WVTK Local & State News November 12, 2010

The Addison Central Supervisory Union schools and central office will attempt to prepare 2011-2012 budgets that reflect a combined total of $613,340 in spending cuts. The cuts are being requested as part of the state Legislature’s “Challenges for Change” directive aimed at reducing government spending. Next Tuesday, UD-3 school board members will get their first glimpse of how a 2-percent spending cut could translate into fewer supplies, programs, staff and services.

This week Middlebury selectmen got their first look at a draft 2011-2012 municipal budget. Maintaining current staffing levels and services would require approximately $250,000 more in local tax revenues. The municipal tax rate would need to be increased by almost 4 cents. That would translate into a property tax increase of $74 for the owner of a homestead valued at $200,000.

The Addison Northwest Supervisory Union committee studying unification of the five-town district took no action at this weeks meeting. They did however reach a consensus that it will offer a positive review of a potential one-board governance to the full board on November 17th.

The Mount Abraham Union High School board has set its educational spending target for the coming fiscal year. It is a 2 percent reduction from this year’s spending plan. The target agreed upon unanimously by the board members would allow Mount Abe to reach the voluntary spending cut mandated by the Legislature as part of its “Challenges for Change” law.

Sudbury residents will be asked to close the Sudbury Country School after a number of failed moves exploring the possibility of merging their elementary school with schools in neighboring towns. A number of parents recently delivered a petition demanding that the school be closed and the town tuition its youngest students to other schools. There will be a special school district meeting on December 6th. Town voters will be asked to decide whether to authorize the Sudbury school board to close the school and send students to other public schools beginning in the Fall of 2011.

This first draft of recommended Rutland Public School district cuts was presented to the full Rutland School Board late October and the work continues to reduce its tap on the statewide education fund. The administration supports the elimination of world language in seventh grade at Rutland Middle School, industrial arts or woodshop also at the middle school and the layoff of three Rutland High School teachers in English, math and social studies. The Board is expected to ratify the district's budget by early January 2011.

The search continues on Lake Champlain for a missing New York woman. Fifty-six-year-old Francine Marcel was last seen canoeing on the lake last Tuesday near her family's camp. Earlier this week New York State Police troopers walked 30 miles of shoreline looking for the missing Morrisonville woman. Helicopters and sonar are also being used to try and find Marcel in the water. Her green Old Town canoe also remains missing.

A new marquee made of hand-forged steel will soon stand in front of the Town Hall Theater. The new marquee will provide a very sturdy and classy message board on which the theater will be able to showcase its many events to the community. They expect installation to be complete by the end of the year.

Ripton Elementary School is looking for community input on how students can mark the holiday season as part of their learning experience. The outreach comes in the wake of decision by school officials not have typical Halloween activities this year. The decided instead to have a more general celebration of the fall and Thanksgiving.

There's a new memorial to Vermont soldiers and Marines who have died as part of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 300 people gathered yesterday at the state veterans' cemetery in Randolph where the granite memorial was dedicated. The memorial is inscribed with the names of 40 service members with Vermont ties that have died in the nation's wars since the 2001 attacks on the United States.

Rutland County residents came out this Veterans Day to show their respect at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Main Street Park. The memorial was built back in 2000 with the names of about 125 local vets on the honor roll. Thirteen more names were added this Veterans Day and the list is now at 312 names.

The commander of the Vermont National Guard says "dozens and dozens" of the state's soldiers have been wounded while serving in Afghanistan. But Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie says federal privacy laws prevent the guard from announcing when a soldier is wounded. Dubie says he's visited military hospitals in the Washington area and Germany multiple times in the last six months and says it's tough.

Howard Dean’s supporters crowded into the back of a downtown Burlington café last night to discuss how a midterm defeat for the Democrats will shift the balance of power in Washington and how the party could bounce back. Dean says he stands behind the President and believes the Democrats can still recover, but has no plans to launch his own campaign 2012. He did predict that Mitt Romney would be a shoe-in for the republican nomination.

The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon is back online after the reactor was restarted following an unplanned shutdown caused by a leak of radioactive water. Plant officials say Vermont Yankee was reconnected to the New England power grid at 5:18 AM yesterday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is fighting to keep Social Security exactly as it is. A bi-partisan commission tackling the rising national debt recommends higher taxes and big cuts. The commission says it could reduce the federal deficit by $4 trillion over a decade with a series of moves including higher federal taxes, a 10 percent cut to the federal work force, $700 billion in cuts to Medicare and Social Security, and raising the retirement age. Already Republicans are speaking out against the tax hikes and Democrats are speaking out against cuts to Social Security.

Thee are new talks of a major addition to the University of Vermont. School officials now hope outside assistance will help them build a new sports arena on campus. The plans to build an arena for UVM have been up in the air for years now. The university said those plans are back on but with the help of outside firms they hope will take the vision forward.

Officials in Vermont are hoping $590,000 in grants will help the state become the first to build a so-called "smart grid" to deliver electrical power more reliably and efficiently. The money is coming from a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and $90,000 from IBM. Two professors from the University of Vermont will use the grants to launch a 2-year study of how to reduce the risk for the smart grid of large blackouts such as the one that paralyzed much of the Northeast in 2003.

The people at 3SquaresVT want you to know what it's like to live on food stamps for National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. To do so they're asking everyone to take the 3SquaresVT challenge, where people who do not receive food assistance will try to make ends meet with just $38. That's the weekly average for about 88-thousand Vermonters.

E-books have reached another milestone: their own best seller lists in The New York Times. The Times, whose best-seller lists have long been a benchmark for success among authors, announced that in early 2011 they would begin publishing rankings for fiction and nonfiction e-books. The digital market has grown rapidly in the past three years, starting with Amazon.com's Kindle reader and continuing with Apple's iPad and Barnes & Noble's Nook.