Archive - Jul 2007 - Page
July 23rd
July 23, 2007
By JOHN FLOWERS
MIDDLEBURY —Patricia A. Hannaford Career Center (PHCC) teachers have agreed to a one-year contract that will retroactively cover the recently concluded 2006-2007 school year, and they are now setting their sights on negotiating a longer-term pact.
Peter Ryersbach, chief negotiator for the Middlebury Union High School Teachers’ Association (MUHSTA), said the recently ratified contract grants PHCC teachers a 4-percent wage increase for the past school year and maintains the status quo on health care benefits. Teachers now pay 10 percent of their health insurance premiums, with PHCC picking up the balance.
Teachers recently received, in a lump sum, their retroactive pay stemming from the agreement, according to PHCC board Chairwoman April Jin.
It was the teachers who approached the PHCC board about forging the one-year pact.
July 23, 2007
By MEGAN JAMES
BRANDON — Kerry Clifford had better things to do than go to that mammogram appointment 12 years ago. The Brandon resident had done it the year before and, like every time before that, the results showed she was healthy. Besides, she gave herself the occasional breast exam, and she had never felt any lumps.
So she called to reschedule.
But the results of that rescheduled appointment made her reevaluate once and for all the importance of regular check-ups. Her doctor showed her the mammogram and pointed out the beginnings of cancer.
“It was about the size of the tip of a pencil, but it had already set up what they call a spider web, the connection of little blood vessels, already growing,” she said. “That appointment was almost a year to the day from my last mammogram. That’s how quick it can be.”
They cut out the cancer, put her on medication and four months later, found her cancer had moved into more organs, meaning she was in Stage Four, “which is not good,” Clifford said.
July 23, 2007
By JOHN FLOWERS
MIDDLEBURY — After a life of globe trotting, the Rev. Marthinus Riekert had found spiritual contentment and geographic stability as pastor of the Congregational Church of Middlebury, which he joined in 2005.
But only two years into his tenure at the church, Riekert and his family have found a new calling that has them again packing their bags. The family, which hails from South Africa, will soon leave Middlebury to lead a church half way around the world, in New Zealand.
“It was a very difficult decision to make,” Riekert said on Thursday. “It was taken with sadness and after a lot of deliberation and thinking.”
But in the end, Riekert said he could not ignore the appeals from a community of South African nationals who have relocated to Auckland, N.Z., in the wake of increasing violence in their native land. Riekert explained that South Africans are leaving their homeland by the thousands to escape crime that has become particularly violent in nature.
July 19th
MORE THAN 275 athletes entered Sunday’s Vermont Sun Triathlon held in Salisbury and Leicester. The winners were both Vermonters: Tim Donahue of Jamaica and Donna Smyers of Adamant.
Independent photo/Trent Campbell
SERVERS RUN INTO spilling trouble at the start of the waiters' race during French Heritage Day in Vergennes on Saturday afternoon. Waiters and waitresses run in a one-kilometer race through the Little City and must cross the finish line with most of the water still in their bottles.
Independent photo/Trent Campbell
July 19, 2007
By JOHN FLOWERS
MONTPELIER — Vermont House and Senate leaders this week vowed to hit the ground running in January with a new energy bill that could be even more comprehensive than the one vetoed by Gov. James Douglas.
The Vermont House on July 11 narrowly sustained Douglas’s veto of H.520, an energy bill that would have, among other things:
• Expanded the state’s electric efficiency utility (Efficiency Vermont) to an “all fuels” utility. Efficiency Vermont is currently limited to helping Vermonters improve their homes and businesses in ways to save on electricity, not on fossil fuels.
H.520 called for the Efficiency Vermont’s expanded services to be paid through a four-year tax on Vermont Yankee that would’ve raised roughly $25 million. Douglas was among those who did not support the Vermont Yankee tax, figuring that it would simply be passed on to consumers.
• Encouraged development of more renewable energy projects on Vermont farms.
July 19, 2007
By CYRUS LEVESQUE
BRISTOL — For most Bristol property owners, tax bills that will be mailed next month will contain a pleasant surprise: tax rates will go down by more than 4 percent for homeowners, and up by less than 2 percent for non-residential properties.
An average homeowner who didn’t make any big changes to his or her property in the past year can expect to see a smaller tax bill, town clerk Theresa Kirby said.
The good news on tax rates was possible partly because Bristol’s grand list has increased, Kirby said. The municipal grand list has increased by 2.1 percent since last year, from $2,620,374 to $2,675,407, because of new construction or the change in use of properties. The police district grand list increased by 1.52 percent, from $1,075,362.
The biggest reason for the drop, though, was a drop in the state education tax rate for homesteads. The education tax rate for homesteads dropped by 7.19 percent and, for non-residential properties, increased by only 1.19 percent.
July 19, 2007
By MEGAN JAMES
MIDDLEBURY — In a near silent gallery at the Middlebury College Museum of Art, Rebecca Purdum took a step closer to see the intricate overlay of colors in paintings she completed recently. She knows a painting is good, she said, when it surprises her, when she no longer thinks of herself as the one who created it.
The three abstract oil paintings, which went up late last month, hang one to a wall — two horizontal diptychs each stretching more than 10 feet across and one massive vertical piece — filling the space between with a kind of visual noise. All three are made up of what the artist calls “non-colors,” layers of blues, grays and browns, which come together to create something akin to water.
