'She was the rock': Vermont native praised for help she coordinated after Montpelier flood

MONTPELIER – As the floodwaters rose in Vermont’s capital city on July 10, Katie Trautz had an assignment. Montpelier’s leaders asked the executive director of the nonprofit organization Montpelier Alive to coordinate volunteers and serve as a liaison between city government and downtown businesses.

The Cabot native’s first job was to canvass downtown businesses on foot, stopping in every storefront she could to urge shop owners and restaurant staff to move their inventory off the floor to a higher point within the building. As the organization’s only full-time employee, Trautz wished she could have had a bigger team to help her, but made the rounds as thoroughly as she could.

“It just became clear,” she said, “that this was a much more massive event than we might have thought.”

That was the first time business owners saw Trautz in relation to the Winooski River flooding that would devastate much of downtown Montpelier. It was certainly not the last time. In the days, weeks and months as destruction gradually gave way to recovery, Trautz was the lifeline between business owners and the resources they needed − somewhat literally and definitely figuratively – to stay afloat.

The federal and state governments lagged in their economic response to the flooding, according to Thomas Christopher Greene, the owner of Hugo’s Bar & Grill who’s among several downtown business people raving about Trautz’s work. He said she sought grants to bring needed funding into shuttered businesses’ bank accounts, and at least as importantly provided leadership when so many business owners felt rudderless.

“I’d vote for her for governor,” Greene said recently at his relocated, but revived, Main Street restaurant. “We wouldn’t be open without her.”

Working to keep Montpelier alive

That Trautz became indispensable to business owners in July is surprising only because she had just become executive director of Montpelier Alive five months earlier. Her primary professional experience in recent years has been on the artistic side; the fiddle player who has performed in Americana groups including Mayfly and Chaque Foie co-founded the Montpelier-based Summit School of Traditional Music and Culture, and later served as executive director of the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph.

Trautz came to Montpelier Alive in 2021 as a part-time event coordinator before being named interim executive director in October 2022 and executive director this February.

“It’s such a dynamic role being an executive director of any organization,” Trautz said recently from her office in Montpelier City Hall. “You’re always learning so quickly.”

That process sped up exponentially starting July 10.

The normal job of Montpelier Alive − which is not part of city government but does receive funding from the city as well as outside sponsorships and donors - is to uplift downtown. Trautz said that happens through events, marketing, beautification projects, public art and by supporting the city and Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce in economic development.

None of those were priorities once the floods came. Trautz had to improvise.

She coordinated volunteers to help with flood cleanup. She identified people within the community who could pitch in physically and financially beyond the city’s and Montpelier Alive’s resources. (She cited a former Montpelier Alive board member, Peter Walke of Efficiency Vermont, and the city’s parks and trees director, Alec Ellsworth, and his staff for particularly crucial contributions.) She led Montpelier Alive’s efforts to communicate with the community on its website and through social media, and to manage the organization’s donor database.

Trautz helped coordinate the collection of food and water to take care of volunteers cleaning up the mess. Montpelier Alive provided a tool library, with contributions donated by residents to be used by business owners to rip out damaged walls and floors and dehumidify their buildings. She had to delegate some of the nitty-gritty work while spending time listening to people, she said, to take in their comments, reflections and grief.

“Anybody who meets a crisis or a challenge head-on in this way is probably inclined to use your own personal strengths to get done what needs to be done,” Trautz said. She said her skill set includes empathy and collaboration, abilities that serve her well as a musician and as an administrator.

“They (business owners) were searching for a confident voice and a true source of information that they could trust,” she said.

Trautz worked without having an office as a base. Montpelier City Hall was shuttered after the floods, so she took her work laptop to her Montpelier home and to The Skinny Pancake. That eatery sits several feet above Main Street and was one of the few downtown restaurants not closed by the floods.

“It certainly was disruptive,” Trautz said. “We all felt quite lost.” It was weird to be displaced from her office with all the daunting work that faced her, she said. Her priority was not to straighten out her own workplace but to help business owners in town strive toward rebuilding theirs.

Praise from Wilaiwans, Capitol Grounds, Three Penny Taproom

Tim Azarian was among the business owners who felt lost. Co-owner of the State Street restaurant Wilaiwans, he and other business people weren’t sure what to do next after the floods. Montpelier Alive was “the whole start of the recovery,” Azarian said, giving business owners a place to find volunteers to help clean things up as well as a forum to collaborate and discuss plans to rebuild.

“This gave everyone an island to go to,” he said. “For us, that was a lifesaver.”

Julia Watson, owner of the State Street coffee shop Capitol Grounds, said Trautz  sent daily emails detailing what business owners should remove from their buildings to make them safe for refurbishing. She identified funding sources, which in the case of Capitol Grounds included a grant from DoorDash; that money went right to payroll so Watson could pay her suddenly out-of-work employees.

“She was the rock,” Watson said of Trautz.

It’s hard to anticipate being the point person for a major flood, according to Kevin Kerner, co-owner of the Main Street restaurant and bar Three Penny Taproom. “That’s not on your bingo card,” he said.

Trautz, though, displayed “iron demeanor” throughout the crisis, according to Kerner. She almost always had the answer to business owners’ questions, he said, and if she didn’t have those details right away she’d track them down quickly.

“She never faltered,” Kerner said. “She crushed it.”

Floodplain restoration, other solutions

Trautz is mother to two children, ages 3 and 7. The family was supposed to take a vacation soon after the floods happened. She told them to go on vacation without her.

“There were some hard months of trying to balance family and work,” Trautz said.

Her home life, and life in downtown Montpelier, are heading back toward a sense of normalcy. “The recovery is definitely going to be a very long-term thing,” according to Trautz.

It will take years for businesses to rebuild their revenue and bring downtown life back near where it was, Trautz said. Not all flooded businesses have returned; 10 or so, Trautz said, will not reopen. A few have moved out of downtown or, like Hugo’s Bar & Grill, to new downtown locations, leaving potential customers having to catch up with the changes. Many potential customers no longer work downtown in their flood-damaged offices, further affecting businesses’ bottom lines.

Trautz said Montpelier Alive is doing what it can to brighten the vibe downtown. Holiday-season lighting and art displayed in empty storefront windows are early steps toward rebuilding spirit, according to Trautz, while acknowledging the flood and the suffering it brought.

Montpelier Alive, with the city and The Montpelier Foundation, is part of a Commission for Recovery and Resilience looking into long-term solutions to the city’s frequent and sometimes severe flooding problems. Solutions the group is exploring with public input, according to Trautz, include restoring the floodplain along the Winooski River to give overflowing water other, more natural places to go than the heart of downtown.

Trautz’s organization is looking toward a stronger future for itself as well. She said Montpelier Alive is building an endowment fund that could defray the cost of future emergencies. She recently hired a development director and expects to bring another full-time employee on board soon.

“It really made visible Montpelier Alive’s work,” Trautz said of the past few months. “This has elevated our profile so that people trust our work.”

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Montpelier flood-recovery organizer led efforts with 'iron demeanor'