Letter to the editor: City ballot item called ‘divisive’

I write to oppose the anti-Israel non-binding referendum on the Vergennes Town Meeting Day ballot. Israel is a vibrant democracy. Palestinian Israelis vote alongside Jewish Israelis in all elections. Arab countries of the Middle East and Africa are weak democracies at best.

Vergennes residents on Town Meeting Day will have a chance to tell city councilors to take a stand in the war between Israel and the Palestinian people.

Due to expiring terms, potential races loom in March on the Vergennes ballot for mayor, three city council seats, two seats on the Addison Northwest School District Board, and one seat on the Vergennes-Panton Water District Board.

The Vergennes City Council last week discussed two necessary and five potential Town Meeting Day ballot items that could be warned for residents to consider.

Here’s what happened at each of the town meetings in Addison County.

Middlebury voters overwhelmingly backed all the financial items on their town meeting agenda and elected Farhad Khan and Fred Dunnington to three-year terms on their selectboard.

It’s possible that Lincoln’s annual town meeting, held on Monday night in Burnham Hall, can be summed up by a single remark made by resident and former state representative Mike Fisher during one of several lengthy discussions that evening.

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign after Donald Trump’s sweeping success in Tuesday’s Super Tuesday primaries, but not for lack of support in Vermont and Addison County.

Voters struck down close to a third of school budgets across Vermont on Tuesday, the highest proportion in at least a decade, according to the Vermont Superintendents Association. 

As about a third of the state’s school districts, including three of the four school districts serving Addison County, were defeated in Town Meeting votes this Tuesday, voters naturally turn to two questions: Short-term, what are the next steps to propose … (read more)

In all school districts, boards struggled with the double-digit rising costs of health insurance for their employees, general inflation and the loss of federal money started during the pandemic.

Voters in the Mount Abraham Unified School District on Town Meeting Day narrowly defeated the proposed district budget for the 2024-2025 academic year and opposed by a much larger margin the purchase of the building that houses the district’s central offi … (read more)

In commingled balloting in the five Addison Northwest School District communities, the ANWSD board’s Fiscal Year 2024-2025 (FY25) budget proposal of $28,232,078 was defeated on Tuesday, 1,282-1,012, or about 56-44%.

In what’s shaping up to be a season of “nay” in the area, the proposed FY25 budget for the Otter Valley Unified Union School District was rejected by district voters on Tuesday, with 891 votes (40%) in favor and 1,325 votes (60%) against.

Voters in the Addison Central School District communities of Bridport, Cornwall, Middlebury, Ripton, Salisbury, Shoreham and Weybridge went to the polls on Tuesday to approve a proposed FY’25 preK-12 spending plan of $50.6 million by a convincing 2,081-1, … (read more)