SHOREHAM — Shoreham residents at their town meetings agreed to finance a new loader, one of several requests that received a collective thumbs-up from the local electorate.
The new loader is a John Deere, and the selectboard was green-lighted to pay up to $75,000 for its purchase.
Also OK’d were the proposed fiscal year 2020 highway budget, which was $881,589, and a general fund spending plan of $358,817.
Voters quickly dispensed with requests for:
•Creation of a “general reserve fund” to be used, at the selectboard’s discretion, for unanticipated expenditures.
•The transfer of $10,000 in general fund balance to the newly proposed general reserve fund.
•The shifting of $44,000 from the highway fund to the highway reserve fund.
•A combined total of $23,793 to help fund a variety of nonprofits that deliver services to Shoreham residents.
In the lone contested race on the ballot, residents picked Beth Davis over Maureen Gour by a 93-35 tally for a one-year term as auditor.
Those elected unopposed included Will Stevens, town moderator, one year; Julie Ortuno, town moderator, one year; Kathleen Brisson, town treasurer, one year; Steve Goodrich, selectman, three years; Molly Francis and Peter Lynch, each for a one-year term on the selectboard; and Katie Flagg, library board, five years. There were no takers for two positions on the planning commission. Two grand jurors and a town constable will need to be appointed.
Shoreham voters got to weigh in on a five-person race for three Middlebury seats on the Addison Central School District board; ballots cast in all seven ACSD-member towns were co-mingled and counted to decide the winners. Local residents also cast votes on a K-12 public education budget of $37,794,916 to operate ACSD schools, including Shoreham Elementary, for the 2019-2020 academic year.