Post-Irene, Pittsfield Discovers Community Spirit

(Host) Residents of some towns hit hard by Tropical Storm Irene say there's been a silver lining to the experience:  They've discovered a stronger community spirit. 

As VPR's Steve Zind reports, some are hoping to preserve that spirit and build on it to make their communities stronger. 

(Zind) For two months after Irene hit Pittsfield, there was a series of regular town meetings to update residents on recovery efforts. The first one, right after the storm started with a joke.  The final post-Irene meeting took place late last month.  It ended with a song. 

 

(Pittsfield residents singing ‘Goodnight Irene')

(Zind)  By most accounts, Pittsfield residents discovered a spirit of togetherness that wasn't always evident in this small bedroom community which has no school of its own. 

Pittsfield was one of a group of Vermont towns completely isolated in the days following the storm. 

It took nearly two weeks before many residents could actually get out to go back to their out of town jobs.  During that time, people turned to volunteering and helping in any way they could with the flood clean-up.  Patti Haskins is Pittsfield's Town Clerk.

(Haskins)  "It was just kind of a magical moment because people were divorced from their regular life.  They were all in it together, they weren't able to go to work and they had lots of energy to put into making it all happen. "

(Zind)  Haskins is hoping that outpouring of community involvement will carry over into the future and increase interest in serving on town boards and committees.   

(Haskins) "It seems like it's harder to get people to fill some of the positions.  And I wondered if this would change that, if people would be more interested in being involved. I hope it does."

(Zind) It's too early to tell if that will happen. Haskins is also hoping the newfound Pittsfield community spirit will boost March town meeting attendance.  She says there was better attendance at the post-Irene meetings than at town meeting.

One concrete result of the sense of community that grew from Pittsfield's Irene experience is a new Website. Pittsfield Vermont News publishes a biweekly newsletter.  As the first newsletter last September declared, "why should we give up that wonderful feeling of community?"

There's also a new effort to bring businesses together in the series of towns along the stretch of Route 100 between Pittsfield and Granville. 

Larry Plesent is the co-owner of a café and restaurant in Rochester.  He's also the president of Vermont Soap Company in Middlebury. Plesent says a number of local businesses got together after Irene and decided to market this stretch of Route 100 as the Green Mountain Valley.  Their marketing pitch echoes a line from the old TV show Seinfeld.

(Plesent) "People come here and they say, oh, well what do you do here?' And I say, ‘our main product is nothing'!"

(Zind) By ‘nothing' Plesent is referring to the valley's relative quiet, unhurried atmosphere compared to more popular Vermont tourist destinations.  He says in reality there are plenty of hiking and biking opportunities to promote, along with inns and restaurants. 

Plesent says local businesses have suffered since Irene, and customer numbers were down during foliage season.  The new Green Mountain Valley Business Community has more than 30 members today.  So far they're largely Rochester businesses, but Plesent says they're reaching out to neighboring towns. 

The group's goal is to even out the seasonal ups and downs and increase local business by about 25 percent. 

Plesent says the organization wouldn't have been created without Irene and the shared, ‘we're all in this together' feeling that grew out of it.

(Plesent) ‘No.  We would all have gone our ways.  Everything was kind of working."

(Zind)  Like some in the other towns briefly isolated by the flooding,  Plesent thinks almost wistfully of the days immediately after Irene, when the community came together for nightly dinners, everyone pitched in however they could, and social and political distinctions melted away.   

(Plesent) "My concern is that we're gong to lapse back into the old ways.  You have to keep it going."

(Zind)  For VPR news, I'm Steve Zind.