[DaveWroteThis]

Thank you! Another question: What's with all the oil for heat? That's foreign to me. Everywhere I've lived it's been natural gas or propane. I remember growing up in Minnesota and hearing about the "old days" of fuel oil.

[vter]

Vermont being a rural state, natural gas is not available in most areas. You can get it in parts of Chittenden County. Vermont Gas is the company. You can give them a call and see what areas they service.
http://www.vermontgas.com/
Hopefully someone will chime in on the oil issue....we heat using propane.

[flu189]

You definitely need to very closely examine your choice of communities carefully. Based on the criteria of low religious participation, liberalism, and not minding paying taxes you will surely find like minded cohorts in various pockets and enclaves here. If in in fact your 200k income can persist in Vermont, then congragulations, you will be in the top 2%. Based on on my experience with work colleagues and members of the community, the above criteria as a whole will still place you in a very distinct minority. Regarding oil heat, not to complex of a riddle. It has to do with supply and the capacity of transmission. New England as a whole is far from producing gas fields and the infrastructure to move natural gas to market here has never been developed to a scale to allow a mass conversion. The rural nature and geography of the region makes it virtually cost prohibitive to develop a network of gas transmission lines. The factor will come into play when or rather if we ever attempt to develop wind turbine generation for electricity. It's great to have a generation source, but it is a major endeavor to develop transmission and distribution capacity. Regarding taxes and how they are spent. The state and towns produce reports on both revenue and expenditures. Yeah, some of it is a bit fuzzy and creative bookkeeping can create haze on how exactly monies are spent, but overall it is pretty easy to see what comes in and where it goes. That is where the "emotions" can come into play when folks see spending on certain projects, programs, offices, exceed what they believe to be reasonable and prudent. The way the future trend promises to go it is actually quite probable that many who have been very lax and with tolerant attitudes toward government spending will begin to have a change of heart as their personal situations further deteriorate.

[DaveWroteThis]

Thanks again! You guys are great. As far as me being a minority, do you mean my beliefs or my income?

I understand the oil thing, thank you.

I hear how "rural" Vermont is all the time. Help me compare it to where I live now. I live on a mountain, 30 miles from two towns - either direction. 1, pop 600... The other, pop 2000. My county is the size of Connecticut and has only 2 school districts. Kids go to school only 4 days a week because gas prices just don't allow bussing 5 days a week. This is very common in the rural mountain regions of Colorado.

[flu189]

Vermont being "rural" is just based on the fact that we don't have major population centers within our borders, basically just small towns linked by state and town roads. Having lived in the west and travelled across the country I have seen much more rural and remote expanses. Our largest town (city) is Burlington, but it is geographically very small and does not reallty have a city feel to it, at least in comparison to what cities in our neighborhing New England states have. Chittenden County is the most populated, but again the bulk of the towns are more rural than suburban in nature. As far as beliefs go, most people here really keep to themselves and neighbors at least outwardly do not seem to care or show interest in what your faith or level of activity with a church is, at least in comparison to other regions of the country. However, at least from my perspective, the majority of folks who I have come to know do actively engage in faith based activity, just that it is more casual than other places I have lived. Regarding liberalism, yes the state portrays especially through the media to the rest of the country an especially leftist bent, but on the other hand by being here just doing your thing it's not like it's being aggressively thrown at you wherever you go. There are really quite a few conservative folks here as well, but again it's not overly obvious. A lot will depend on who you get to know and what social circles and organizations you become part of if being around like minded folks is important. Then again, anywhere else I have ever lived the same applied.