Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, on assignment for the Winooski News.
WINOOSKI — For Chloe Tomlinson, knocking on doors and talking to the people of Winooski is as much a learning experience as it is about reaching potential voters.
“I think it’s an essential part of democracy. We should be in conversation with the people that we’re offering ourselves up to represent,” Tomlinson said. “It’s also really wonderful to meet more of my neighbors.”
Tomlinson is running for one of two seats to represent Winooski in the Vermont House of Representatives as a member of the Vermont Progressive and Democratic parties. If elected — a near certainty, given only two candidates are on the ballot — she’ll replace outgoing Rep. Taylor Small, P/D-Winooski, and likely work alongside Rep. Daisy Berbeco, D-Winooski, who is running for reelection.
As for what she’s been hearing from Winooski residents?
“Honestly, over and over again it’s housing,” Tomlinson told the Winooski News on an unseasonably warm afternoon in Rotary Park. “And housing is so interconnected with other issues. It’s interconnected with health care. It’s interconnected with substance-use disorders. It’s interconnected with everything, and it feels like, at the doors, it oftentimes comes back to that.”
Housing seems to be Tomlinson’s key issue. She said she was inspired to run for office in part by the struggles she faced navigating Vermont’s tight housing market in recent years. As she talked to her friends and neighbors, she said, she heard the same story.
“I saw more and more people unable to access stable housing and recognizing that they might have to leave Winooski or even leave the state,” she said.
But Tomlinson thinks the city’s moves toward helping people find and stay in housing, such as efforts to trigger a charter change to require stronger protections for tenants against evictions or the establishment of a citywide rental registry, could be emulated across Vermont.
“I think there’s a lot of things here in Winooski that could be a great model statewide — which is part of my interest in running statewide,” she said.
The charter change had seemed to be moving along after a voter petition put it on last year’s Town Meeting Day ballot and Winooski voters approved it by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. But the change, which would need legislators’ approval, fell through when officials discovered a scheduling mistake that invalidated the votes. Another procedural issue meant the item couldn’t be on the ballot this past March.
Councilors voted 3–1 to hold the revote this coming Town Meeting Day, according to the Aug. 5 council minutes. Tomlinson, the minutes say, spoke in favor of holding the redo this November instead.
Tomlinson isn’t a Vermont native, but she made two Vermont connections early in her career. The first was through a nonprofit called Spark Microgrants, founded by a University of Vermont graduate, which tries to help communities in East Africa design and implement social impact projects. She also worked for HIAS Pennsylvania, an organization focused on securing housing for refugees in Philadelphia — an experience she thinks will be valuable in serving Winooski, she said.
Her second Vermont connection was through working on the 2020 presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Tomlinson worked almost entirely on the road, she said, organizing events and working with local groups.
“I was really enamored with the way that Vermont has a very unique, strong community engagement in local democracy,” Tomlinson said. “I think that contributes to and also is a result of strong, tightly knit communities here.”
That’s what made her feel immediately at home in Vermont, she said. If housing is the issue that Tomlinson seems most focused on, then sense of community is the value she seems most passionate about.
“Community development and community building has been a common thread throughout my life and career,” she said.
For nearly four years, Tomlinson has worked for Front Porch Forum, the local social media platform and organization focused on better bringing together neighbors in Vermont and New York.
“I was a member before joining the team, and it immediately resonated with me as a tool that’s really powerful for connecting neighbors and building community,” she said. “That felt so aligned with the work that I had done in the past.”
Winooski School Board of Trustees President Robert Millar, who endorsed Tomlinson, said he backs her because of her commitment to justice and equity work that includes “the voices of those most directly affected.”
“I’ve had a number of conversations with Chloe about some of the most pressing current issues in Vermont, from housing to education to affordability, and have been consistently impressed by her engagement and understanding,” he said via email.
Tomlinson also works with Vermont Garden Network, growing food in a collective garden in the Intervale. The garden was ravaged by the summer 2023 floods and has since flooded two more times, in December 2023 and again this past July.
Tomlinson said the frequent flooding is evidence Vermont is not immune to the climate crisis. “We need to be thinking really urgently about addressing and responding to the climate emergency,” she said.
Asked what a just transition away from fossil fuels could look like for Vermont, Tomlinson brought up the Affordable Heat Act, which was passed via a veto override in 2023 and of which she is a supporter. The act, which was the center of political tensions in Montpelier, aims to push Vermonters away from heating buildings with fossil fuels and fund a transition to cleaner heating sources. Tomlinson believes the act will be good for the climate and for middle- and low-income Vermonters.
“Meeting our climate goals is important, and sometimes comes across as the emphasis, but we also need to make it clear that heating costs have been fluctuating and a just transition is about moving people towards more affordable ways of heating their homes,” said Tomlinson.
Tomlinson said she’s also heard a lot about taxes recently. When she speaks on this subject, it’s hard not to hear a bit of the Sanders influence that she freely admits to.
“It’s clearly urgent for us to address our education financing system, and I think there’s opportunities for us to move towards a more progressive taxation model that’s asking the wealthiest and the top 1% of our state to pay their fair share,” she said.
Tomlinson has never held public office before, and she described running for the first time as an “unending to-do list” — but she said so with a smile.
Berbeco, who herself was a first-time candidate when she was elected in 2022, seems confident and excited that she and Tomlinson will be representing the Chittenden 21 District in 2025.
“Chloe is a delightful person and a hard-working, thoughtful member of the community,” Berbeco said via email. “I have no doubt she is going to do an excellent job representing all the people of Winooski in the Statehouse and I look forward to working alongside her.”
Correction (11/5/24): Spark Microgrants focuses on projects in East Africa; HIAS Pennsylvania is the group Tomlinson worked for that focuses on refugee resettlement in Philadelphia.