood searching for “ambient video,” Burke said, which would be reviewed for further leads.

LaLonde did not respond to messages sent by phone and email on Friday.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont state rep’s home vandalized after first round of motel program evictions.

This story by Lisa Scagliotti first appeared in the Waterbury Roundabout on May 25.

A little over a year after learning that its school district was using restraint and seclusion with students at an alarming rate, the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board has adopted a new policy that officially bans most uses of the practices starting with the 2023-24 school year in the fall.  

The move means that the school district will now have stricter guidelines in place than state policy allows when it comes to employees and contracted staff who need to manage challenging student behaviors.

The issue has been a top priority this school year after the district’s use of the practices was found to be particularly high among schools in Vermont. Former board member and Brookside Primary School special education teacher Brian Dalla Mura brought the matter to the attention of the board and administration in spring 2022. Dalla Mura, who now works in another school district, pointed to statistics showing reported incidents at what was then Thatcher Brook Primary School in Waterbury in the 2017-18 school year. He found that 281 reports were made based on data collected by the federal Office of Civil Rights.

The 2017 figures are the most recent available and they show 11 Vermont schools with more than 50 restraints, only four of which had greater than 100. Fayston Elementary had 105 restraints and Thatcher Brook was the only one with more than 200, Dalla Mura found. The Harwood district’s total across all schools for that year was 451, he said.  

According to the state definitions, physical restraint means using physical force “to prevent an imminent and substantial risk of bodily harm to the student or others.” The Harwood district’s new policy applies to prone and supine restraints. Prone physical restraint means holding a student face down on their stomach using physical force in order to control the student’s movement. Supine restraint means holding a student on their back using physical force for the same purpose. The techniques can be dangerous and even lethal as they impact the child’s ability to breathe.

Seclusion refers to confining a student “alone in a room or area from which the student is prevented or reasonably believes he or she will be prevented from leaving,” according to the state definition. Doctors, psychologists and advocates say the experience can be traumatizing to a child. This does not include a “time-out” situation where a student is not left alone and is under adult supervision, according to the state rules.

The issue came to light as the district’s administration was in transition. Brigid Nease was in the final weeks of her tenure as superintendent and current Superintendent Mike Leichliter was preparing to start in his new role on July 1. Leichliter moved to Vermont from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a superintendent in a system that bans the practices entirely. Vermont is among a minority of states that still allows the tactics to be used with children as young as preschoolers. 

When the current school year opened last August, Harwood staff and contractors who work as support staff for special education were prohibited from using the restraining techniques and from using closed rooms for seclusion.

Administrators on May 24 shared statistics with the school board saying there have been 39 incidences of restraint — none using prone or supine methods — so far this year compared with 129 by this time last school year. Five restraints in the 2021-22 school year were prone restraints, Leichliter added. Also this year, there have been no seclusions compared with 30 last year, officials said.  

School administrators this year have worked on modifying district protocols, they’ve added in new trainings, and a school board committee began drafting a new policy to address the issue. 

A parallel process began in Montpelier this year led by Waterbury state Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, with the introduction of a bill that would look to ban prone and supine restraints and seclusion statewide. Although state lawmakers took testimony, the legislation did not advance and remains pending for the legislature to take up in 2024. 

An exception permits some seclusion  

In April, the school board committee completed drafting a policy that calls for the elimination of prone and supine restraints. It also would prohibit seclusion with one exception being “in situations where physical restraint is contraindicated for a particular student.” That exception would only be in place until June 30, 2024, according to the new policy. 

Leichliter and other administrators assured the board that they believed the exception is unlikely to be used and that those circumstances are rare and have not occurred this year or in recent memory. 

That exception led several board members to not vote for the new policy on Wednesday. While the measure received nine votes in favor, Fayston representatives Mike Bishop and Danielle Dukette both voted no; Duxbury member Life LeGeros abstained. The chair typically does not vote; Waterbury board member Marlena Tucker-Fishman was absent.

All three who were not in the “yes” column thanked the policy committee and the administrators for their work on the policy but said they would have liked to see a full ban on seclusion. 

“I don’t think it makes any sense to let it go for another year,” Bishop said.

Dukette agreed, calling the new policy “a substantial step forward” that falls short of the input the board heard from the community on the issue. “The input from the community was quite extensive and very passionate. There are strong feelings against the use of seclusion,” she said. “They are now working effectively without it … I had to vote in support for what the community has spoken so strongly about. That’s my job on this.” 

Leichliter said the point was discussed at length at the policy committee level with administrators. “While the belief is that the district wants no instances of seclusion, the committee felt that if a parent felt that for reasons like personal physical trauma that seclusion was preferred as opposed to restraint, there should be a very specific procedure written that would consider this as an option with medical documentation,” he said. 

The new policy also requires that school staff follow state guidelines in using seclusion. Procedures on how to implement seclusion under this new approach are needed for next school year, he noted. 

LeGeros acknowledged the challenge the committee had in crafting a policy that charts new ground. “It is such a tough issue because there was just a lot of harm done by our district and probably resulting trauma from that. It’s awkward because most of us weren’t necessarily here or at this table during that time,” he said. “But when there’s a process that’s creating harm — especially disproportional to people who are from marginalized communities — you gotta stop the harm. I appreciate the leadership from [Leichliter] for stopping that as far as restraints go. Ultimately, the fact that we allow seclusion to last another year, there’s no secret that I’m disappointed in that.” 

Reached on May 25 after the vote, Wood echoed disappointment that seclusion was not fully banned for another year but she said she was happy to see the district take the first step in moving away from the tactics that are considered harmful and dangerous. “The school district has made great progress in the last year, and I look forward to continuing that progress for the safety of students and staff. I am hopeful that the bill I have introduced banning seclusion and restraint, H.409, will be adopted during the next legislative session,” Wood said. “Although the state has a policy on the use of restraint and seclusion, obviously there is no enforcement and very little data tracking on this issue. The impact on students is undeniable and so this needs to change on a statewide level.”

Dalla Mura, whose experience witnessing restraint and seclusion at Brookside prompted him to research the issue and call for change, said last week that he was happy to see the new policy adopted for the coming school year. “I look forward to the 2024-2025 school year when seclusion will also be banned in HUUSD schools,” he said. “Although the new policy gives me hope that fewer students will be subjected to inappropriate and dangerous restraint practices moving forward, my heart goes out to the students and families that were impacted by past practices.”

Warren board member Jonathan Young reflected on the issue just before the vote was taken, saying he didn’t think the school board and administration could have made such a significant change so quickly just several years ago when he joined the board. “It’s amazing and refreshing and hopeful to me that we’ve come so far so quickly,” he said. “We made good decisions. It makes me proud to be part of this board.”

Board member Ashley Woods of Warren chaired the policy committee. “It was a huge learning experience for me — just the intensity of this issue and how important it is to this community,” Woods said, thanking a number of individuals involved in the process including the superintendent, Director of Student Services Jon Berliner, consultant Dyane Lewis Carrere who is an author and expert on childhood trauma and education, and Dalla Mura. “And all the people who have chimed in and made their feelings known … all the passionate parents who have struggles. We get it, this is a big deal. It’s a big policy change. Thanks to the whole board for riding this wave with us all.”

Board Vice Chair Kelley Hackett of Waterbury thanked the policy committee members, acknowledging the gravity of the subject matter. “I know that it was really, really just heart-wrenching at times … hearing things, and just going through the emotions,” she said. “I really appreciate the time and effort that you took.” 

A request to acknowledge past harm

At the start of last week’s meeting, Dalla Mura was the only individual to comment during the public comment period. He thanked those in the community who advocated for the revised restraint-seclusion policy and then asked the board to not move on without acknowledging the impacts of past actions under the old policy. 

“I hope that we’ll hear how the district plans to repair the harm and trauma that it’s inflicted on its students. I hope to hear a public apology to the victims of inappropriate restraint and seclusion, and I hope to hear the district take accountability,” he said. 

He pointed to inadequate oversight over the years from the state Agency of Education, Board of Education and Mental Health Department. “However, there’s no excuse for the harm that has been inflicted upon hundreds of individual students in the care of HUUSD over the past decade — thousands if you include witnesses,” he said. 

Dalla Mura said he believes restraint and student seclusion were implemented in an intentional way over the years in the school district. “Harwood chose to allow contracted service providers to hold young children face down on the floor. In fact, we paid millions of dollars to outside agencies to do this. Harwood also made a conscious decision to build and use a seclusion room to isolate students,” he noted. “These were conscious decisions, not accidents. Ignorance and good intentions are not an excuse for the harmful impacts.”

Banning prone restraints and seclusion is just the beginning of reversing harmful practices, Dalla Mura suggested. “Once you vote to approve this policy … the job of the board is not done,” he said, calling for the policy subcommittee to continue.

“We know that countless parents and staff were ignored and silenced when they raised concerns about how their students were being restrained and secluded. Please consider hearing testimony from additional experts about how you can prevent this from going undetected in the future. Please consider working on a complaint and investigation process,” he said. “This district desperately needs help with accountability. Don’t blame this on a statewide problem. We shouldn’t need a law to tell us what’s right. Harwood should do what’s right for the sake of doing what’s right.”

Looking ahead

The board as a group did not address the issue of the impacts of the past restraint and seclusion policy. Board members, however, did discuss the possible future role of the committee that drafted the new policy. Committee member Cindy Senning of Duxbury said she found the work the committee did in researching the issue valuable and suggested it would be beneficial for the group to follow through as the policy is implemented. She noted how the seclusion exception ends in a year and that the shift in protocols would impact the relationships the district has with the outside agencies who contract to provide behavioral support staff.

Others agreed. 

The superintendent noted that it’s the board’s prerogative whether to keep a committee active. “It’s up to the board to provide oversight,” he said.

Board Chair Kristen Rodgers of Moretown said that could be something the board discusses at a future meeting. “This could be part of a larger discussion in the fall,” Rodgers said. 

Leichliter and Berliner discussed steps ahead involving staff in all schools as the district looks for new strategies to put into practice with students. They said the shift will involve more training and learning for staff. 

Looking ahead to next year, staff training will continue in trauma-informed practices and social-emotional learning. Each school will have crisis teams, Leichliter noted, and one aim is to have school psychologists in the mix. One challenge is staffing, he added, noting that there currently are approximately six openings for special education staff in the district. A new districtwide position has been created for next year that will be filled by current Moretown Elementary Principal Mandy Couturier. 

Leichliter and Beliner said that they will continue to rely on experts in the field who they have come to know over the past year including Guy Stephens, founder of the nonprofit advocacy organization Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, who has connected the district with resources. 

Educator and consultant Carrere was well-received on two visits this year, Leichliter said, once last fall for a districtwide training and again in January to work with staff at Brookside. “Teachers have asked for her again,” he said, noting that she will return in June. “We’re continuing that deeper dive with schoolwide strategies to help prevent situations that involve any type of restraint.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Harwood board adopts new policy to ban dangerous student restraints.

BURLINGTON — Employees of Ben & Jerry’s flagship store in Burlington took another step toward forming the ice cream chain’s first union on Tuesday.

A group of employees calling itself Scoopers United is seeking to join Workers United, an international union that has been involved in efforts to unionize Starbucks employees. A short press conference was held outside the Church Street scoop shop to announce the results of a key union vote.

State Rep. Kate Logan, P/D-Burlington, was invited by the employees to oversee a “card check,” an important step toward officially forming a union. Logan said 35 of 39 staff voted in favor of unionizing.

“We are ecstatic at this turnout,” said Rebeka Mendelsohn, one of the employee organizers. “We are incredibly proud of all the staff that came forward to do this and we really look forward to the bargaining contract.”

In April, store employees sent a letter to management declaring their intent to unionize. Later that month, employees celebrated the company’s commitment to fair negotiations.

Logan applauded Ben & Jerry’s for allowing time for Tuesday’s card check and recognizing the results.

“It’s a huge accomplishment and I wish that every employer in the United States would do this for our workers,” Logan said.

Mendelsohn said Scoopers United will next focus on which rights it hopes to bargain for. Though she has been involved in the union push since its inception, Mendelsohn said that she would be leaving for graduate school. She said she would be working to “get the new generation of co-organizers up and running.”

Trey Cook, a field organizer from the Vermont State Labor Council, said the council is excited by Tuesday’s results.

“I think Vermonters know now that workers deserve more and we’re about to see a big wave of unionization, not just on Church Street but across the state,” Cook said.

At the April 28 press conference, an employee representative from neighboring Church Street business Black Cap Coffee announced that employees there were inspired by the scoop shop efforts and hope to form a union of their own.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Ben & Jerry’s Burlington scoop shop unionization effort moves forward.

Gov. Phil Scott struck down two measures on Saturday that would expand voting rights in local communities. 

He vetoed H.509, a charter change approved by Burlington voters that would allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. And, for the second year in a row, he rejected a charter change that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds in Brattleboro to cast ballots in local elections. 

In doing so, the governor added two more bills — plus the budget — to legislators’ checklist to reconsider during their June veto session.

Thanks to Dillon’s Rule, municipalities must earn the blessing of state lawmakers in order to make such amendments to their charters, no matter how widespread their local support.

In explaining his veto of noncitizen voting in Burlington, Scott harked back to his vetoes of similar measures in Montpelier and Winooski in 2021, stating that, “this highly variable town-by-town approach to municipal election policy creates separate and unequal classes of legal residents potentially eligible to vote on local voting issues.”

“I am happy to see legal residents who are non-citizens calling Vermont home and participating in the issues affecting their communities,” Scott said in his statement Saturday. “However, the fundamentals of voting should be universal and implemented statewide.” 

Both the Montpelier and Winooski measures made it into law with a veto override — suggesting Burlington’s charter change could follow the same path.  

Also on Saturday, Scott allowed H.508, which will expand ranked choice voting in Burlington local election, to take effect without his signature. Already in place for Burlington City Council elections, ranked choice voting will now also apply to mayoral, school board and ward officer races. 

In a statement, Scott expressed skepticism about the voting method but, citing the limited scope of the change, said he would still allow it to become law. “As we know, ranked choice voting went terribly wrong over a decade ago, resulting in Burlington abandoning the practice. Nevertheless, it appears the politics have changed in the City, for now, in favor of ranked choice voting,” Scott said, adding that he remains opposed to ranked choice voting at the statewide level. 

This year marks Brattleboro’s second attempt at amending its charter in order to lower its local voting age. Proponents of H.386 argue that the move would get Brattleboro’s teens engaged at a younger age, educating them on the civic responsibility of voting and empowering them with a voice in their local community.

Scott disagreed. In a Saturday statement, he repeated his argument from last year — that the bill exacerbates an inconsistency in state law when it comes to defining the age of adulthood. “For example, the Legislature has repeatedly raised the age of accountability to reduce the consequences when young adults commit criminal offenses,” Scott said. “They have argued this approach is justified because these offenders are not mature enough to contemplate the full range of risks and impacts of their actions.”

If this year’s floor votes are any indication, the Senate could be the ultimate decider in whether H.386 goes into effect — potentially setting Brattleboro voters up for a repeat of last year’s failed override attempt in the upper chamber.

A two-thirds majority of lawmakers present is required to override a gubernatorial veto. With all members present, such a move requires 100 yeas in the House, and 20 in the Senate.

The House voted 103-33 on the bill in April. But in the Senate, the floor votes were 16-8, followed by 18-10. When the latter vote was cast on May 9, two senators were absent: Sen. Dave Weeks, R-Rutland, and Sen. Irene Wrenner, D-Chittenden North. In order to override Scott’s veto come June, both would need to vote yes — or senators who previously voted against the bill would need to change their tune.

Should the override attempt fail in the Senate, Brattleboro’s charter change would face the same fate as it did last year, when the veto override attempt succeeded in the House but failed in the Senate.

Alicia Freese contributed reporting.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott vetoes noncitizen voting in Burlington and voting for 16- and 17-year-olds in Brattleboro.

A hard frost crept through Vermont last week, damaging thousands of acres of growing produce. With overnight temperatures reaching as low as 25 degrees on the night of May 17, growers throughout the state woke up on Thursday morning to apple and berry blossoms that had turned black inside, conceding the possibility of future fruit.

On the morning after the frost, growers at Scott Farm Orchard in Dummerston surveyed the property, orchardist Erin Robinson said, sitting beside apple trees that were limp and glistening in the frost. 

“It is the most brutal feeling to love something so deeply and be so powerless to protect it,” Robinson wrote in an Instagram post.

“In my 25 years of working with fruit crops in Vermont, I have never seen frost or freeze damage this extensive,” Terence Bradshaw, associate professor at the University of Vermont Extension Fruit Program, said in a press release. “My team is systematically collecting damage data across the region to help inform next steps to respond to this event.”

According to Anson Tebbetts, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, the hard freeze could result in significant losses for growers who cultivate fruits, produce, berries and wine — and for the Vermonters who enjoy them come summer. 

“The losses caused by the late Spring frost is heartbreaking,” Tebbetts said in a press release. “The extent of the damage may not be known for several weeks but early indications are discouraging.”

Since the freeze, apple orchards and vineyards across the state have reported particularly grim circumstances, with ​​50% of primary buds reportedly lost in many Vermont vineyards, according to Kendra Knapik, president of the Vermont Grape and Wine Council.

Scott Adams, a co-owner of Adams Apple Orchard and Farm Market in Williston, said his farm was among the orchards severely damaged during the freeze. 

“I think we might have taken a pretty significant hit on the apple crop here, based on how cold it got,” Adams said. “But we’ll know better in a week or a week and a half, since there are different elevations in the orchard (with fruitlets) in higher places that may have survived.”

Outsourcing produce from other farms could prove to be difficult, Adams said, since other vendors, including Green Mountain Orchards, a farm in Putney from which Adams’ farm has obtained additional produce in the past, also experienced dire losses from the freeze. 

“If they were impacted, that means we’re impacted,” Adams said. 

Despite the significant damage to much of the produce throughout the state, farmers at Adams Apple Orchard and Green Mountain Orchards remain optimistic that there will be enough blueberries to offer to pick-your-own customers.

“Nothing appears to be dead on the blueberry bushes,” Adams said. “I think the blueberries survived … (although) you can’t really count on a crop until it’s in storage.”

While it is unclear whether Vermont growers will be eligible for financial relief assistance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency provides federal crop protection for weather-related losses in certain circumstances. The Vermont Agency of Agriculture has begun reaching out to local growers to collect information on the damage, urging Vermont farmers to document and report their losses to their local Farm Service office in case aid becomes available.

For many farms, though, the losses caused by the freeze could be more than federal aid may be able to account for.

“(Crop insurance) is a pretty complicated entity to deal with,” Robinson said. “At this point we’ll take what we can get, but it by no means touches what is needed.”

At farms across the state, the effect of the freeze ripples out past the edges of the frozen fruitlets into the lives of the workers and consumers who depend on them. 

“I grieve for the fruit and try to keep the perspective that my trees are still living, that there will be harvests to come,” Robinson said. “But there’s also fear now — Mother Nature is something that’s out of our control with climate disruption, and for the men who come here to work to support their families back home, this will have a huge impact on them, and not just my farm.”

Of the eight seasonal farmworkers who travel to Scott Farm from Jamaica annually to work during the growing season, Robinson said four will lose their jobs this year because of the financial pressures the farm is facing after the frost. Some of the workers, she said, have been working at Scott farm for more than 30 years.   

Fredson Brissett, a farmworker from Trelawny Parish in Jamaica who has worked at Scott Farm for 25 years, said that after the frost, he sent photos of the blackened apple blossoms to some fellow Jamaican farmworkers who had yet to arrive at Scott Farm, and who this year, may not be able to at all.

“Plenty of us, including myself, depend on this overseas job to balance our budget back home,” Brissett said. “It’s gonna be a big setback for those who don’t have a chance to make it this year. Especially if they don’t find anywhere else to go.”

Brissett said he fears what could happen if frosts like this one become a more regular occurrence. He said he hopes farmworkers can collaborate to share strategies for preventing crop damage in the future to “save their crops and themselves.”

“For those who haven’t experienced this before as growers, and knowing this could happen again, I believe all growers should come together,” he said. “It’s gonna take a lot.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Hard frost threatens crops and the farmworkers who tend them across Vermont.

Londonderry contractor Abe Crossman was keeping busy with small projects at his family’s home in June 2020 during the newly arrived coronavirus pandemic. He was working outside when he noticed that the paint was peeling off the trim at the peak of the gable end of his roof. 

With 25 years of building experience, he knew that peeling paint indicated the presence of moisture. But the location was odd — that trim underneath the overhang should stay dry. So he grabbed a ladder and a pry bar to take a closer look. 

His stomach dropped as he sank the pry bar into the soft wood sheathing underneath the trim and peeled away the vinyl siding down to four feet below the roof line. What had been wood disintegrated into dust in front of his eyes, he later recalled, leaving behind nothing but spray polyurethane foam insulation. 

At first, Crossman thought he might have a roof leak. But he found no issues with the standing seam roof. In any case, he said, when a contractor had installed spray foam insulation in his roof and second-floor walls a decade earlier, he had been promised that the type of foam used, open cell, would let water come through in case of a leak, so he should have noticed it immediately. 

He headed inside to his daughter’s bedroom, cut a square out of the ceiling’s sheetrock and hacked at the spray foam so he could see the structure underneath it. He grasped a rafter, and it crumbled in his hand. The roof had dry-rotted. 

“I was in shock and disbelief,” he told me this past winter. “I wanted to cry, honestly.”

He was starting to wonder if the spray foam itself might be the problem. 

The big spray foam push

Vermont’s old homes desperately need to be insulated and upgraded. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential homes consume the largest share of energy in Vermont, representing 35% of its energy consumption, and account for one-fourth of Vermont’s petroleum consumption. About three out of five Vermont households use some sort of fossil fuel to heat their home. Only Maine and New Hampshire have a larger share of such homes.

The federal government and Efficiency Vermont both hand out rebates to encourage homeowners to weatherize their homes and reduce their oil consumption. The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law last summer provides new federal income tax credits of up to $3,200 annually to homeowners to help cover heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, new doors and windows, home energy audits and, of course, insulation. 

While there are many types of insulation — cellulose, mineral wool, foam board and batting — the spray foam industry has benefitted mightily from this green weatherization push, since spray foam is such a terrific insulator and can be easily installed in one day without tearing out walls. 

I experienced this push toward spray foam myself. In early 2022, my husband and I purchased a 180-year-old farmhouse in southern Vermont, near Londonderry. After my first $600 oil bill, I visited Efficiency Vermont’s website and found two certified energy auditors. One was booked for months, but the other showed up the next week.

After touring the house and doing a blower door test, he recommended we spray foam the cathedral ceilings, inside the knee-wall attic and in the basement.

I questioned how green it was to fill my walls with a fossil-fuel-based plastic product, but the energy auditor assured me that there wouldn’t be any problems; we would have heard about them if there were. And he knew a local spray foam installer. (I recently called him back, but he wouldn’t comment on the record for this story.)

Two days later, we had our first walk-through of the house with Crossman, whom we had hired as our contractor for renovations. When I shared the energy auditor’s recommendations and said that I had asked Chester-based Vermont Foam Insulation to give me an estimate, he gently cut me off. 

“You know I’m suing Vermont Foam, right?” he said.

After Crossman left, I canceled my appointment and began investigating best practices for weatherizing my home. I figured, as a journalist with years of experience researching green materials, I would make quick work of it. 

Instead, during what would become a year-long journey, I found myself in a thicket of contradictory, outdated or biased information. Plenty of horror stories lurked in forums and blogs: historical homes ruined, fishy smells, moisture problems and people falling ill. 

Every terrible tale, however, was followed by an explanation excusing the foam. The homeowners didn’t run a proper ventilation system. They should have installed a vapor barrier. The contractor built the house wrong. That particular spray foam installer did a bad job. Anything and everything but the spray foam itself seemed to be the culprit. 

I was left with more questions than answers. Are Vermonters unwittingly destroying their homes in their quest to be green? And how many people are about to peel back their own siding and find a nasty surprise?

For this story, I spoke with four Vermont building science experts, plus a building materials specialist, residential architects, contractors, homeowners, spray foam representatives, and a mold remediation expert. I dug through forums, building trade journals, news reports, and court cases looking for clues. 

As I tried to cut through the noise of online comment sections, a clearer picture started to emerge. 

• Spray foam can be an excellent insulation material and safe for people and homes when perfectly applied — which is difficult to accomplish in real Vermont conditions. 
• Underqualified and unregulated contractors are pitching spray foam insulation to bewildered homeowners as a safe, easy, quick, affordable and eco-friendly solution to cutting their heating bills, without disclosing its risks. 
• Poor application can lead to extensive moisture damage, including rotted framing and toxic mold. Remediation and repair can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars. 
• Spray foam is the best option for old, rubble-stone cellars and basements, but building science experts don’t recommend it for anywhere else inside homes. Nevertheless, it’s frequently specified for insulating cathedral ceilings, attics and walls. 
• Spray foam is especially risky for homes built prior to the 1950s, and for low-income homeowners who cannot afford architects, contractors or energy auditors with building science training. 
• Homeowners have little protection from shoddy workmanship, and those who discover damage and mold years later have little recourse. 
• Industry representatives like to say that less than one-tenth of 1% of spray foam installations fail, but this is based on informal polling of installers and manufacturers. There has been no comprehensive short-term or long-term followup with homeowners to ascertain the real percentage of unhappy customers. 

Among the experts I talked to was Jacob Deva Racusin, the director of building science at the worker-owned cooperative New Frameworks in Burlington, which specializes in sustainable retrofits of older homes. He doesn’t want to demonize spray foam as a product, he said, but he’s seen the installation process go off the rails.

“I just see spray foam being used inappropriately very frequently without consideration around its moisture management applications,” he said. “It can be a real liability in (above ground) scenarios.”

Is anyone in charge? 

Americans — and Vermonters in particular — are especially vulnerable to the risks of poor spray foam installation. In Canada, spray foam installers must be third-party certified. In the U.S., there are no legally-required training, educational or certification requirements for spray foam installers at the federal or state level. 

Until last year, when the state passed legislation aimed at making housing more affordable, Vermont was one of the few states that didn’t require contractors to register with the state. And there was no way for homeowners to lodge an official complaint against any residential contractor, including weatherization contractors. Even now, most spray foam jobs cost less than $4,000, and the new law exempts jobs under $10,000. (State officials unveiled the registry earlier this month.) 

Efficiency Vermont has partnered with Vermont Technical College to offer a free, voluntary educational program, the Building Performance Institute, for builders and weatherization contractors. And two trade organizations, the Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance in Virginia and the Air Barrier Association of America in Massachusetts, offer voluntary professional certifications. The only Vermont spray foam contractor listed by either trade organization is an Overhead Door Company location in Williston. 

When asked how a homeowner could assess whether they’re hiring a high-quality insulation installer, Brent Ehrlich, a products and materials specialist at BuildingGreen, an information platform based in Brattleboro, said, “I don’t really have a good answer to that.”

I asked Matt Sharpe, a senior building consultant for Efficiency Vermont, about the issue.

“We want to make sure whatever you’re doing to the house is not going to do more harm than good,” he said.

But he remained agnostic throughout our conversation as I delineated the potential risks from spray foam. 

“Those are all legitimate concerns. And I think those concerns would all be legitimate to other products as well,” he said. “The performance of the work in general, no matter what material you’re using, is very important.” 

Unfortunately, there’s currently a shortage of qualified weatherization experts and contractors in Vermont. Efficiency Vermont estimates that only 2,000 homes in Vermont are weatherized a year, when 13,400 homes need it to meet the state’s climate goals. Many other states report similar labor shortages in weatherization and residential construction. 

“Weatherization is a higher-skill job than I think most people realize,” Sharpe said. “And it’s in horrible conditions. Not many people want to do it.” 

The result is a Wild West of spray foam installation, raising questions about the long-term damage to homes and ruinous costs to homeowners who are just trying to do the right thing.

Onsite chemistry 

Polyurethane, also known as PU, was invented in Nazi Germany in 1937 by Dr. Otto Bayer, who discovered mixing isocyanates and polyol would create a special type of plastic. One of its first uses was for mustard-gas-resistant garments. After the war, manufacturers found other uses for it in an expanding range of consumer products, including fake leather, mattresses and foam insulation panels. 

In the 1960s, the spray foam gun was invented, which allowed polyurethane foam to be sprayed to fit perfectly into any wall or ceiling cavity that needed an airtight seal — at the time, mainly industrial sites. The 1970s energy crisis, which drove the price of heating oil sky-high, made homeowners receptive to this new, super-insulating product. 

But it was the Canadian spray foam manufacturer Icynene, founded in 1986, which pushed spray foam deep into the consumer market. The company sold its product to a network of independent contractors across North America, who in turn pitched it to homeowners as an easy and effective way to save on energy costs. 

Here’s how it works. The spray foam contractor brings the chemical ingredients to your home in separate canisters. One contains the main ingredient for foam: highly reactive chemicals called isocyanates. The other contains a trade-secret mix that varies from manufacturer to manufacturer of polyol, fire retardants, catalyzing amines, blowing agents and other chemicals. These are mixed together through a tube and sprayed onto the unfinished wall, roof decking or into tight spaces, where the combined chemicals immediately expand into a foam. 

There are two different types of spray foam. In open cell foam, the little air bubbles in the foam are broken open, leading to a spongy and soft foam. In closed cell foam, the air bubbles are completely encapsulated, for a harder and denser foam with higher insulation value. The latter is also more expensive to install but today is recommended over open cell foam for cold climates such as Vermont’s.

The most common spaces where spray foam is applied are inside walls, under the roof, inside attics, and on the walls of basements and cellars. Contractors often use it for tight spaces instead of using thicker types of insulation, in order to more easily fulfill building code requirements. 

The application process makes spray foam unique among plastic consumer products. “Unlike a foam board product, which is manufactured in climate-controlled factory conditions where they can really manage quality control, you’re doing onsite chemistry,” said Racusin, the Burlington-based building science director.

The installation process releases toxic fumes, which is why spray foam technicians must wear a full protective suit and respirator. The foam spends the next day “curing,” or drying and hardening, during which time homeowners must vacate the property. 

If all goes well, the spray foam is inert and done off-gassing by the time the homeowners are back inside. And it has fitted neatly into every space in which it was applied, with no holes or cracks, creating an airtight seal and a deliciously warm home — if everything goes right.

Several building science and material experts, however, say there are many ways spray foam application can go wrong. 

Taking the temperature

Rick Duncan, the Maryland-based executive director of the trade group Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance, said spray foam can be applied in every season because contractors can heat the home, heat up the material where it is being applied or use cold-weather foam. Below 40 degrees Fahrenheit is the absolute cutoff for proper application, but “the warmer the better in terms of getting the most out of your chemicals,” he said. 

This may represent an optimistic view. 

“The conditions where the manufacturers say that you should be mixing and installing this site-created insulation are very strict and almost never met in the field,” said Chris West, a Jericho-based certified consultant and trainer for Passive House, a design standard for ultra-low-energy-consumption homes. “It’s like, 80 degrees, and no dust and the perfect humidity of the material you’re spraying against.”

Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that more research is needed, it found that if the chemical mixture or temperature is wrong, it can fail to cure and may continue off-gassing amines, isocyanates and other chemical fumes. In 2013, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on homeowners who had to abandon their home after it was insulated with spray foam because it made them so sick. Around the same time in the U.S., an “avalanche” of similar health complaints and court cases cropped up against spray foam manufacturers. 

According to 2013 testimony to the General Law Committee of Connecticut from a homeowner, the spray foam installed in his 1890s home shrunk, cracked, gave off a strong noxious odor and even exploded in the middle of the night. He was never warned about the health effects, even while his family lived in the house during remediation, when spray foam dust filled his home. 

Once people are exposed to a high amount of isocyanates, they may become sensitized, meaning even a tiny bit of exposure — like walking into a building with spray foam insulation or buying a memory foam mattress — could trigger asthma. This is particularly a problem for spray foam installers. 

“Isocyanates have been reported to be a leading attributable chemical cause of asthma in the workplace,” the EPA warns. “Even if you do not become sensitized to isocyanates, they may still irritate your skin and lungs, and many years of exposure may lead to permanent lung damage and respiratory problems.” 

In 2016, a whistleblower lawsuit was filed on behalf of the U.S. government against four major manufacturers of spray foam chemicals — BASF Corporation, Bayer Material Science, Dow Chemical Company and Huntsman International, which had bought the spray foam manufacturer Icynene. It alleged that the companies knew of the serious health effects of isocyanates and kept that information from the EPA. The case did not move forward.

While failures to cure are immediately apparent, another danger that only presents itself many years later is that the spray foam doesn’t actually create the airtight seal promised, which can lead to air quality complaints and devastating structural problems. 

One Kansas City builder, Travis Brungardt, has documented for The Journal of Light Construction every type of failure in spray foam, even when working with reputable local installers: improperly cured foam; voids, which are akin to air bubbles or caves within the foam; gaps, which reveal the sheathing or decking; the foam “delaminating,” or pulling away from the wood; and even failure to achieve the thickness that would provide the insulating value promised. 

“While I believe spray foam can be a path to success, I haven’t seen it executed successfully in my market, and I will avoid that risk whenever I can,” Brungardt wrote last June in The Journal of Light Construction

The moisture lurking in old homes

When you look online for Vermont spray foam experts, Peter Yost’s name is one of the first to come up. A building consultant with more than 30 years of experience in contracting and building science, he recently moved from Brattleboro to Durham, New Hampshire, with an eye on retirement. 

I thought he would fall in the spray foam supporter camp, especially since he’s been hired by at least one spray foam company in the past, but his views on insulation are more nuanced. 

“My mantra is: We have to manage energy and moisture with equal intensity,” he said. “If we just go after the energy and don’t recognize the moisture, we’re going to create problems.” 

Houses always have a certain amount of water vapor in the air, which can come from wet basements, but also everyday necessities such as cooking, bathing, and even breathing and sweating. 

In a house with little insulation, the escaping heat dries out the walls. Spray foam, as a plastic, is hydrophobic, so it air seals if applied perfectly. But if there are any pathways, cracks or voids, humid air can sneak in and hit the cold exterior framing, condensing into water. That water can then be trapped by the spray foam and settle in to rot the wood framing members. 

Rot issues related to foam tend to show up around eight years after the initial application, according to Jim Bradley, founder of the building science consultancy Authenticated Building Performance Diagnostics in Cambridge. In fact, he had the roof of a new addition to his home spray foamed a little over eight years ago using what he thought were best practices at the time. That meant his roof was spray foamed, with no ventilation, making it what is called a “hot roof.” 

Recently, he’s noticed “tea stains” dripping out of the soffits — where the roof overhangs the house’s exterior siding — and staining the drywall, indicating a wood rot problem. 

“And it makes me sick, because this is my business,” Bradley said. 

In 2005, a New Jersey couple sued both the foam manufacturer Icynene and the spray foam installer of their new vacation cabin in Warren, claiming the spray foam had caused extensive moisture damage. The case was settled with Icynene out of court in 2006, a week before it was set to go to a jury trial. (I contacted the spray foam installer, but the company is under new management and could not comment on the specifics of the case.) 

“There are a lot of good spray foam contractors in Vermont that do good work and there are places where spray foam is perfect,” said West, the Passive House consultant. But, “When we go into an old house, we never spray foam.” (By “old” he means 1950s or older, but, he later clarified, he’s not a fan of it in any age home.)

There are only a handful of people across Vermont who can give unbiased and holistic consultations to homeowners about moisture management and weatherization together, according to Yost.

“We don’t have nearly enough building professionals that understand building science,” he said. “If you’re an existing building owner, it can be so complex. You need to make sure that you don’t have just an energy auditor looking at your building.” 

A slow-moving health crisis

Health complaints could also, ironically, arise because the home is too tight. 

“What we find is if you go in and you spray an entire home, seal up that complete building envelope, you are not going to have enough natural ventilation to maintain good indoor air quality,” said Duncan, of the Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance. 

He and other building science experts I spoke to recommend homeowners install an air exchanger, equipment housed in the basement that circulates stale, moist air out while pulling in dry, fresh air.

If not, particulates from cooking, off-gassing from furniture and carpets, and other other indoor air pollution could build up and bring the home’s air quality to below a typical day in New York City. Add in the mold that can come from trapping moist air, and you’ve got yourself a health crisis in the making.

Government agencies have not tracked the prevalence of homes with mold in the U.S. or Vermont over time. But according to a 2022 NIOSH assessment, dampness and mold problems are estimated to affect 47% of U.S. homes. 

Business has been swift in the past couple of years for mold remediation, according to Chuck Nystrom, a contractor and co-owner of Catamount Restoration Services in Manchester Center. He at least partly attributed the uptick in calls to homeowners tightening up the air flow in their homes. “A lot of people didn’t see mold for many years. Fifty years ago it wasn’t an issue. The homes breathed more,” he said. 

One big problem Nystrom has seen is when the soffit vents are sealed up by foam. “So by changing the way a house breathes, you’re now trapping the moisture in,” he said. “And once it gets in, because (the house) is so efficient, the only way to get it out is to use a manmade device: a dehumidifier, an air exchanger, something of that nature.”

When asked his opinion of spray foam, Nystrom called it “a great product — if applied correctly.”

He noted that traditional insulation with rock wool or fiberglass is “easy enough” to undo if issues arise. But, he said, “Once you go spray foam, there is no going back.”

Spray foam permanently sticks to whatever it is sprayed on, and it can cover up and hide water leaks, mold and damage for years. For inspectors to view a home’s framing, the foam has to be chopped away. Complete removal is prohibitively expensive for most homeowners.

Everyone I spoke to agrees that spray foam is better suited for some jobs than others. Instead of the top of a home, look to its bottom, they said — particularly old rubble-walled foundations.

“That’s where spray foam really shows up as one of the best options available, without going to more heroic measures that can cost a lot more money,” said Racusin, New Frameworks’ building science director.  

Unfortunately, as Yost points out, homeowners don’t get rebates for addressing their homes’ moisture problems. Without financial incentives, owners with lower incomes often cannot afford to solve water issues before they call in a spray foam installer. 

It’s unique to each house, but West says $15,000 “is a pretty standard price” for basement remediation work to address water intrusion for a 2,000-square-foot house.

Green, how? 

Some industry observers have raised questions about just how sustainable spray foam really is. 

The building standards of LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, gives builders green points for using spray foam because of its high R-Value, which denotes how much insulation it can provide per inch of depth. In 2007, licensed architect David Pill built his family a LEED Platinum house and Vermont’s first Net Zero home — meaning it generates as much energy as it consumes in a year — and used spray foam to insulate it.

“I can’t believe (LEED) let me use that. But at the time, nobody knew about spray foam,” Pill said.

Pill hasn’t used it in a project since, mainly because he doesn’t consider it a green product. Traditionally, spray foam has required a blowing agent with a global warming potential (a widely used measurement for emissions) of 1,000 or more. Spray foam manufacturers are moving to a blowing agent with a lower global warming potential of just five. 

But because it’s made completely from fossil fuels, spray foam still arrives with a high amount of “embodied carbon,” meaning a lot of fossil fuels were used and a lot of greenhouse gas emissions were released before it is ever sprayed into a home. 

According to a report by Efficiency Vermont released last summer, it would take about 10 years of energy savings for a home with spray foam insulation to match the carbon savings of a home with dense-pack cellulose and rigid foam board insulation. (That’s assuming a typical homeowner sticks with an oil furnace and makes no other changes.)

Unlike some green builders and experts, Efficiency Vermont does not currently consider embodied carbon in its recommendations to homeowners, Sharpe said. 

“Our first and foremost mission is to reduce energy waste and save Vermonters energy and money,” he said.

Experts say that heat pumps, which efficiently condition outside air into hot or cool inside air depending on the season, cannot do their job in a very drafty, uninsulated house. But once you’re no longer primarily heating with oil, it doesn’t do much for the environment to stress over getting your house perfectly sealed — you might as well go with an alternative with a slightly lower R-value. 

The report by Efficiency Vermont also assumes best practices for spray foam application.

“When you go ahead and build something, and it fails prematurely within five years, 10 years, and you’re replacing siding, roofing, whatever, how much more of an energy cost is that?” Bradley said. “This whole movement that we have for global warming initiatives and saving the planet and all this energy savings, we are missing the mark, especially in Vermont.” 

The architect Pill’s spray foam application didn’t go well. He called the installation “completely wrong.” When he discovered gaps, voids and cracks several years later, he called the contractor who built the home, who told him the spray foam company was out of business. 

Recently, Bradley stopped by and took a look at the spray foam in Pill’s attic and discovered many more gaps, plus areas where the foam is peeling away from the roof deck and areas of moisture. There’s no rot that they could see — Pill credits the plywood for being rot-resistant — but the gaps will have to be filled again … with more spray foam. 

No one to turn to

Crossman bought his grandparents’ modest 1950s timber-frame home in 2001 and spent the next 10 years steadily renovating it. Room by room, he tore out the walls down to the studs, and replaced the old batt insulation with new fiberglass batt insulation. By 2009, he was done with the first floor and ready to start the second. 

At the time, Vermont Foam Insulation was on-site at a job Crossman was working on and he accepted a pitch from its sales representative, Will Reed, to insulate the entire top floor of Crossman’s home with open cell foam — the spongier, more affordable option with little air bubbles that are broken open. 

The company did one side of the house in 2009 and came back to do the other side the following year. Crossman applied a vapor retarding primer paint as recommended. 

“There was definitely a smell that first couple of years. I don’t know if we got used to it or if it just went away,” Crossman said. But he didn’t notice anything was really wrong until the winter of 2012, when moisture started building up on the windows. It got worse the next year. 

“The bottom two inches of the sash on the glass in the mornings would be just drenched with water,” he recalled. “We’d have to go around wiping them down every morning.” 

At the time, some people inside the spray foam industry were raising the alarm about shoddy workmanship. Henri Fennell, a Thetford-based spray foam consultant with 25 years of experience, wrote in The Journal of Light Construction that contractors who were out of work during the 2008 financial crisis had rushed into the growing spray foam field, bringing little experience with them and pushing prices down to unsustainable levels. 

“The ongoing price wars have also been accompanied by a pronounced increase in bad installations. Industry experts tell me they’ve seen more foam quality problems in the last two years than in the preceding two decades,” Fennell wrote. 

Part of Crossman’s problem might also have had to do with the choice to use open cell foam, which Crossman said was pitched to him as a way to identify leaks should they happen. 

Rick Duncan, executive director of the Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance, confirmed that leak detection was a common marketing point 10 years ago, though he doesn’t believe it is true. 

“You don’t always see a leak developed right below where the hole is on the roof,” he said. “You never know where that water is going to come out. It can actually be retained in the open cell foam like a sponge, and then it can drain out towards the soffit and come down the walls.” 

He said open cell foam is fine as long as you use a vapor retarder, including paint, like Crossman did. But he acknowledges the models used to support this recommendation are based on ideal conditions and perfect application. 

Vermont Foam Insulation declined to comment on Crossman’s case. Reed, the sales representative who worked with Crossman, said the company still uses open cell foam, though he wrote in an email that the company installs more closed cell foam today.  

In 2012, Crossman called Reed, who told him that he would have to install an air exchanger at a cost of $5,000, according to Crossman. It did seem to mostly fix the moisture problems, until eight years later when he discovered his roof had dry-rotted. 

First, he called Efficiency Vermont, who sent someone out to take a look. Crossman said he was told the insulation had been done wrong and to call Vermont Foam Insulation. 

Dissatisfied with the quality of the company’s work, Crossman had stopped bringing Vermont Foam Insulation into his projects years before. But he called up the company, and owner Joe Thompson came to check out the problem. (When I reached out to the company asking to speak to Thompson, I heard back from Reed.)

As Crossman tells it, Thompson peered into the walls and told him, “You’ve definitely got a problem but it’s not as bad as you think.” Thompson contended the wood stove or the moist basement could be to blame, Crossman said, and suggested spray foaming the latter. Finally, Thompson offered to pay for Yost to come take a look. 

Yost later performed a blower door test and a smoke test, during which a house is filled with theatrical smoke to identify air leakage. “And what I remember is that there were significant (air leaks) that the spray foam was not addressing,” Yost said.

He recommends that these tests be done immediately after any insulation is installed. Crossman says a moisture assessment before the installation in 2009 and blower door test after in 2012 did not happen. 

Reed, of Vermont Foam, said in an email that “almost all of our retrofits get a pre and post blower door.”

“We are slowly adopting blower door testing for new construction projects,” he wrote. “We agree with, and promote this measure, particularly with regard to its adoption into the building code.” 

Without commenting on Crossman’s case, Reed said that Vermont Foam Insulation advises customers to fix moisture issues before having spray foam installed, and also that it will recommend and install other forms of insulation when it’s appropriate. 

“Spray foam is used to insulate buildings, not to repair water issues, preexisting moisture, or air flow issues,” Reed wrote. “You wouldn’t put a blanket on a leaky pipe and say that it’s fixed.”

Because Yost was paid by Vermont Foam, he couldn’t share his findings with Crossman. In any case, he said he didn’t come to a clear conclusion of fault. 

“It was very difficult for me, because the spray foam that was done was done 10 years prior to my involvement. (It’s) very difficult to separate out what conditions were the result of a lack of perfection in the installation of the insulation, versus the existing moisture conditions in that building,” Yost said. “I don’t think either party was going to end up being particularly happy with what I was going to say.” 

When asked how Vermont Foam Insulation recommends homeowners monitor their spray-foamed homes for leaks or damage, Reed wrote, “Homeowners need to work with their general contractor, HVAC provider, architect, or building science expert to ensure their home has no leaks or damage. As an insulation contractor, we are there to insulate, not provide an entire home review.” 

Crossman couldn’t find a building science expert to advise or help him. After hunting high and low, he found a lawyer who would file a claim with Vermont Foam Insulation’s insurance company, Liberty Mutual, which forbade Crossman to do any work on the house until the claim was resolved. 

So, after waiting some time, Crossman filed a lawsuit and got to work replacing the roof, plus many of the second-floor walls and windows of his home. 

His lawsuit asked for $300,000 to cover materials, labor, renting another home, and other costs. It was sent into mediation, which dragged on for a year and a half. This winter, his lawyer advised him to settle with the insurance company for less than half of what he was asking. 

Vermont Foam Insulation would only say that “a mutual agreement was reached and we did not accept liability.”

“I can’t even put into words how hard the past two years have been,” Crossman said. 

What’s a homeowner to do?

If you don’t have the budget for an architect or high-end green contractor with a building science expert on staff, Efficiency Vermont has a hotline with trained customer support agents. If your questions get into more complicated territory, you’ll be referred to an engineering consultant such as Sharpe, and you can even have a virtual home energy visit. You can also contact one of the building science experts quoted in this story. 

Racusin said that if you’re a homeowner looking to tighten up your house because you’re miserably cold and paying through the nose for heating oil, and you want to take advantage of the rebates and incentives, there are two places to focus.

First, insulate your basement (after you’ve solved for any water incursion or moisture issues). After that, complete some targeted air sealing via some caulk or tape in the attic, and finish it off with some dense-pack cellulose. That will go a long way to make you comfortable without taking unnecessary risks. 

When you’re ready for a larger renovation project, you can visit Efficiency Vermont’s website to find contractors who have gone through the Building Performance Institute, or the Brattleboro-based Sustainable Energy Outreach Network for a list of members. Or, you can choose a contractor who is open to going through one of these certification programs. 

If you’ve already spray-foamed your home, Duncan recommends getting a moisture meter with an alarm and putting it in your attic, plus having your roof inspected every five years. An inspector with an infrared camera can identify moisture issues, and there are now mini infrared cameras available that plug into your smartphone.

I feel lucky that I was nudged away from spray foam at the last minute and — through this story — have been able to ask the state’s foremost experts for advice on what to do. I paid almost double the usual fee to have Bradley drive three hours from northern Vermont to audit my home. His first recommendation? You guessed it: Fix my leaky basement.

Crossman joined us for part of the tour. Having experienced the downsides of poor weatherization, he is ready and eager to learn the ins and outs of building science alongside me as we set out on our home renovation. 

But I’m just one person. Hopefully, for the sake of my neighbors down here in southern Vermont, there will be more contractors learning building science soon.

Otherwise, Vermonters are in for some nasty and expensive surprises, lurking right inside their walls. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘I wanted to cry’: Devastating risks of spray foam insulation hidden from Vermont homeowners.

Readsboro residents voted against closing their town’s only school on Wednesday in a 166–91 vote, according to official election results.

The election, conducted by Australian ballot, was scheduled after nearly 40 residents of the Bennington County town’s 600 registered voters signed a petition calling for the school’s closure. The number of people who signed the petition exceeded the 5% minimum of 30.85 voters needed for the town to call a special election.

In the petition, which was sent to the school board on April 4, people expressed doubts about the quality of education at Readsboro Central School, which has 39 students enrolled in pre-K through sixth grade. 

Petitioners also raised concerns about staffing, emphasizing one instance in which two teachers were responsible for teaching three grade levels in one classroom. Since then, another classroom teacher was hired, according to Principal Robyn Oyer, returning the school to its standard ratio of two grades per classroom.

In April, Larry Hopkins, a former Readsboro school board member who was among those who drafted and signed the petition, told VTDigger that he did not think the town would vote to close the school but felt the petition was a necessary means of making “people aware of what’s going on” at Readsboro. 

Ahead of the vote, Readsboro administrators, school board members and many other town residents expressed a desire to keep the school open.

Last month, residents wrote a letter to the editor at VTDigger arguing that closing Readsboro and sending local kids to other schools would have a negative impact on the young students’ senses of stability. 

“The feedback we have received from the schools (that Readsboro graduates attend) points to the fact that we are properly preparing students socially, emotionally and academically to move forward and do well in other area schools,” Oyer wrote in an email to VTDigger in April. Oyer said many Readsboro graduates have made the honor roll at their current schools.

Following the vote that determined that the school would remain open, Readsboro residents discussed the election results on their town’s public Facebook page. 

“Great turnout!” one resident wrote. “Hopefully this community can continue to support each other in a positive way.”

Tiffany Tan contributed reporting.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Readsboro voters choose to keep the town’s school open.

WOODSTOCK — The town’s economic development commission has expanded its housing incentives, allowing landlords in bordering towns to receive funding to house Woodstock workers in newly created, unused, or formerly short-term rentals. 

Woodstock’s Selectboard approved the amended program Tuesday night. 

The town’s economic development commission — funded by Woodstock’s 1% option tax — first created its rental incentive program last year. The program paid landlords up to $10,000 to build or refurbish rental units to make them livable, and offered similar funds to convert short-term rentals to long-term rentals. 

To obtain the grant, the landlord needed to rent the space for three years to someone working in Woodstock or surrounding towns. Owners could charge no more than $1,000 a month for a studio, $1,500 for a one-bedroom or $2,500 for a multi-bedroom unit, not including utilities.

Like other towns across the state, Woodstock has a dearth of affordable rentals. In turn, some local businesses have struggled to find workers. 

“The market isn’t providing these houses, so we have to provide some subsidies,” said Jill Davies, a member of the economic development commission’s housing working group. 

Now, the program is expanding to cover units in Bridgewater, Pomfret, Reading and Hartland, so long as the units are rented to someone working an average of at least 25 hours per week in Woodstock. 

“You just have to try everything and see what works,” Davies said.

Davies said the rental program in Woodstock, an upscale tourist destination, was inspired by a similar initiative led by the Big Sky Community Housing Trust in the resort town of Big Sky, Montana. 

The commission also solidified other, minor policy changes to the program. Rather than distributing funds on a per-bedroom basis, the economic development commission will pay landlords according to how many qualified workers they rent to. 

Landlords would receive $2,500 if they sign a qualified tenant to a one-year lease, and $6,000 if they sign a tenant to a two-year lease. A maximum award of $10,000 is available to landlords who sign four or more tenants to two-year leases. 

Additional funds are available if landlords rent to a non-qualified tenant, so long as they also rent to a qualified tenant. 

Previously, landlords needed to sign one-year leases at a minimum with qualified tenants. Now, landlords can receive grant money for six-month leases in order to accommodate seasonal workers. 

Thus far, Woodstock’s rental incentive program has supported or is planning to support 10 units, according to Trena Tolliver, housing advisor for the economic development commission. Funds will support or have already supported the creation of four accessory dwelling units, a new three-bedroom unit, and a three-bedroom apartment being rented to Woodstock workers, she said. 

Tolliver called the program’s changes “enhancements,” adding that current funding would allow for two or three more units. 

“If we get close to hitting the targets, we’ll go back to the (commission) to ask for more funding,” she said. 

Both Tolliver and Davies acknowledged that the 10 units supported thus far are far from enough. Still, they represent a start. 

“We just hope to keep the momentum going,” Tolliver said. “Anything we’ve created or used to get this off the ground, we welcome other people to utilize it, too.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Woodstock will pay landlords in nearby towns to house its workers.

Morristown’s top administrator plans to leave his job by the end of June, he announced this week, close to two months after the town’s selectboard chair also resigned. 

The decisions by Eric Dodge, the town administrator, and Bob Beeman, the board chair, followed months of contentious local debate over the Lamoille County town’s proposed 2024 fiscal year budget, which voters overwhelmingly rejected on Town Meeting Day. 

The budget was controversial in part due to its size — more than $10 million, which a small but vocal group of residents argued was too large for the 5,500-person community — as well as salary increases it included for town employees, including Dodge.

A revised budget set to go before voters next month still includes those increases. All Morristown employees have been slated to receive what Dodge has described as an 8.7% cost of living adjustment, though some in certain pay grades would get larger raises.

The town administrator read a resignation letter at Monday’s selectboard meeting, saying that his decision came after “uncountable hours of contemplation.” He didn’t say why he planned to leave; on Friday, he did not return a request for comment.

“My reasons for making the decision are personal,” said Dodge, who was hired in April 2021 after serving on the town’s selectboard. “I do not intend to air them publicly.”

After Dodge read his letter, several board members and town officials — who, in some cases, appeared to be crying or holding back tears — said that while they respected Dodge’s decision to leave, they were disheartened by the position the town was in.  

“It’s very troubling to me,” said Don McDowell, the board’s vice chair. “It saddens me that we’re at this point.” 

Beeman, the former board chair, resigned his seat with a year left in his term just days after the March election. He chalked up his decision, in part, to the town’s political climate becoming “extremely negative and volatile” over the past year, he has said.

At Monday’s meeting, board member Laura Streets said recent months had marked “unprecedented times” for the town. Streets is one of two members elected in March, along with Travis Sabataso, who had campaigned against the proposed budget. 

“I’m actually very sorry that these were your two years in this position,” Streets told Dodge. “It’s been incredibly stressful.”

Streets and Sabataso voted to accept Dodge’s resignation, while board member Chris Palermo voted against it, having said earlier in the meeting that he disagreed with Dodge’s decision and wanted him to stay. Judy Bickford, the board chair, abstained, setting up the possibility that the board would not approve Dodge’s request to leave. 

McDowell, who had the final vote, paused for almost 30 seconds before granting Dodge the board’s approval. His “yes” vote was “the hardest vote I’ve ever taken here,” McDowell told his colleagues.

Dodge said he intended to stay on until a new town administrator was hired, but he said he wanted to be out of the job by June 30.

Monday’s meeting also saw some discussion about the 2024 fiscal year budget, which officials have slimmed down in advance of the planned revote on June 6. 

The new proposal totals about $9.4 million, roughly 13% higher than the budget voters approved in 2022. It’s estimated to increase local tax bills by about 10%, compared to the roughly 25% increase that had been proposed on Town Meeting Day this year.

Town officials said they were able to reduce the size of the budget in part by drawing on about $250,000 of the town’s reserve funds, as well as putting off hiring a new highway department employee. The proposal still includes funding for a new police officer, which the local agency has said is badly needed to bolster coverage on its overnight shift.

All five selectboard members voted in favor of the latest proposal. 

Dodge has defended keeping the salary increases in the budget as a way to keep town jobs competitive at a time in which many other municipalities are vying for workers. In the letter he read Monday night, he spoke highly of the town’s employees.

“My intent when I stepped into this role was to create a work environment built on trust, mutual respect, open communication and personal accountability,” Dodge said. “I couldn’t have selected a better team to bring these concepts to.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Another top Morristown official to resign.