WHITING — Thirty-six residents at the Whiting town meeting on Tuesday evening at town hall were kind to the incumbent town officials and to town roads.
Those gathered at Whiting Town Hall on Tuesday evening added $10,000 to the highway budget in order to do a little more in repair dirt roads in town. That made the final municipal spending plan that was approved by voters $338,962.50 of spending for the 2018-2019 fiscal year, with $243,689.10 to be raised by taxes.
One resident said that the budget for gravel to put on the roads had been level-funded for several years and offered an amendment to put $10,000 toward more gravel. Others suggested that on some roads the underlying problem could be the base of the road; so the amendment was amended to put the $10K toward road repair more generally, and it passed.
Voters also returned all incumbents to their positions in voting from the floor. Those included Selectman Bob Wood, Road Commissioner Paul Quesnel, Lister Dennis Ethridge, Auditors Elizabeth Curran and Alison Remy, Collect of Delinquent Taxes Rani Fallon, First Constable Michael Dame, Second Constable Rusty Brigham, Town Juror Paul Quesnel, and Town Agent Heather Bouchard
Curran was also re-elected as moderator.
There was discussion on repairing the firehouse and building a new town garage. The one-bay garage is not big enough to accommodate the town truck when it has the snowplow affixed to it. Townspeople asked the selectboard and town clerk to gather information on costs and building options and present them at a special town meeting, which will likely be held late this summer.
Also at the polls, Whiting residents voted on the budget for Otter Valley Unified Union School District, which includes the towns of Leicester, Brandon, Goshen, Pittsford, Sudbury and Whiting. Voters in the district approved the $19,243,835 OVUUSD spending plan by a tally of 772-356. That budget figure represented a roughly $550,000 cut in spending, or 1.22 percent, from the current budget.
The proposed budget calls for Whiting Elementary School to become a preschool center. Sudbury and Leicester schools will split kindergarten through third grade at one school and grades four to six at the other.
In other OVUUS voting, Leicester resident Greg Bernhardt won re-election, uncontested, to a three-year term on the school board as an at-large member.