WVTK Local & State News October 22, 2010

In final preparation for the opening of the Cross Street Bridge parking lot paving and marking will take place today in the lower lot behind the library and on Monday in the upper lot. The lower parking lot will receive a base course of pavement today and the upper lot directly behind Ilsley Library will be paved, marked and restored to full service. The lot will be closed on Monday and Tuesday.

Also, pavement milling and paving will take place this coming Monday and next Thursday on Elm Street from Route 7 to the Railroad Underpass. Traffic flow through the intersection of Elm, Exchange and Seymour Streets will be limited when the milling machine is working the intersection on Monday. On Thursday the same intersection will be temporarily closed when paving machinery is crossing the intersection.

State Police say two men held up a ferry dock in Charlotte. It happened at about 4 AM yesterday at the Lake Champlain Transportation Dock. The security guard was removing money from a safe at the time when the two men wearing ski masks and armed with guns took the cash away from him. The security guard was not hurt.

The next public meeting regarding the possible consolidation of schools in the Addison Northwest Supervisory Union will be held next Tuesday from 6:30 – 8:00 PM at the Addison Central School. The union is exploring a possible unification vote on Town Meeting Day 2011.

The Mount Abraham Union High School garden wrapped up its second year. The garden doubled in size this year. Mount Abe is just one of many schools in the county that have been taking the first steps toward incorporating more local food and nutrition education into their curriculums. So far this year, 438 pounds of produce from the garden have gone into school meals and that number is expected to rise to 600 pounds by the end of the harvest season.

The UD-3 board heard from more than a dozen teachers and community members this week who have requested that any cuts to the 2011-2012 budget, not affect direct educational services to students. Some advised the board to target extra-curricular activities and administrative positions in the Middlebury district, while others suggested school directors not cut anything from the budget.

This week Bristol planners looked over piles of color-coded maps and complex terms while studying the subtle differences between definitions like “Village Mix” and “Village Business.” The Bristol planning commission has been tasked with what Main Street will look like 10, 20 or even 50 years down the road.

Authorities are warning residents of New Haven and the general public to be wary of wild animals that act strangely. A rabid raccoon attacked a local man and his brother on Summer Road near New Haven Mills this week.

Vergennes Union High School Juniors took the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) tests earlier this month. School officials are optimistic that years of focus on improving test scores will pay off. Vergennes teachers have coordinated their efforts at helping students whose classroom work has lagged, and the school sets aside time at midday to allow teachers to give extra time to students.

Police investigating the killing of a Kathleen Smith are appealing for information about a fender-bender involving her car, which was found, abandoned about 60 miles from her Burlington home. Police are appealing to hunters who were in the Hancock area, asking them to contact police if they saw any stranded motorists, hitchhikers or anyone who looked out of place.

Cow Power is coming to Monument Farms. The program run by Central Vermont Public Service Corp. launched its Cow Power pilot program at Blue Spruce Farms in Bridport in 2005, and since then has added six more farms around the state. The digesters use cow manure to create electricity that CVPS buys from the farms and sells to environmentally conscious customers.

For the past six years Representative Steve Maier has been helping shape the state’s health care reform policy from the Statehouse. The Middlebury Democrat will now implement that policy in line with the new state job he officially started this week as The Department of Vermont Health Access’s (VHA) “Health Care Reform - Health Information Technology Integration Manager.”

The first building at Forest Park in Rutland was demolished yesterday. The demolition is the first phase of replacing the project with a mixed-housing neighborhood. Thirty-seven units are coming down, to be replaced by 33. Total costs for phase one are $8.5 million, which the Rutland Housing Authority gathered from federal and state sources.

While kids had the day off, Vermont teachers went back to school with two days at the Vermont National Education Association's 169th Annual Educators Convention. They were addressed by Vermont's Congressional delegation, as the very tough subject of states and school districts having to slash education budgets were discussed. Part of the two-day convention also involves workshops for teachers to improve their teaching practices.

The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has reported a leak in a steam line connected to its emergency core cooling system. Plant spokesman Larry Smith says the leak is in a drain line from the system, and would not prevent it from operating in an emergency. He says steam is leaking from a pipe, that it does contain radioactivity, but that it is contained within the plant's main reactor building. Smith says there's no threat to public health and safety.

Continuing efforts to ensure a clean, low-carbon energy supply, Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Power have signed contracts to purchase additional wind power from a New Hampshire wind project. CVPS’s contract is for 20 percent of the output of Noble Environmental Power’s planned 99-megawatt Granite Reliable Power Windpark in Coos County, NH, for 15 years starting in November 2012. Green Mountain Power’s contract is for seven percent of the Granite Reliable project for 20 years, also starting in November 2012.

Plattsburgh school officials are alarmed at what they've found. Two ninth-grade girls allegedly obsessed with the Columbine massacre that occurred more than a decade ago created a "hit list" of their peers. Eighty-four students were targeted on the hit list, the majority from Plattsburgh High School and others from Peru. Officials say they got the list just in time, before something much worse could have happened. The two girls have been suspended from Plattsburgh Senior High School until further notice and the hit list investigation is still pending. No charges against the girls are likely to be filed.

The National Weather Service has a new forecasting tool to help skiers and hikers prepare for conditions on popular summits, where the weather often is far more severe than down below. The Recreational Mountain Forecast features an online map where users can click on 19 summits in Vermont and northern New York and get a detailed hour-by-hour forecast. The experimental site becomes official on Nov. 5 after a year of testing and user feedback. Click here to visit the new site.