There will be a Middlebury Recreation Meeting this afternoon
at 5:30 at the Town Offices. With
the transition from Recreation Advisory Board to Recreation Committee, this
meeting is intended to keep the momentum going and communication open in
planning for the future of the Recreation & Parks Department. Discussion will include an update from
the Teen Center, a report on summer programs and a review of the job
description for the Director of Recreation & Parks.
The Downtown Improvement District Commission will
meet on Thursday afternoon at 4:00 at the Middlebury Town Offices. The Commission will review proposals
for a parking study of the downtown and prepare a recommendation to the Select
Board regarding the award of the contract for the study. The Commission will also discuss plans
for installing bike racks in the downtown.
Brandon Music on Country Club Road, Brandon presents
a concert of chamber music by musicians from the Killington Music Festival this
evening at 7:00. The concert will feature solo and chamber music performances
by resident musicians from the Killington Music Festival. Now in its 30th season, the Killington
Music Festival is the only resident professional classical music organization
in central Vermont. Each summer about 100 students gather at Killington from institutions
such as the Juilliard School of Music, Boston Conservatory, The New England
Conservatory, The Manhattan School of Music, Peabody Conservatory, Eastman
School of Music and the University of Arizona. Tickets are $10 for the Brandon
Music performance. Visit www.brandon-music.net
for more information.
A Rutland man faces charges for impersonating a
public officer. Police say Eric
Turco was one of a few people going around Middlebury telling people they were
bail bondsmen looking for a man wanted for a sex assault. Turco had cuffs and a
badge with him. Police say he also
had an outstanding warrant for impersonating a public officer in Windham
County. And they're looking into a
report that he pretended to be a state trooper in Middlebury.
A Brandon man is facing child cruelty charges after
police say he led officers on a high-speed chase with two young children in his
car. Police say they tried to stop
29-year-old John Ryea on Route 103 in Shrewsbury Monday evening, but he took
off. When he was finally stopped, Ryea was arrested for driving with a
suspended license, attempting to elude, negligent operation and child cruelty.
Here’s another reminder to watch your speed and
stay safe. On Monday members of the
state police traffic operations section were conducting speed enforcement on
Interstate Highway 91 in Brattleboro where the speed limit was reduced from 65
mph to 50 mph in a bridge construction work zone. Charlotte Pelkey of Bristol was clocked at 84 mph. Due to
the high speed into a congested work area; she was arrested and charged with
careless and negligent operation. She was processed at the state police
barracks in Brattleboro and released on a citation to appear in Windham Court
on August 28th. The Vermont State
Police continue to support the Summer HEAT initiative, which is designed to
take enforcement action against motorists who speed. This program's goal is to
reduce the high number of vehicle collisions and deaths, which are occurring on
area highways.
Police believe they have found the body of Jimmy
Joe St. Andrews, the suspect in Friday night’s Ticonderoga shooting. On Monday at approximately 4:05 in the
afternoon a law enforcement search team discovered the remains of a male in a
wooded area adjacent to Mount Hope Cemetery on Burgoyne Road in Ticonderoga. Police said positive identification of
the body is pending, but evidence at the scene indicates a likelihood that it
is St. Andrews. According to a press release, it appeared the cause of death
was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A large bird’s nest short-circuited high-voltage
power lines Sunday evening to cause an outage of more than seven hours from
Whitehall to Port Henry. The
blackout was caused by an osprey nest atop a pole in the South Bay area of Lake
Champlain near Whitehall, officials said.
When the birds dislodged the nest, it fell onto the main lines. National Grid said about 12,000
customers were out of power from 5 PM Sunday to just after 12:30 AM Tuesday.
The power failure included Port Henry, Moriah, Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Several
thousand New York State Electric & Gas customers in Westport, Elizabethtown
and Keene were also out of power due to the incident, until that utility could
back-feed the line.
Essex County lawmakers were delighted to learn
Monday that North Country Community College isn’t asking them for a budget
increase. College President Dr.
Steven Tyrell said the institution’s 2012-13 budget request is $1.19 million
from each county, the same as the last school year. The budget itself totals $13.6 million, a 3.3 percent
increase over 2011-12. Tyrell said they’ve started popular new programs this
year: fine arts studio and environmental science.
Facing declining enrollment, Putnam Central School
has decided to accept out-of-district students at no charge beginning this
fall. According to the
Superintendent there will be zero cost to parents and local taxpayers for the
new program. Putnam is a
pre-kindergarten through sixth grade school with 35 students. The district pays
tuition to send 40 other students to Ticonderoga Middle School and Ticonderoga
High School. Superintendent Matt
Boucher expressed admiration for neighboring Ticonderoga and Whitehall school
districts, noting the new Putnam program is not designed to compete with other
schools. The entire tuition-free program is detailed at the school’s website, www.putnamcsd.org. People can also call the school at
547-8266 for information.
A provision in the pending Farm Bill before
Congress could provide critical funding for infrastructure improvements for
dozens of statewide small communities, including two in the North Country. A piece of the Senate-approved Farm
Bill provides for at least 60 small communities in New York to apply for
funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program for
water and sewer improvements and community facilities.
Clarendon Town leaders will not be joining their
counterparts in other Rutland County communities in taking a stand against the
Grandpa’s Knob wind proposal. Members
of the Clarendon Select Board voiced strong opposition to Reunion Power’s $100
million proposal to construct 20 wind turbines on ridgelines in Castleton,
Hubbardton, West Rutland and Pittsford.
However, a motion to oppose the erection of wind towers on Grandpa’s
Knob was withdrawn before officials voted on the matter.
Rebuilding is happening all across the tiny Vermont
ski town of Wilmington, which was hard hit by Tropical Storm Irene last August. Restaurants, an inn and businesses have
reopened, and renovations have been completed on a badly flooded church. Most importantly, the heart of the
community, Dot's Restaurant, is also on the road to recovery. On Tuesday, a crowd of about 75 people
watched a crane lift the building that dates to 1832 off its foundation. The entire project is expected to
cost $800,000. They hope to reopen
in November.
The effort to get Vermonters health records
computerized and on line has hit some technological roadblocks. Despite years of work and millions of
dollars spent, officials say the systems are not fully compatible and the
information they produce is not always accurate. The Legislature's Health Access Oversight Committee is
asking some tough questions, because information technology is a key piece of
health care reform. Electronic health records are supposed to improve patient
care, and provide valuable data to measure hospital and physician performance. The
stakes for the taxpayer are huge. The state and federal government are
investing about $79 million in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 to improve health
information technology.
The state of Vermont must pay a medical data mining
company $2.4 million in legal fees in a case in which the firm successfully
argued a state law trying to restrict its activities violated the First
Amendment. IMS Health Inc. had
sued the state over a law that required it to get doctors' permission before
selling data on their prescription writing habits to drug makers. The drug
companies use the data to tailor drug sales pitches. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the company last year. IMS
then asked the U.S. District Court in Vermont for $4.2 million in legal fees
and costs in bringing its suit, with rates as high as $875 per hour. The court scaled that request back to
$4.2 million.
The Small Boat Festival, coming up this Saturday
and Sunday at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. The Museum is open from 10 AM
to 5 PM and festival activities are included with museum admission. Rick
Norcross, an acclaimed veteran of Vermont’s music scene with special ties to
Lake Champlain, will be performing at the Small Boat Festival, at 12:15 and
3:15 each day. For more
information you can visit www.lcmm.org.
Severe weather swept across Vermont Tuesday
afternoon and evening, taking down trees and power lines, knocking out
electricity for many. Severe
thunderstorm warnings went out as the winds, heavy rainfall and hail moved east
and southeastward. Trees were reported
down in Shelburne and southern Chittenden County, but no one was said to be
hurt. A cold front coming out of
Canada was to blame, as it slammed up against moisture brought up from the Gulf
of Mexico.
It's going to be a while before the rockslide onto
Interstate 89 is going to be cleared up.
The rocks tumbled down onto a northbound lane Monday, luckily not
hurting anyone, but with some boulders weighing 75 tons, it's clearly not going
away soon. The highway remains
open, although it's slowed traffic down in Barre. Excavators will be brought in to break up the big chunks of
rock, and that's when assessment to the road damage will start.
The state is faced with spending millions of
dollars to replace office furniture left in the Waterbury office complex after
Tropical Storm Irene. Last week,
the state held a tag sale, giving away 75-percent of the furniture left in the
complex after Irene. 400 Agency of
Natural Resources workers will move into the National Life building in the next
few weeks, and the furniture left in the old complex was simply too large to
fit in the new location. The old
stuff takes up a lot more square footage than the new spaces being created,
with cubicles and open floorplans.
A grant of nearly a million dollars is coming to
Vermont, and expected help about 150 veteran families considered homeless or
at-risk of losing their homes.
It's all part of a nationwide effort to end homelessness for veterans by
2014. The funding will go to
non-profit organizations providing outreach to vets. About 150 veteran families in the state working with the
University of Vermont and State Agricultural College will be helped. The Veterans Administration is
estimating grants will help 42-thousand veteran families across the country.
Everyone at Burlington's Intervale Center had their
best smiles on for some special visitors Tuesday. The U-S Department of Agriculture administrator David
Shipman and Vermont's Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross came by. Intervale is up for a Specialty Crop
Block Grant of 55 million dollars, designed to improve the marketing of
farm-grown produce to local communities.
The center has been around since 1988, and is considered an important part
of the "agricultural renaissance" going on in Vermont. If it receives the grant, the focus
will be on targeting more people who haven't yet been drawn to the local food
movement.
From Fox 44 and ABC 22 News – Your Voice in Vermont
& New York:
Knocked down power lines, snapped trees and smashed
glass. That's what people on Falls Road in Shelburne are cleaning up after a
storm swept past late Tuesday afternoon.
"I couldn't even see the trees across the street, it was so dark
and gray outside," said Dan Messier.
Messier is visiting family from Arizona, unfortunately, it wasn't quite
the vacation he was hoping for. "My
niece looked outside the window and said, ‘The garage is gone!'" Reporter Brittney Hibbs: "I'm
standing in what was the garage. The wind blew it over and part of it landed on
this car smashing the window and walk with me over here, the other part of the
garage landed here and that's not all,
trees are uprooted and this all happened in just a matter of minutes." Just up the street, Tracy Monell takes video of the wind
whipping the power lines outside her house, "It was literally just going
back and forth so I started filming it and you couldn't even see the power pole
it was just everything was going everywhere." All that mess including the electric wires laying on the
ground, will soon be cleaned up but the storm didn't come and go without a
cost. "The work they are
going to have to do to restore the property, get the trees taken care of and
yeah we are talking many thousands of dollars I'm sure," said Messier.
Political rhetoric has taken a negative turn this
campaign season in Vermont. On
Sunday, the Green Mountain Daily reported that a racist statement was posted on
the Rutland County Republican Committee's Facebook page. Here is what it said: "Just wanted to let you know --
today I received my 2012 Social Security Stimulus Package. It contained two
tomato seeds, cornbread mix, a prayer rug, a machine to blow smoke up my butt,
2 discount coupons to KFC, an "Obama Hope & Change" bumper
sticker, and a "Blame it on Bush" poster for the front yard. The
directions were in Spanish. Watch for yours soon.” The Chairman of the committee says the post itself did not
come from his party. But, other posts that followed did. He apologized and now
the Facebook page is nowhere to be found.
"Clearly intended to direct prejudice at Spanish speaking Muslims,
on an African American diet," Political Science Professor Garrison Nelson
said. A satirical answer to the
post, Nelson calls, simply stupid. But, Nelson says it is also an indication of
a bigger problem in Vermont politics.
Nelson says negative politics have become more common in the Green
Mountain State, starting during the 2010 election cycle. In June, for example, the Vermont
Democratic Party jumped on Republican candidate for Governor, Randy Brock, for
inviting Virginia Governor, Bob McDonnell and Maine Governor, Paul LePage to
some of his events. Brock called the tactic nasty. Nelson says negative politics is also alienating moderate
voters in the Green Mountain State.
"The loss of the middle, the loss of the people who have really got
to make the decisions, and the polarization where there is no compromise,"
Nelson said.
