Archive - Feb 2012
February 23rd
MIDDLEBURY — After almost a decade in a temporary structure, the Middlebury College Field House will get a permanent home. The field house has been housed in an inflatable dome — the “Bubble” — off South Main Street since 2003, but last weekend the college board of trustees gave the green light for a permanent replacement.
ORWELL — This Town Meeting Day, voters in Orwell will decide on a proposed 2012-13 elementary school spending plan that represents a 5.47 percent increase over the 2011-12 budget.
Like many proposed school budgets around the state, Orwell’s plan adds back many vital services that were cut due to the state’s Challenge for Change budget recommendations last year, according to Orwell Village School Board chair Glen Cousineau. The additional spending is necessary to maintain a high quality of education at the Orwell Village School, he added.
LINCOLN — Long-time Lincoln Town Treasurer Larry Masterson’s last term will expire next month, giving way to an unusual three-way race for town treasurer
In Lincoln’s only contested election on Town Meeting Day, Shawn Richards, Lisa Truchon and Linda Daybell are vying to fill the treasurer vacancy.
MIDDLEBURY — The Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship, a Middlebury College department that helps budding social entrepreneurs solve the ills in society, is barely a month old, but it’s already lost its senior director.
That the Vermont State Police failed to adequately respond in a search for 19-year-old Levi Duclos, who was reported to state police as an overdue hiker in Ripton on Jan. 9, has been acknowledged by most, outraged first responders and rescue volunteers across the state, distressed friends and local residents, and shaken the public’s confidence in the state police force.
It is clear to almost everyone that this is a tragedy that might have been prevented had a better system been in place.
We won’t claim a preference in the current redistricting debate that has proposed moving Charlotte into the Addison County senatorial district, but in case math prevails we’d like to introduce you to aspects of the county that may be closer to your values than you may know.
Our rural roots are the most obvious similarities. Dairy farming, open land, small town government and small rural schools are the heart of both areas.
I first started to poke around town clerk’s offices and, more importantly, get to know the people who run them in the mid-1980s, when I started selling real estate for about five years. Back then, Panton’s office, if I remember correctly, was in a basement in a home near Vergennes, while Waltham’s was basically housed on a porch and didn’t have a copier.
I used to look at the covers of celebrity gossip magazines at the supermarket checkout and wonder about the headlines: What is Kim Kardashian’s “painful secret”? Is Jennifer Aniston really pregnant?
But I could never bring myself to buy a copy; other shoppers might think I was the kind of person who cared about the vapid lives of Hollywood stars.
Turns out, that’s exactly the kind of person I am.
