Don’t let NewVistas buy out our community. Take action today to help us protect our way of life, somehow, someway. NewVistas is not a proposal that is in the distant future, that we can rely on Act 250 to save us from. It’s a real threat, with real consequences that are happening now. A Utah based corporation is still purchasing hundreds of acres in our area, at or below its market value. They intend to purchase 5000 acres total, and more outside their designated region to ‘trade’ for the land they want to consolidate. This land-grabbing is keeping property in our region out of the hands of locals, and those that want to own a piece of rural Vermont by moving here. Every parcel that is bought up will be tied up for decades to come whether this project is successful or not. Over time it is sure to lead to a diminishing pool of voters to fight against any changes to the regional plan, eventually even the local democracy of this area could be overrun by a shrinking population. If that happens, not even Act 250 can stop NewVistas. Join the cause, donate to the cause, get out and let the entire state know what a huge and immediate impact NewVistas is having on us. We can’t afford to do nothing!
Our region has already been negatively affected by the plans of NewVistas and its laundry list of corporations. Many affordable properties that could have been purchased by families looking to move here, and make their way with future generations have vaporized from the market via the gaping maw that millions of dollars can consume. It is clear that NewVistas uses money as both speech, and a way to buy out the silence and complicity of others. Many of you reading are no doubt familiar with the echoes from Bernie Sanders campaign, that Corporations are not people. That they do not have a will of their own, nor can be used against entire regions of people to do as they will to land. Yet here in our home state this is exactly what is happening as NewVistas decides to land its Mothership in the back yard of the Joseph Smith memorial. The corporation will continue to purchase land, and to make snake-oil type offers to young entrepreneurs with predatory contracts that remove their rights to own whatever they create. NewVistas will carry on trying to buy out our voices and beguile our lives with green washing and offers of corporate-backed ‘economic stimulus’. If we stand by and wait, we will be overcome, and our way of life is in Jeopardy. As the VistaBiz model begins to take over, our abilities to maintain competitive small businesses will diminish. Act 250 will disappear, or fail to block this project as it moves into our regional plan, taken over by purchased voices. This is not a project we can ignore. We must stand together, we must inform the rest of our state so they may stand with us. And we must maintain the chorus of our voices until NewVistas is forced to move on. Join the Alliance, or donate to the Alliance today. Insure the future of our region against corporate takeover.