Why?

As much as I think becoming an entrepreneur will help me get a job and get out of Rutland, I do have some better reasons than that for doing this.

There are reasons why Rutland has such a bad reputation throughout the state, why "there's nothing going on in Rutland," why none of the projects that are ever talked about get done, why businesses flee the city for the town and why Rutland has been getting smaller and poorer while the rest of the state has seen population growth and greater wealth.

Rutland is the state's historic center of Republican politics and conservatism. For most of the last several decades the Republicans have been ascendent in city politics. The current mayor, Chris Louras, is a Republican who has served since 2005 and Republican Jeff Wennberg was in office from 1987 to 1999. I have heard so many stories about people who wanted to bring businesses to Rutland but couldn't because the city wouldn't play ball with them.

Sometimes the state has blocked growth in the city even though similar developments in South Burlington are greenlit and sometimes the town's own unfathomable reasons have played a role, but we here in the city can't control what the state does and we can't control what the town does, but we can change the way things are going in the city and make it a better place to start and grow businesses.