Archive - Feb 2010 - Editorial

On Tuesday, Bristol residents will vote by Australian ballot on two crucial issues: adoption of a revised town plan and a new zoning ordinance that would regulate gravel mining. The votes are crucial because under the revised town plan, the RA-2 zoning district that butts up against downtown’s Main Street would allow for a large gravel pit, and mining of natural resources were unnecessarily opened in the town’s conservation districts.

View: Quick Read | Full Article

When at their town meetings next Monday, Salisbury and Leicester residents will be asked to approve a temporary hike in funds needed to get the milfoil eradication program back on top of the problem. The $5,000 or so in extra funding for each town isn’t a huge amount, but it is critical to the success of the program and the long-term health of Lake Dunmore and Fern Lake.

View: Quick Read | Full Article

Twenty-six years ago, I attended my first town meetings as a reporter. I was new to the state and its Town Meeting Day traditions and was awed by the purely democratic form of government many of the small towns throughout Addison County had long embraced. In those days (not all that long ago, I like to think), many towns still held the meeting on that first Tuesday in March with potluck luncheons or early dinners as part of the community heritage.

View: Quick Read | Full Article

Not many people bake their own bread these days.

I’m not surprised. To read a cooking magazine, you’d think it requires a $49 digital kitchen thermometer, a convection oven and a kitchen scale accurate to 0.05 grams. We forget that early man was cranking out homemade bread way back in the days when the wheel was still being tested in focus groups.

View: Quick Read | Full Article

Armando Vilaseca, Vermont’s Education Commissioner, delivered a sobering message to area school board members last Wednesday in a session that is meant, in part, to shock-and-awe his audience. The numbers tell most of the story, which is that budgets will either have to be cut again and again for the next two years or new revenues will have to be found.

View: Quick Read | Full Article

Part of the role of a town selectman is to advocate on the behalf of town residents. So when a Middlebury woman approached selectman Craig Bingham and complained that smokers at a public event at a Middlebury park had caused her kids to breathe smoke from their cigarettes or move, Bingham dutifully took the problem to the selectboard with a proposed solution: ban smoking in all town parks.

One of the roles of the selectboard is to reign in suggestions that are likely to cause friction without effectively solving the perceived problem. This is one of those times.

View: Quick Read | Full Article

What was an encouraging, hopeful and humanitarian response to Haiti’s desperate plight in the aftermath of its major earthquake ended abruptly this week in what we suspect was a heap of bureaucratic red tape.

Middlebury Union High School officials confirmed on Wednesday that plans to accept six Haitian students at the school for a year of study were cancelled when an U.S. Department of State official told MUHS Principal Bill Lawson that complications in obtaining visas for the students presented hurdles too large to surmount.

View: Quick Read | Full Article

I know envy is one of those deadly sins, but I can’t help it. Other columnists can write pieces about their smart, charming and funny pets. Or heartwarming pieces about growing up with dogs and finding just the right one now, like my colleague Katie. That helped her win a New England Newspaper and Press Association Rookie of the Year prize.

I’m not jealous of that award. She earned it, and it’s a little late for the particular honor for me. (See picture.) But the topic? That would be nice.

View: Quick Read | Full Article