An informational meeting about the South Street
& Green Mountain Place Project will be held this Thursday at 5:30 PM in the
MVAA Conference Room. In response
to input from the public meeting held in April, the Town will present traffic
calming concepts for the project. The meeting will be taped by MCTV.
Repair work continues on the historic Pulp Mill
Covered Bridge that was originally constructed in the 1800s. Recently, Middlebury and Weybridge
officials closed the bridge over Otter Creek for major structural repairs now
underway. Approximately 2,000 cars
and light trucks traversed the span every day. In 2002, the bridge was closed for several weeks while work
was done on a middle truss. According
to the Vermont Agency of Transportation, the first effort to maintain the
bridge began in the 1860s with plank arches. Then, two concrete piers with
hardwood cribbing were constructed in 1979. Work was also done on the trusses
in 1991. The one-of-a-kind bridge
takes it name from a 19th century pulp wood mill that stood nearby. Both the
towns of Weybridge and Middlebury maintain the historic span.
Middlebury Union High School officials announced
the school’s class of 2012 valedictorians. They are William Conlon, Stephen Peters-Collaer and Emma
Ryan. Graham Barlow, Hannah Kraus
and Nellie Pierce are the 2012 salutatorians.
The New York State Department of Transportation has
announced a commemoration program highlighting the original 1929 Lake Champlain
Bridge, which was replaced by a new span last fall. The program now has two interpretive displays located in New
York’s Lake Champlain Visitors Center and Vermont’s Chimney Point State
Historic Site along with a website, www.dot.ny.gov/LCBCommemoration. Additional displays will be installed
in the region later this year.
The Ti-Alliance in partnership with the Town of
Ticonderoga, is hosting a speaker series on Monday nights during the month of
June. All of the speakers will address topics related to revitalizing
communities. Programs will be at 7 p.m. on the top floor of the Ticonderoga
Community Building on Montcalm Street.
All of the presentations are free and open to the public. The
Ti-Alliance is a not-for-profit, local development corporation whose mission it
is to restore economic prosperity in the Ticonderoga region, by serving as a
clearinghouse for innovative ideas and resources, and a catalyst for
public-private partnerships and investment opportunities.
Members of the Horace Nye Task Force have made
their recommendation to sell the Essex County owned nursing home to Centers for
Specialty Care. Members of the
Horace Nye Task Force sub-committee overwhelmingly showed their support for the
New York City-based care provider who also operates 15 facilities in the state.
The full Board of Supervisors will next meet this coming Monday where the
recommendation is expected to be voted on by the 18 supervisors under the
weighted vote system.
According to the County Department of Social
Services Commissioner John O’Neill the tenacious work ethic of the Essex County
Child Support Enforcement Unit collected $3.8 million last year. The nine-person unit threw people in
jail, seized bank and retirement accounts and intercepted tax refunds to get
the money. The Social Services
group is charged with collecting court-ordered child support from parents, and
it’s averaging 2,000 cases a year.
A petition drive has started in Rutland to save the
local hospital's inpatient rehabilitation unit. But hospital officials say they have no choice. They're
grappling with a $7 million budget shortfall, and closing the rehab unit will
save $3.5 million. Rutland's
12-bed inpatient rehab unit helps people recover from strokes, head or spinal
injuries, joint replacements and some long-term ailments. It's one of only three acute rehab
facilities affiliated with a hospital in the state. So if it closes, patients
will have to travel to Burlington or Mount Ascutney Hospital for such care. Rutland
Regional Medical Center's board of directors will decide this week whether to
go along with the plan to close the rehab center or to try a different
approach.
Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras is meeting with
school officials today to talk about his plan to direct money from the sale of
the former Dana School to city coffers.
Louras said he believes the school “department” still has the authority
to take $300,000 or 3 cents on the grand list every year from taxes collected.
That’s according to an approved ballot question in 1998.
On Thursday, an assistant professor of computer
science at Norwich University is making it official: he's running for office. Jeremy Hansen of Montpelier is kicking off his campaign for
state Senate tomorrow morning at Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier,
intending to run as an independent.
In a news release to the "Burlington Free Press," Hansen says
that while we're living in the information age, Vermont is getting by with
horse-and-buggy representation, and he wants to change that, by empowering Washington
County citizens with direct representative democracy.
The head of the Vermont National Guard says he's
thrilled and honored to be taking a new military job, but he will be sorry to
leave the men and women he has served with for more than 30 years. Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie says it will
probably be late summer before he leaves Vermont for his new position in
Colorado as the deputy commander of the United States Northern Command. The command was created following the
9/11 attacks to protect U.S. territory and provide military support for civil
authorities in the event of a national emergency. Last week the U.S. Senate confirmed Dubie in the new post. Dubie's deputy will succeed him until
the Legislature can elect a permanent replacement next winter.
Vermont Congressman Peter Welch says he wants to
hear from residents about their struggles with student loans. Congress is at loggerheads over how to
avoid a July 1st doubling of interest rates on some Stafford Student Loans, and
Welch and the head of the Vermont Student Assistance Corp. will be holding a
telephone conference this evening with people concerned about the issue. VSAC’s Don Vickers will join Welch on
the 7:30 call. Following brief
introductory remarks, Vermonters taking part in the call will have a chance to
ask questions, share their stories and offer their ideas. To join the call, dial (toll-free)
877-229-8493 and enter PIN code 13785.
Town officials in Morristown have formally approved
an agreement with the state to host some beds from the state mental hospital. The agreement comes nearly nine months
after Tropical Storm Irene devastated the State Hospital in Waterbury. The hospital will be replaced with one
central and two regional facilities. Morristown will host 16 beds for a year
beginning in July. The town was
slated to discuss the plan at a select board meeting last night. Meanwhile town officials in Berlin will
hold their own meeting today on the plan for the 25-bed central hospital in
that central Vermont town.
Congressman Peter Welch hopes a partnership that's
been helping Vermont National Guard members with their small business needs can
become a model for the nation. It's hard enough to start or run a small business. But
to do it while you're deployed in the military can be truly daunting. Back in 2008, Vermont's Small Business
Development Center won a 300-thousand dollar grant to work directly with the
Vermont National Guard to help veterans with their small business needs. Because of the program's success,
Welch is working to expand the partnership nationwide.
The Cuomo administration is suspending its
restrictions on smoking in parks, pools, beaches and historic sites after a
smokers rights groups objected. Instead,
the administration said yesterday the measures would be voluntary for at least
two months while a full rule-making process including public comment is
concluded. The state parks
department issued its order in April after the Legislature failed to approve
laws that would restrict smoking to some areas of the public facilities this
summer. Failure to obey could have resulted in a disorderly conduct arrest.
Brandon Music on Country Club Road in Brandon will
present Judi Silvano’s Indigo Moods Quartet, featuring Fred Jacobs on trumpet,
Tom Cleary on piano, John Rivers on bass and special guest Dan Silverman on
trombone this Sunday at 7pm in the Music Café. She was voted Top Ten Jazz
Vocalist in Down Beat Magazine Reader's Poll four times. The concert is a part of the year-round
weekly Sunday Jazz at Brandon Music series. Tickets are $15 in advance, and $18
at the door. Brandon Music offers an Early Bird dinner special, which includes
a ticket for the jazz performance, for $25 per person. Enjoy the chef’s
award-winning chili and cornbread as well as dessert before listening to
world-class jazz. Reservations are required for dinner. For more information just visit www.brandon-music.net.
The third annual Ticonderoga street art project
seeks to decorate downtown sidewalks and stores with hand-painted, handcrafted
birdhouses. Sponsored by the
Ticonderoga Montcalm Street Partnership the inaugural street art project
featured “Soldiers on Parade,” wooden colonial soldiers painted and placed
throughout the community. The second street art project was “Relax in the
Adirondacks” and had decorated Adirondack chairs placed in the town. This year’s street art theme is “For
the Birds.” To get involved just
visit the TMSP website www.timainstreet.org.
Nicholas Manfred, a seventh-grader at Moriah
Central School, will compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in
Washington, D.C., this week. Manfred
earned his spot in the national competition by winning the Champlain Valley
Educational Services Regional Spelling Bee at Seton Catholic Central School in
March. After round one yesterday all 278 spellers will participate in rounds
two and three of the competition, which will be televised live on ESPN3, from 8AM
to 5:15PM today. Manfred’s progress in the bee can be tracked live during the
competition at www.spellingbee.com.
Kaylie Flannigan said her 10-day service trip to
several poverty-stricken communities in Honduras earlier this year changed her
life. The Fair Haven Union High
School senior from Castleton was part of a group of more than 30 people who
traveled to the city of Donli in Honduras as part of an annual service trip by
Rotary International. Since returning home, the Vermont student has made it her
mission to raise money that will help supplement the loss of government
funding. She created Hope for Honduras, a benefit fundraiser that will run
throughout the summer. With the help of her mother, Angela Woodbury, she has
planned at least one fundraising event during the summer months, including a
lawn sale on the weekend of the town wide yard sale in Castleton. Other events
include a spaghetti dinner and silent auction in July, a basket raffle in
August and a second lawn sale in September. People can also donate cans and
bottles at the Castleton redemption center, make a monetary donation or even
sponsor a child.
From
Fox 44 and ABC 22 News:
Keeping kids safe on Facebook: Vermont Attorney
General Bill Sorrell teamed up with social media giant Facebook to give parents
a better idea on how to keep minors protected. Dozens of parents listened Tuesday night on how to keep
their kids' Facebook profiles secure.
"I didn't know a lot of the functionality that existed," said
parent Wendy King. Wendy King says
she learned a lot of new ways to monitor what her child does on the popular
social media website, "I am on Facebook quite a bit mainly because my
daughter is of age and I wanted to be a consumer to understand what she was
facing." Vermont Attorney
General Bill Sorrell hosted the event to help give parents more information,
"A lot of parents don't know much about Facebook, they are intimidated by
it." Sorrell says it's
especially important for parents to be informed when it comes to cyber
bullying, "I wanted more people in this community to know how to try and
combat and protect young Vermonters from being cyber bullied." Bullying was a focus of this meeting
how other kids and parents can report it to Facebook. "Kids aren't necessarily approaching their peers
directly face to face but if there was a mechanism, where they could report
that to a trusted adult, through an e-mail or something like that I think would
be helpful," said King.
Strong thunderstorms, which packed rain, wind and
lightning caused problems all across our area Tuesday. Vermont Emergency Management says that
there are no reports of serious damage.
The worst appears to be roads that were washed out, including a part of
Route 74. Flooding also affected
Vermont routes 14, 100, and 302. For
about fifty-feet, parts underneath Route 74 were washed out. That forced the road to be temporarily
closed. Crews planned to narrow
the lanes so the road could re-open.
"There was a lot of rain. I think we got three, three and a half
inches of rain total in like an hour period," says Leo Audet, who lives on
Route 74 near Cornwall. We
actually first met Audet three years ago, after flash flooding also washed out
this road. "It's in the same
area but not as bad as it was last time," says Audet. Heavy rain also caused minor flooding
including in fields and around streams and rivers. For the latest on road closures click to www.511vt.com.
Firefighters from throughout central Vermont were
converging on the city of Barre where three fires were reported in homes within
minutes of each other. The fires
were reported Tuesday morning after a series of thunderstorms passed through
the region. Mayor Thomas Lauzon
says officials believe lightning strikes caused the fires, although a final
determination has not been made. Lauzon
says the fires damaged two homes off U.S. Route 302, on Liberty and Waterman
streets. A 200-year-old farmhouse on Allen Street in a different section of the
city was fully engulfed in flames when crews arrived. He says the fire in the
farmhouse was reported by a passer-by, which delayed the response by
firefighters. No human injuries
have been reported, although a number of pets are missing.
