Top 10: Local school districts struggle to pass budgets

Like school districts around the state, most of the learning communities that serve Addison County students struggled to get spending plans approved by voters this spring.

The face of Addison County communities is changing — literally. Big building projects started in Middlebury, Vergennes and elsewhere will result in some major change in the appearances of several Addison County villages and downtowns.

The year just ended saw the departure of many local leaders serving in top positions in some of Addison County’s largest institutions and towns.

Politically, Addison County has been solidly blue for the past 20 years. In 2022, Democrats accomplished something they’d never done before: They won every one of Addison County’s nine seats in the Vermont House and both its seats in the state Senate.

Housing remained out of reach for many in 2024, as the cost of building and buying homes has skyrocketed. Though, local organizations and municipalities saw some progress this year in their efforts to alleviate the housing crunch.

The charitable organization Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects, or HOPE, this fall was asked to help a growing number of houseless folks who’ve temporarily settled in the shire town, either at the Charter House Emergency Shelter or at makeshift campsites … (read more)

There are a handful of certainties about the 50-megawatt solar array proposed to be installed on a 220-acre tract of Panton land.

News first surfaced in April of a proposal to build a 20,000-square-foot, 14-bed, locked facility in Vergennes. It would house what state officials called “justice-involved” youth on a short-term basis. They called it the Green Mountain Youth Campus.

The vast majority of our top 10 stories typically involve issues with a weeks-long buildup and/or fallout. Number 9 on this year’s list keys on an event that spanned a mere six minutes: the total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024.

We play sports and offer them in our schools for any number of reasons — fitness, the lessons of teamwork and striving for common goals, the idea that striving leads to improvement, and the simple joy of participating.

This past year, the stories that got the most clicks on our website included the accidental fire that destroyed the home of the Mount Abraham Union High School principal in January, the seemingly random knife attack on Middlebury’s College Street in March … (read more)

When we choose the top 10 stories of the preceding year, we always produce a longer list than just 10. Here are a couple of important stories that could have made the list, but didn’t fit.

Many Addison County residents will remember 2023 as the year during which they never left home without an umbrella.

A lack of available housing created a lot of problems in 2023, not only for folks trying to settle in Addison County, but for various businesses and institutions trying to fill vacancies on their workforce rosters.

2023 was a year during which some major building projects got off the ground — or at least off the drawing board.