ADDISON — Addison residents on Tuesday supported town and elementary school spending and joined other Addison Northwest Supervisory Union towns in backing Addison Northwest Supervisory Union school governance unification.
They also supported several measures to create town reserve funds and gave the selectboard the authority to borrow $50,000 to fund the next phase of developing the community sewer system, an item they approved by Australian ballot on Tuesday.
At the annual town and Addison Central School meeting on Monday night, residents also agreed to authorize the selectboard to negotiate a land swap with the school board.
Town and school officials have been discussing a land exchange that would move along the town’s effort to renovate the now-vacant former Addison Town Hall and use it as the town clerk’s office and community center. Town officials have been studying the idea for a decade.
To do so, Addison would have to build a community septic system on land west of the school, a system that would serve the town hall, the church next to the town hall, and the town’s fire department.
And the town must also clean up a patchwork of land ownership around the town hall, the existing clerk’s office and the central school, something the land swap would handle.
On Tuesday, residents back the selectboard’s proposals for $325,261 for the town administration budget for the coming year and $732,236 for the highway department budget.
Earning support were reserve funds for highway equipment, culverts, the town’s service bay/salt shed, and the town hall, all to be “funded with voter-approved budget appropriations” in the next year.
Addison backed a full slate of candidates who ran without opposition.
Incumbent Selectmen Roger Waterman and Steven Torrey won re-election, as did Town Clerk and Treasurer Marilla Webb and school board treasurer Jill Bourgeois.
Two newcomers filed for seats on the ACS board, Jasmine Almeida and Michael Krause; they will serve for the next year as ANwSU transitions to one-board governance.
Addison residents chose Vergennes Union High School board chairwoman Laurie Childers and ACS board vice-chairman George Lawrence for the town’s two seats on the Addison Northwest Unified District Board.
Addison residents backed, 348-192, a $1,606,375 ACS budget proposal that will make few changes to elementary school’s program and will raise spending by 4.12 percent, or about $63,000.
That increase is almost entirely driven by contracted raises and an expected hike of roughly 8 percent in health insurance benefits, officials said.
The school board had voted to use $100,000 of a projected fund balance from the end of the current school year to keep spending under the original dollar-for-dollar Act 46 penalty threshold.
As for school spending, Addison residents voted against, 284-252, the proposed VUHS $10,026,000 spending proposal for the 2016-2017 school year that represents a 2.23 percent spending cut from current spending.
They backed, 300-215, a separate VUHS $100,000 capital fund line item. VUHS spending will still be reduced by about by about $134,000, or 1.3 percent, including that fund.
Addison residents supported ANwSU unification, 366-169.