By JOHN FLOWERS
MIDDLEBURY — School directors and educators in the Addison Central Supervisory Union’s (ACSU) six rural schools have ratified a new, four-year contract that will maintain current health insurance benefits and ultimately raise teachers’ base salaries to be on par with their colleagues at Middlebury’s Mary Hogan Elementary School.
The new pact comes after more than a year of negotiations between ACSU school directors and negotiators representing the teachers union, called the Addison Central Elementary Association. The contract will apply to the approximately 60 teachers who work at the elementary schools in Bridport, Cornwall, Weybridge, Ripton, Salisbury and Shoreham.
The teachers’ previous contract had expired in June of 2005. They spent the past school year (2005-2006) working under the terms of that expired pact.
By JOHN FLOWERS
MIDDLEBURY — David and Cheryl Werner last week looked nervously upon the Vermont Electric Power Co. (VELCO) equipment that has mobilized off Painter Road, right across from their Middlebury tree farm.
They know it’s only a matter of time before that equipment springs into action, erecting a new set of transmission lines in the VELCO right-of-way that runs through their 10.4-acre property.
The Werners are desperately hoping the VELCO equipment fires up later, rather than sooner. That’s because major construction on the Werner property within the next five weeks could dramatically take the wind out of the couple’s Christmas tree sales.
“We just opened today, and we’ve already had three customers leave, because they couldn’t tag a tree,” David Werner said on Friday morning. “We can’t let them tag trees that could get run over.”
