Forty-five years helping rural Vermonters make their homes here. Now bringing it to Montpelier.

The short version: Tom Otterman is a sixth-generation Vermonter — a descendant of Seth Warner — who lives in West Topsham, on land that was once the family farm, with his wife Donna. He's a Norwich-trained civil engineer and has spent a 45-year career surveying land and designing the water and wastewater systems that let people make their lives here. He's running for the Vermont House because the people writing the rules have rarely, if ever, done the hands-on work that makes life in rural Vermont possible.

Grown where he was planted

Tom was born, raised, and educated here — the schools in Waits River and West Topsham, Spaulding High School, and Norwich University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. He grew up on his parents' farm (Bud and Doris) among the sheep, cows, and horses, with a childhood full of the kind of rural life that's hard to put a price on.

Working together, he and Donna made a living and raised a family where they grew up. Their two grown children still live and work in Vermont. Tom is guided by the belief that the next generations deserve the ability to have the same opportunities.

The work he actually does

After an early career at several engineering and surveying firms, Tom has spent the last 22-plus years running his own practice — surveying, septic design, and permitting — across the Upper Valley and beyond, in both Vermont and New Hampshire. That means staking property lines, reading soils, laying out wells, engineering the on-site wastewater systems, and working closely with state regulators on behalf of landowners to come out the other side of a complex and difficult permitting process.

In plain terms: Tom is the candidate with a deep, practical understanding of what works, what doesn't, and what needs fixing when it comes to the state's regulatory relationship with Vermont's people. He has walked countless properties with landowners, sat across the table from young couples doing the math on a first home, and untangled permits that stalled for reasons that protected no one.

Why he's running

Rural Vermont is now out of reach for many people who grew up here. To Tom, that's the whole problem: how is a young Vermonter supposed to gain a foothold in home ownership while competing with seemingly unlimited money from somewhere else? He believes Vermont's policy choices invited scarcity and pressure that pushes out rural Vermonters. The state must take proactive steps now to undo decades of policy choices that drive costs up.

Vermont is also in the middle of the biggest overhaul of its land-use laws in fifty years. The decisions being made right now — about maps, layers of rules, and what's allowed on rural land — will shape our towns for generations, and they need someone in the room who can read the plans, run the numbers, and tell the truth about the trade-offs.

Freedom and Unity

Tom takes Vermont's motto seriously. He sees Freedom and Unity as the balance between individual liberty and the shared well-being of the community, and he worries both are under strain. Too often, he believes, legislation is crafted to unnecessarily curtail our freedom to pursue conscientious lives in rural Vermont, and "unity" has come to mean a single point of view rather than the cooperation, acceptance, and respect for other opinions the word actually requires.

It wasn't always this way. Tom's father served several terms in the Vermont House and worked closely with then-Speaker Ray Obuchowski — including on the still-unsolved puzzle of education spending. Tom wants to bring back that habit of working across the aisle. He doesn't claim to have every answer; what he offers is an honest voice for common sense, and decades of permitting experience that give him real insight into the environment and state regulation. As he puts it: given the nature of the establishment, he's the anti-establishment candidate.

Tom is running on the Republican line, but embraces a Vermont tradition of putting people before party. He'll represent every resident of Groton, Newbury, and Topsham — and work with anyone, from any party, who wants to help Vermonters solve the true crises of affordability and opportunity.