Category: Vergennes
VERGENNES — Former Ferrisburgh Volunteer Fire Department Chief Bob Jenkins remembers as a teen in his native Vergennes hearing the siren on top of City Hall, racing to the fire station to find out where the action was, and then heading to watch firefighters do their job.
“That got the adrenaline flowing,” said Jenkins, now 66.
At the age of 16 he followed in his father’s footsteps and approached Vergennes Volunteer Fire Department Chief Ralph Jackman and signed up, beginning a 50-years-and-counting career in the fire service, including 17 years as Ferrisburgh’s chief.
VERGENNES — A new owner recently took over Main Street fixture Vergennes Wine & Beverage, but he hopes that other than new paint, flooring and faces, its customers will notice little change from the way the store has been operated for the past dozen years.
Monkton’s Paul Kerin, a 24-year veteran of the beverage distribution business, bought the Stone Block store from longtime owner Andy McCabe on March 1.
VERGENNES — Seniors in Vergennes got some good news Friday when the Vermont Community Development Program awarded a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant to the city for the long-planned and long-awaited senior housing center off Monkton Road.
That grant, officially announced by Gov. Jim Douglas at Vergennes American Legion Post 14 on Friday, provides one of the final two pieces of the financial puzzle for the fully permitted 25-unit, $5.8 million facility.
VERGENNES — In a vote watched closely around Vermont, residents of all five Addison Northwest Supervisory Union communities on Tuesday backed strongly the plan to have one 12-member board govern the four-school union.
The final tally was 908-539, or about 63-37 percent, with wide margins in each town.
As of June 2011, the existing Vergennes Union High and Elementary school boards, Ferrisburgh and Addison Central school boards, and ANwSU board will dissolve and the union will assume ownership of all four schools.
VERGENNES — Residents in four of the communities that Bixby Free Memorial Library serves agreed on Tuesday to make substantial increases in their towns’ yearly contributions to the Vergennes library, the first time towns have upped their annual ante since 2002.
In all, Addison, Ferrisburgh, Panton and Waltham will add about $17,600 to their annual contributions during their upcoming fiscal year, to a total of about $51,200.
VERGENNES — The future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and the state’s budget crunch continue to dominate the Vermont Legislature’s agenda, local lawmakers announced as they began their weeklong break on Monday for town meetings.
VERGENNES — Vergennes aldermen at their Tuesday meeting last week released funds that will help the planning commission update the city’s zoning laws to reflect changes called for in the municipal plan adopted last fall. That update would not take effect until after a public process.
Aldermen said they would take $3,000 out of the city’s Tower Fund, which is funded by cell phone companies who lease space for antennas on the water tower behind City Hall.
VERGENNES — It’s not often that high school teachers can take a semester away from teaching to focus exclusively on creating a more progressive learning environment.
But that is just what Vergennes Union High School Spanish teacher Kristine Kirkaldy will do next fall. She recently became the second teacher from VUHS to win a Rowland Fellowship, which each year awards $100,000 to up to 10 Vermont secondary school educators to fund a semester researching and developing a project focused on “enhancing the institution’s culture and climate,” according to the foundation’s Web site.
