Next week the Middlebury Select Board will be
holding their meeting on Monday instead of Tuesday. The meeting will be conducted in the Main Conference Room of
the Town Offices at 7 PM. On
Wednesday the 9th the Vermont Agency of Transportation will be
holding an Open Forum and Public Hearing regarding the Middlebury State Airport
Runway Reconstruction and Safety Area Improvements. The Open Forum begins at 6 PM and provides an opportunity
for interested parties to ask questions of VTrans representatives specific to
their property. The Public hearing
begins at 6:30 PM so VTrans can receive comments and suggestions for changes
from interested persons. Project plans are available for review in the Middlebury
Town Clerk's Office.
The Merry Mulch program gets underway in Middlebury
this Saturday. Members of the
Rotary Club of Middlebury will pick Christmas trees placed on the side of the
road up Saturday. Remember - please remove all decorations, especially metal
objects. The trees will be taken to the Addison County Solid Waste Management
for composting.
The Middlebury Highway Department will clean up
snow in the downtown tonight and tomorrow evening starting at 9 PM. Sidewalk clearing is on going. Although originally scheduled to start last
night, the clean up was delayed until tonight due to the forecasted frigid
weather overnight. Please remember
the Winter Parking Ban is in effect from 12:00 AM - 6:00 AM. Any vehicles
parked on town roads or parking lots, except where permitted, will be ticketed
and towed. Contact the Public
Works Department, 388-4045, for additional information about Town snow removal
operations.
The Middlebury Otters and the Middlebury Mystix will
host the 14th annual “Face Off Against Breast Cancer” hockey tournament on
Saturday and Sunday January 19th & 20th at the
Memorial Sports Center in Middlebury.
Last year, the event raised over $70,000 for the statewide Cancer
Patient Support Program, and the Otters and Mystix are hoping to break that
record this year. Over the course of its history, the Face Off Against Breast
Cancer has raised over $270,000 for charity. In addition to hockey games, the Face Off Against Breast
Cancer also includes several other associated activities on the tournament
weekend. For details or to become
a sponsor, just visit www.faceoffagainstbreastcancer.org.
The Town of Schroon Lions Club has a long history
of helping the blind are now helping identify sight problems in elementary
school children through the Lions SEE program. The program offers free eye screenings for children. In
December screenings were held for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students at
Schroon Lake and Crown Point schools. Trained Lions utilize scanners to take
measurements of each child’s eyes. Those measurements can detect problems with
the eyes that no one, not even the child, may be aware of. Information on the
Lions SEE program is available online at www.LionsSEE.org.
Hacker Boat Co. is using a $600,000 state grant to
move from Ticonderoga to Queensbury for a facility expansion. The move means
the loss of 38 jobs in Ticonderoga, although workers will be offered a chance
to transfer to the Queensbury plant expected to be built this year. The firm
says it will invest $5.4 million and create 31 new jobs at a
116,400-square-foot facility there.
The New York State Department of Health has
approved a corporate affiliation between CVPH Medical Center in Plattsburgh and
Elizabethtown Community Hospital through their corporate parent, Community
Providers Inc. and Fletcher Allen Partners. The affiliation took effect Tuesday. It was finalized following a nine-month
period of state and federal regulatory reviews that began last March after the
organizations gave their initial approvals to proceed. It is now subject to confirmation by
the New York Supreme Court, which is expected within 45 days. The affiliation
will allow for improved continuity of patient care throughout the region.
Russell Construction Services will oversee the
building of Green Mountain Power’s Energy Innovation Center in Rutland. The utility announced yesterday that
Russell was chosen from almost a dozen bidding contractors. The Rutland-based company will work
with N-B-F Architects and GMP officials, developing a formal construction
timeline and managing the budget, the subcontractor bid process and budget,
safety and regulatory compliance at the site, and all day-to-day construction work.
The state’s ski resorts are happy with the first major
holiday of the ski season. It received a boost from two well-timed storms that
dumped more than two feet of snow over the Green Mountains. The Christmas-New Year’s holiday period
was one of the best in years with several resorts reporting record business
according to the president of the Vermont Ski Areas Association. The percentage increase in business over
last year’s holiday period was anywhere from 20 to 50 percent higher. Killington Resort reported a
double-digit average increase in business levels over the holiday period
compared to last year.
A fire has destroyed an auto repair shop and left
one person homeless in Bellows Falls.
The owner of an auto repair shop says he was fixing a car when gas
dropped onto a work light, starting the fire on Wednesday. The shop was destroyed and an adjoining
woodworking shop and apartment were heavily damaged. Everyone in the building got out safely. One firefighter was
injured. The Red Cross says
temporary housing has been arranged for the tenant of the apartment, who was
displaced by the fire.
State officials will hire an expert early this year
to help determine whether Vermonters have any reason to fear the wireless
“smart meters” being affixed to homes across the state. A request for proposals issued last
month by the Department of Public Service seeks a qualified professional “to
conduct a report on health effects related to smart meter radio-frequency
emissions.” James Porter is the director of the department’s telecommunications
division and says the state has no reason to believe that the emissions pose
any danger. Meanwhile about 9,000 GMP
customers have opted out of the new meters.
An additional $20 million in mental health spending
is among a list of mid-year budget adjustments the administration of Gov. Peter
Shumlin is proposing to lawmakers.
Finance and Management Commissioner Jim Reardon said yesterday the federal
government is expected to pay more than half of the increase under the joint
federal-state Medicaid program. Some
of the new costs have arisen as the mental health system retools after flooding
from Tropical Storm Irene closed the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury.
Changes include new or expanded state psychiatric services at the Brattleboro
Retreat, Fletcher Allen Health Care and the Rutland Regional Medical Center. Meanwhile, budget writers are grappling
with an $11 million downward adjustment in the state's revenue forecast.
Gov. Peter Shumlin says he's going to push for
pension reform legislation in the aftermath of the case in which a former state
police trooper was charged with padding his time sheets. Shumlin made the announcement yesterday
during a news conference where he and Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn
discussed other needed changes. The
legislation being proposed by Shumlin would ensure that public employees
forfeit some or all of their pensions if they are convicted of certain crimes. Other state officials say they
would work to ensure the legislation is passed in the session that gets under
way next week.
A commission has proposed overhauling New York's
public schools with longer teaching days and academic years, teacher competency
exams, more pre-kindergarten and by recruiting top college graduates as
educators. Many of the
recommendations released yesterday have been proposed before but blocked by
politics or lack of funding. Gov. Andrew Cuomo says those remain major obstacles. The commission noted Finland recruits
the top 10% of college graduates into teaching, while the United States draws
from the bottom third or half. It
also wants to reward top educators and consolidate administrations. Cuomo may back some of the proposals in
his State of the State speech.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the House of
Representatives' failure to vote on an aid package for damage from Superstorm
Sandy is an unprecedented failure.
The Governor said yesterday he's told to expect the vote within a month.
The Republican leadership of the House had assured a vote would be taken by
Tuesday night. Cuomo was asked if
he's less optimistic now about getting the money. He says he's getting the same
assurances now that House leaders went into recess Tuesday. The Senate has already passed a $60.4
billion aid package.
The National Weather Service says 2012 was the
warmest ever on record for Burlington.
Numbers show the yearly mean temperature for last year was 50 degrees,
beating the previous record of 48.4 degrees set back in 1998. Records have been kept since
the late 1800s, and four of the top five warmest years in Burlington have all
been since 1998.
Line by line, item by item, the Appropriations
Committee is going through the governor's proposed budget closely, looking for
items to cut. The state is dealing
with a three-point-eight million-dollar shortfall. The committee got the budget on Wednesday, and has through
Friday to close up the shortfall.
A lot still depends on the final six months of the remaining budget
year, and it's still unknown how much the Federal Emergency Management Agency
will give Vermont for Tropical Storm Irene relief.
When Congress made a 13th hour effort to keep the
U.S. economy from tumbling over the fiscal cliff, there was something they
didn't pass: Storm relief for the Northeast. The bill providing relief for New York and New Jersey from
Superstorm Sandy damage, also contained help for Vermont from Tropical Storm
Irene, which hit a year and a half ago.
House Speaker John Boehner promises the new House members will vote on
it by January 15th. The Senate has
already approved it.
A Pennsylvania man is facing prescription
fraud charges in Vermont. Police
cited 41-year-old John Dickson Harper III of Leesport yesterday on charges of
defrauding multiple pharmacies in Bennington, Rutland and Windsor counties this
past spring to get prescriptions for various drugs. He is scheduled to appear on court on January 21st.
Two Vermont state senators are planning to unveil
legislation that would call for a 3-year moratorium on large-scale wind power
projects in the state. Senators
Robert Hartwell of Bennington County and Joe Benning of Caledonia County say
they've been hearing from many constituents who say there's been inadequate
public participation in deliberations over big ridge-top wind power projects to
date. They're likely to draw
opposition from renewable energy advocates.
Governor Andrew Cuomo won't rule out of special
session to deal with gun control issues before his State of the State
address. Cuomo told reporters
Wednesday there was no deal on gun control legislation at the moment, but he
hinted he might call lawmakers back to Albany to deal with the issue before his
January 9th address. Any passage
of gun control legislation would make New York the first state in the country
to approve measures following the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting incident.
A new report finds nearly all school districts in
New York State have submitted teacher and principal evaluation plans. State education officials say only nine
of 682 school districts have yet to submit plans. Districts face a January 17th deadline to get their
evaluation plans approved by state education officials, or they'll lose a
scheduled four-percent increase in state aid.
With the extreme cold, these are days to stay
inside as much as possible. When
you do have to go outside, experts suggest bundling up. "The main danger is if you're out
for a short period of time is frostbite, " says Dr. Stephen Leffler,
Fletcher Allen Health Care. He
says it can take as little as five minutes for frostbite to happen. He says a warning sign is if your skin
starts to hurt and that's when you should head inside. "If you wait just a couple more
minutes, as it begins to freeze it will become painless and then you have rely
on your friends to notice you have a white patch or a patch of skin that
doesn't look quite the same. At that point you already have frostbite and it's
getting worse literally by the minute so you have to get in and warm that skin
up," says Leffler. Leffler
says the best advice is to cover expose skin, including with gloves and a hat. He says thankfully only up to a couple
dozen people head to the ER for frostbite because he says Vermonters know what
to do. Experts say don't forget
about your pets on cold days. The
staff at Burlington Emergency & Veterinary Specialists says bring pets
inside. If you can't, they say
make sure your pet has a warm shelter and fresh water. They say if pets are allowed outside,
they shouldn't be there for more than a half hour. "It's definitely good
to check on them if you can. The ears and the nose are the biggest parts that
will get frostbitten. So yes, it's definitely good to watch out for that,"
says Whitney Bierschenk, hospital manager. Staff says if your pet starts shivering it's a good sign
they should be brought inside. Also
consider bundling up dogs with short hair.
A small airline's discounted ticket promotion
helped a New Hampshire airport reach a benchmark passenger count for 2012. Cape Air offered $12 tickets for
flights from Lebanon Municipal Airport to Boston or White Plains, NY to entice
more people. The airport reached
the mark of 10,000 departing passengers for the year. By reaching that threshold, the airport's federal funding
for airfield improvements jumps from about $150,000 to $1 million.
