LEICESTER CENTRAL SCHOOL student Jacob Miner swings across the monkey bars on the school playground during recess on the first day of school Tuesday. Students in the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union started back to school Tuesday, while other Addison County students started on Wednesday.
Independent photo/Trent Campbell

August 30, 2007

By JOHN FLOWERS

EAST MIDDLEBURY — J.P. Carrara & Sons officials have offered to scale back their proposed use of an expanded gravel pit they hope to operate off School House Hill Road, in an effort to address neighborhood concerns about truck traffic, noise and dust their project would generate in East Middlebury.

Neighbors remain concerned about Carrara’s plans, however, and on Monday presented Middlebury’s Development Review Board (DRB) with a petition urging, among other things, that the town call for an “independent, expert evaluation of all impacts to (the East Middlebury) community, related to health, safety, traffic, property values, the environment, aesthetics and quality of life that would result from the proposed expansion of the Carrara gravel pit.”

It was earlier this summer that Carrara proposed to extend its 23.4-acre gravel pit by 15.3 acres to the east. The company also wants to excavate sand and gravel on another 5 acres to the west of School House Hill Road.

August 30, 2007

By JOHN FLOWERS

MONTPELIER — The parents of two children killed in a July 4, 2002, boating accident on Lake Champlain said they are disappointed with the Vermont Supreme Court’s decision last Friday to release the man who was convicted of two counts of boating while intoxicated in connection with the fateful mishap.

The state’s highest court on Aug. 21 ordered that George Dean Martin, formerly of Middlebury, be released at the end of year three of what had been a six-year jail sentence handed down by Addison County District Court Judge Helen Toor in August of 2004.

The court ordered the release pending their ruling on an appeal in the case.

Martin’s attorneys had appealed the sentence, arguing among other things that Martin should have only been sentenced for the single offense of boating while intoxicated — not the two separate counts (each carrying three years) for each child killed during the accident.

August 30, 2007

By MEGAN JAMES

MIDDLEBURY — No one knows exactly what Patrick Dougherty will build on the front lawn of Middlebury College’s Center for the Arts (CFA) next month. Perhaps not even the artist himself.

In residencies at other institutions over the past 20 years, Dougherty has created massive towers of intertwined sticks, cocoon-like structures wrapped around trees and nests spiraling out to cover entire faces of buildings. But since he never works from drawings or plans, the sculptor’s final product remains a mystery until it begins to take shape.

The Middlebury community can be sure of at least two things: the internationally known sculptor will work with silver maple saplings harvested in Weybridge, stripping them of their leaves and weaving them together, and he will enlist the help of community volunteers to get the job done.