RIPTON — Ripton residents on Town Meeting day will decide two local contested elections and also vote on a variety of financial requests.
Timothy Hanson faces Giles Hoyler in a race for a three-year term on the selectboard.
Tom Cabot and Perry Hanson are vying for a one-year term as town constable.
Riptonites will elect their new representative to the ACSD board. Amy McGlashan is the lone candidate for a three-year term to succeed Perry Hanson on the panel, which represents the pre-K-12 public education interests of students in the ACSD-member towns of Bridport, Cornwall, Middlebury, Ripton, Salisbury, Shoreham and Weybridge.
Ripton residents will also help sort out a five-person race for three Middlebury seats on the ACSD board. The race for those three-year seats involves incumbents James Malcolm, Lorraine Gonzalez Morse, Steve Orzech, and challengers Betty Kafumbe and Ryan Torres.
Mary Cullinane is seeking a three-year term on the ACSD board representing Weybridge; Ripton residents will vote on that, too.
Other uncontested elections feature Molly Witters running for one year as town moderator, Kathleen Sullivan for one year as collector of delinquent taxes, and Erik Eriksen for a three-year term as lister.
The local selectboard is proposing a combined town-highway budget of $650,270 for fiscal year 2020. That’s up from the $614,762 that voters approved for the current year.
Other articles on Ripton’s town meeting agenda include:
•  A request for $41,000 for the Ripton Volunteer Fire and First Response Department.
•  A $50,000 request to apply $50,000 from the 2017-2018 general fund surplus to the town’s building fund.
•  A proposal to give $6,000 to pay the Ripton Cemetery Commission’s expenses for next year.
•  Deciding a combined total of $23,816 in funding requests from various nonprofits that serve Ripton residents.
Proposed 2019-2020 spending for Ripton Elementary School will be reflected in a global Addison Central School District budget that voters will field on March 5. That budget proposal is for $37,794,916 to fund Middlebury Union middle and high schools, the ACSD central office and the seven elementary schools. The proposed ACSD budget reflects a 1.9-percent increase in local education spending and a 3.35-percent boost in spending per equalized pupil, compared to the current year.
If approved, the budget is expected to results in an education property tax rate of $1.7523 for Ripton, down slightly from the current $1.76, according to the ACSD’s fiscal year 2020 budget book.
The annual town meeting will begin at 7 p.m. in Monday, March 4, in the Ripton Community House. Show up at 6 p.m. for a potluck pre-meeting supper, with bread and soup provided. Bring a dessert to share (finger foods only), if you’d like.
Australian ballot voting will occur the following day at the same venue, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.