Archive - 2010 - Page

Editor’s note: The change of the year is a good time to look back over the last 12 months and recall where we’ve been before diving into the 12 months ahead of us. We present this look back at 2009 to help you bring to mind the big stories of the year and also some of the smaller ones that have touched our lives in Addison County. Happy New Year!

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MIDDLEBURY — Steadily surging enrollment and some cost-cutting has allowed the Patricia Hannaford Career Center (PHCC) board to craft a proposed 2011-2012 budget that represents a 1.05-percent decrease in spending and produces the lowest tuition rate in recent memory.

The PHCC board is recommending a budget of $3,343,333, which is $35,528 less than this year’s spending plan and represents slightly more savings than was requested from the school under the state’s “Challenges for Change” education spending directive.

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LEICESTER — In the living room of her Leicester home, Kristin Francoeur fed alpaca fiber into a wood spinning wheel, listening to its quiet click as she spun.

“This one has a tiny squeak, so we’ll have to adjust it,” she said.

The squeak, she said, was in the pedal. Over the past few years, Kristin has gotten some practice figuring out where the sounds are coming from: She tests each Green Mountain Spinning Wheel as her husband, Paul, makes them.

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Editor’s note: This article is the final in a three-part series on Addison County residents who have sought help from the Quit Tobacco Program at Porter Hospital in order to kick their cigarette habits.

SHOREHAM — For the first time in decades, Deborah Diamond, 66, could smell the coming of spring.

Earlier this year, Diamond’s vow to quit smoking once and for all was bolstered when she caught a whiff of that “lovely green smell” that she never wants to lose again.

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RIPTON — More than 1,000 cross-country skiing enthusiasts from throughout New England will converge on Ripton this coming February as part of the 2011 TD Bank Bill Koch Festival.

The two-day event (Feb. 25-26), featuring a variety of activities for young cross-country skiers and their families, is expected to provide a very welcome spark to the winter economy in Addison County. Organizers anticipate filling every hotel room in the Middlebury area while providing a stream of potential shoppers and diners.

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VERGENNES — As the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Vergennes enters the home stretch of its three-year community-wide effort to address substance abuse among teens and young adults, club and local officials are convinced their work and partnerships with schools, state and local health providers, and police have paid off.

The effort began in January 2008, when the Vermont Department of Health awarded the club a three-year, $360,000 Strategic Prevention Framework grant from a pot of federal funds.

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BRANDON — Against steep odds and with a few windfalls, the Otter Valley Union High School board this month passed a proposed 2011-2012 budget that far exceeds spending reductions suggested by state education officials in the Challenges for Change law and that raises the local education tax rate by a mere cent while retaining the school resource officer.

On Dec. 15, the board unanimously decided to put before voters a $10,221,037 spending plan for 2011-2012, cutting $454,853, or 4.26 percent, in spending from the current budget.

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BRANDON — Some taxpayers in Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union towns — including Brandon, Goshen, Leicester and Whiting — will be very pleased come Town Meeting Day. Most area school budgets will translate into significant reductions in the local tax rate thanks to lower proposed spending and the state per pupil spending formula.

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