Berlin Community News

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Included below please find:

AMNESTY WEEK AT THE KELLOGG-HUBBARD LIBRARY
FLOWER SHOW AT CHAMPLAIN VALLEY EXPO MARCH 1, 2, 3
EXPO RAILROAD SHOW MARCH 16
SOLAR HOT WATER INFORMATIONAL PRESENTATION
BERLIN IS ASKED TO PAY FOR WATER SYSTEM WORK
SEMI-PRIVATE AMBULANCE SERVICE PROPOSED FOR BERLIN
BERLIN SCORES BIG FOR HOSTING NEW HOSPITAL
BERLIN POND: PANEL TO CONVENE TO PINPOINT ACCESS
BERLIN BLOCKBUSTER WILL CLOSE
BERLIN TOWN MEETING
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Note the above article requesting funds is in addition to the BVFD article: "Shall the voters of the town of Berlin vote by Australian ballot to appropriate $190,985 for the operation of the Berlin Volunteer Fire Department?"
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Return your overdue or billed items to the Kellogg-Hubbard Library from Monday February 25 through Saturday March 2, and no fines will be charged. We will accept all types of materials from the adult or children's sections — including books, DVDs, audiobooks, and magazines — no questions asked.
If your account has been restricted because you received a bill, when you return the billed item we’ll erase the fine and reactivate your account.
Returned items must be in usable condition. Items that are not readable or playable would still have to be paid for.
We will erase fines only for materials returned from February 25 through March 2. The amnesty does not apply to interlibrary loan items.
Adult Library Hours: Monday - Thursday 10am - 8pm, Friday & Saturday 10am - 5:30pm; Children's Library Hours Monday - Saturday 10am - 5:30pm
http://www.kellogghubbard.org

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VERMONT FLOWER SHOW AT CHAMPLAIN VALLEY EXPO MARCH 1, 2, 3
Three days of spring the first weekend in March!!  Take a journey filled with flowers and fragrance, walk through the woods, gardens, and plants galore.  There are seminars and educational workshops included in the admission fee.  The Vermont Railway Society will have a large, landscaped train display.  Hands-on activities for children and scheduled performers to entertain them including the No Strings Marionette performance of Handsome and Gretel at 11am & 2pm on March 3rd.  Cooking from the garden demonstrations will be held on all three days.  There will be lots of vendors too.  Admission $15 for adults, $12 seniors and $3 for children.  Hours are Friday and Saturday 10am m- 6pm and Sunday 10am - 4pm. http://www.cvexpo.org 

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The Northwestern Vermont Model Railroad Association will host Vermont's largest model train show, Saturday, March 16th from 10am - 4pm.  The show will feature multiple operating HO, N, G, and O-scale layouts in addition to exhibits and vendors with model railroading supplies.   There will be a railroad clown to entertain the children with face painting and balloons and hands-on train activities for children.   Here's a video on the event from last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw-vHpGIisw

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SOLAR HOT WATER INFORMATIONAL PRESENTATION
This presentation will be on Tuesday, March 12, 6:15 PM TO 7:15 PM at the Berlin Elementary School in the Learning Center (library) and is presented by Energy Co-op of Vermont and sponsored by Berlin's Energy Coordinator. 

Learn:  How solar hot water systems work; What incentives, financing, and rebates are available in Vermont; How the Energy Co-op has partnered with Shelburne-based Sunward Systems, the Vermont State Employees Credit Union for financing, and local installers such as ReSOURCE to make going solar easier and more affordable through the Co-op Solar program; How to get a Free site assessment for your home or business

For more information or to sign up for a free site assessment, go to www.co-opsolar.net or contact Berlin's Energy Coordinator, Andrea Chandler at andreachandler@ymail.com.


Marketing and Communications Manager | www.ECVT.net
t: 802-395-1388 | e: ben@ecvt.net

Questions, comments, etc. can be sent directly to Ben and/or Andrea Chandler, Berlin Energy Coordinator, at andreachandler@ymail.com.

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BERLIN IS ASKED TO PAY FOR WATER SYSTEM WORK
Pub 2/22/13 Times Argus by David Delcore
   BERLIN — Town officials are being asked to make a contractual commitment for the final design of a municipal water system that may never be built.
   A week after a sliver of the town’s 1,917 registered voters narrowly approved a bond issue to build a water system to serve the Berlin Four Corners area, the engineer who has been working on the project since 2007 said he needs more than a nod and a handshake to take it to the next level.
   Mark Youngstrom of Otter Creek Engineering told the town’s water supply committee Wednesday that he is eager for the Select Board to approve an amendment to an earlier contract so he can recoup more than $42,000 for work he has already performed “in good faith” and begin the final design of the system.
   According to Youngstrom, the agreement he provided the town months ago includes roughly $20,000 for helping with preparations for last week’s bond vote and lining up financing, as well as $52,500 for fieldwork and $150,000 for the final design.
   However, committee member Gary Beem said he believed Youngstrom’s request was premature, and not just because the 30-day window for petitioning to revote the bond issue won’t close until March 15. The bond was approved 122-108.
   Of greater concern to Beem is that a household income survey, which will help determine whether the $5.5 million project is financially viable, is still weeks away from being completed.
   “I don’t think we have a project yet, and you’re putting the Select Board and the town … out there,” he told Youngstrom, suggesting the risk was unwarranted.
   According to Beem, the income survey, which was recently mailed to residents who live in the area that would be served by the water system, will determine whether the project is eligible for favorable financing and dictate what the town will need to charge for water.
   “I really think the income survey is the key to this project,” he said.
   The data collection phase for the survey is scheduled to conclude March 4, and the committee was told the results should be in hand in about a month.
   However, Youngstrom said his firm has carried the project to this point. At a minimum, he said, he needs to be paid for the work he has already performed, but would “like to get going on the design right now.”
   Although Youngstrom acknowledged the importance of the income survey, he said it wasn’t the only thing that could trip up plans for a municipal water system.
   “There are all kinds of things that can stop this project dead in the water,” he said. “It’s an act of faith to move ahead, and one act of faith is starting the design while you’re working on all these other things too.”
   Ultimately the Select Board must decide how to handle Youngstrom’s request. The plan has been to roll all preconstruction costs — including the now-completed drilling, testing and acquisition of three wells on Scott Hill Road — into the cost of the project, to be paid for by future ratepayers.
   However, if the water system is never built — and town officials have said it won’t be if available financing doesn’t allow them to deliver water to users at an affordable rate — taxpayers at large will be on the hook for any money that has or will be spent on planning and design.
   david.delcore @timesargus.com

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Pub 2/20/12 Times Argus by David Delcore
   BERLIN — With three competing proposals in hand, Select Board members must now decide whose name will be on the side of the ambulances that transport patients in and around their community come July 1.
   It won’t be an easy decision because there is something to be said for all three proposals — two of which involve services that don’t yet exist and the third submitted by the town’s longtime ambulance provider.
   Just how loyal the Select Board is to Barre Town Emergency Medical Services will be put to the test as the board weighs alternatives that range from investing in their volunteer department’s expansion plans to accepting a no-cost offer that sounds too good to be true but might not be.
   Central Vermont Emergency Medical Services offered an incentive-laden proposal, underscoring the town’s status as home to a regional hospital.
   For the moment, CVEMS is just an acronym for a proposed paramedic-level ambulance service being pitched as part of a public-private partnership that — at least at first blush — is all upside for Berlin.
   Matt George, who briefly outlined the plan for board members Monday night, said Berlin would not be charged any per-capita fee under a proposed five-year contract that could be trimmed to three years if the board preferred.
   Additionally, George said, the town would receive 5 percent of the ambulance service’s annual profits and be given four seats on its governing board, which would also include a representative from Central Vermont Medical Center. As a bonus, he said all Berlin residents would be offered “free subscriptions” to the ambulance service — essentially guaranteeing they would not be billed for costs that weren’t covered by their insurance for the duration of the agreement.
   George, who is the clinical services coordinator for White River Valley Ambulance, would serve as executive director of CVEMS, though he said the proposed service would be run by Jim Baraw, who is director of emergency services in Northfield.
   The semi-private structure of CVEMS coupled with the fact that it would not rely — even temporarily — on a population-based per-capita fee as a source of operating revenue set that proposal apart from the other two — one submitted by BTEMS and the other by the Berlin Volunteer Fire Department.
   Both organizations were represented at a Monday night board meeting that produced no decisions. That day was the deadline to submit proposals.
   At the outset, Town Administrator Jeff Schulz recommended the board take the three decidedly different proposals under advisement so members would have an opportunity to dissect them.
   “It’s a fairly weighty, complicated issue,” he said.
   That may be an understatement given what Berlin’s business means to Barre Town’s stand-alone ambulance service and what it could mean to the Berlin Volunteer Fire Department’s plans to launch a fire and ambulance service that is staffed around the clock.
   Barre Town Manager Carl Rogers told board members that BTEMS is keenly interested in keeping Berlin, and its 1,800 calls for service a year, as a customer of its semi-regional ambulance service. However, he said, that would come at a cost to the town.
   The annual per-capita fee, which has been a feature of the local ambulance contract since BTEMS lured Berlin away from Montpelier in 1996, would start at $26 and increase 5 percent a year over the life of a proposed three-year agreement. The fee would increase to $27.30 per-capita next year and $28.67 in 2015.
   According to Rogers, the per-capita fee would increase 3 percent a year if Berlin exercises an option for two additional years. Under that scenario the fee, which is assessed on all but the Riverton section of Berlin, would climb to $29.52 in 2016 before topping out at $30.41 in 2017.
   If the Select Board decides to stick with BTEMS, it would pay $65,676 for the ambulance service under the first year of the agreement.
   BTEMS is already licensed by the state, fully staffed and has five ambulances that were all purchased in the past year. Two of those ambulances and their paramedic-led crews are assigned to handle Berlin’s sizable call volume. Much of that call volume can be traced to lucrative transfers involving the hospital and two nearby nursing homes.
   Meanwhile, members of the Berlin Volunteer Fire Department have renewed their request that the town award them a contract they say will enable them to staff the Four Corners station around the clock, providing swift response to all emergencies — both medical and fire.
   Though the service doesn’t yet exist, Chief Miles Silk Jr. said it will by July 1 if the fire department is awarded the contract. He said the department has been training its members and is ready to move swiftly on a plan to lease two ambulances for the five-year duration of the contract it has proposed.
   Silk and other department officials told the board there would be a per-capita fee to start, but the goal would be to gradually phase it out over the life of the contract.
   According to department officials, the per-capita fee would start at $28 if voters approve a ballot item asking for an additional $180,000 to establish continuous staffing at the Four Corners station. If that request is rejected, the per-capita fee would jump to $89.02 to provide a paramedic-level ambulance service to the entire town of Berlin.
   After listening to brief overviews of the three proposals, Chairman Brad Towne said the board had some reading to do. No decision will be made before the Town Meeting Day vote, but the board is expected to discuss the ambulance contract at its March 11 meeting.
   david.delcore @timesargus.com

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BERLIN SCORES BIG FOR HOSTING NEW HOSPITAL
Pub 2/20/13 Times Argus by David Delcore
   BERLIN — The town will receive much more than a payment in lieu of taxes in exchange for hosting the state’s new 25-bed psychiatric hospital.
   On a night when Select Board members hired a new town treasurer and tabled action on a proposed parking ordinance, they were told that negotiations with the state went very, very well.
   According to Town Administrator Jeff Schulz, the state has agreed to pay the town $25,000 a year to offset any costs associated with emergency services responding to the facility that is under construction off Fisher Road. That, he said, will be in addition to the more traditional PILOT installment of $58,000 a year that the town will receive, and it doesn’t include a promise to continue providing free emergency dispatch services for the Berlin Police Department for the next 20 years.
   Schulz has estimated the current value of the dispatch services the town receives at roughly $60,000. Officials have long feared that free arrangement, which dates back to the days when Berlin had a one-member police department, could end as local call volumes have climbed.
   Based on the signed agreement with the state, that won’t happen for another 20 years unless the psychiatric hospital is abandoned before then.
   Given the state’s $12,000 opening offer, board members and at least one resident were pleased with the outcome of negotiations.
   Resident Bob Wernecke commended the board for its efforts in securing $83,000 a year in revenue and free dispatch services for the foreseeable future and urged members to open similar negotiations with officials at Central Vermont Medical Center.
   “I would encourage you to pursue a similar agreement with the hospital,” he said. “I really think it’s in (the town’s) and the hospital’s best interest, and I don’t know why they get off scot-free.”
   Meanwhile, the board tabled action on an ordinance aimed at prohibiting parking on a town road that has become the primary access point for people interested in getting on Berlin Pond.
   Some residents who live around the pond have urged the board to enact and enforce a parking ban on Mirror Lake Road, but Wernecke said he believed that would be an overreaction to a problem that appears to have abated.
   In any event, Wernecke said, pursuing an ordinance that applies exclusively to Mirror Lake Road seemed “punitive” and, he believed, was little more than a thinly veiled attempt to circumvent a Vermont Supreme Court decision that struck down century-old recreational restrictions on the pond last year.
   “Is this about banning fishing and boating on Berlin Pond, or is this about a parking problem?” Wernecke asked, noting local police have indicated cars parked on the side of Mirror Lake Road didn’t pose a safety problem.
   What’s more, Wernecke said, finding cars parked in that same fashion elsewhere — out of the traveled way, but not completely off the road — isn’t hard in Berlin.
   “If this was a yard sale you wouldn’t hear a peep,” he said. “It’s not a yard sale; it’s fishing on Berlin Pond.”
   Board members agreed to wait until a committee that is being led by Wernecke concludes its evaluation of access alternatives at the pond. That committee is scheduled to meet this afternoon with officials from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
   After a brief executive session at the end of Monday night’s meeting, the board voted unanimously to hire Marcie Carver as town treasurer.
   Carver, a self-employed accountant from Bradford, will be the permanent replacement for former Town Treasurer Patti Lewis, who resigned last year.
   david.delcore @timesargus.com

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BERLIN POND: PANEL TO CONVENE TO PINPOINT ACCESS
Pub 2/18/13 by David Delcore
   BERLIN — A newly formed committee has launched its effort to identify optimal areas for outdoor enthusiasts to get on or near the water of Berlin Pond.
   The seven-member committee got off to something of a slow start during its first meeting Thursday, but before it was over participants expressed a shared desire to conduct a swift but thorough analysis of potential access areas and report their findings to the Select Board later this spring.
   Committee members are clearly of two minds when it comes to an issue that has been the source of local controversy since the Vermont Supreme Court ruled last May that Montpelier lacked the authority to enforce century-old recreational restrictions on the pond that serves as its public drinking water supply.
   That honest difference of opinion surfaced early on in Thursday’s 90-minute session — first when Bob Wernecke was nominated to serve as chairman and again during a brief debate over Wernecke’s interpretation of the committee’s charge.
   Over the course of the past nine months Wernecke has been a vocal proponent of finding a reasonable and safe way for those interested in canoeing, kayaking, or fishing on the pond to actually get to the water — a fact that committee member Phil Gentile suggested might make him ill-suited to serve as chairman. Gentile, who lives on the pond, serves on the town’s conservation committee and has been equally vocal on the other side of the issue, wondered whether someone “more neutral” should run the committee’s meetings.
   However, Wernecke argued individual “leanings” on the subject shouldn’t enter the conversation because the access question has already been answered by the Vermont Supreme Court, Berlin voters, and most recently the Select Board.
   “I don’t think we’re here to debate that issue,” he said.
   “We’re here about finding the best way to accomplish this, not whether it should be accomplished,” he added.
   Wernecke went on to say that, in his view, the committee’s evaluation should not focus solely on the tiny, town-owned parcel of land that was the subject of a lopsided, non-binding referendum last November.
   That assertion provoked some initial push-back from another committee member who lives on the pond and has repeatedly raised concerns involving access to the pond over the past year.
   Kathy Hartshorn argued the committee shouldn’t waste its time evaluating other possible access areas, when the vote last November specifically involved the town parcel on Paine Turnpike South.
   Members discussed whether to seek clarification from the Select Board, but after reviewing the notice that the board crafted in order to recruit the committee, agreed that wouldn’t be necessary. Though the notice stated the committee would be created as a “...follow-up” to the town vote, the board specifically expressed an interest in having the committee “... review and identify other possible sites for access to the pond as possible alternatives.”
   “That’s part of what we’re being asked to do,” Wernecke said.
   “It seems pretty clear to me,” committee member Paul Irons agreed.
   Once that threshold question was out of the way, Wernecke was elected chairman, Gentile, vice chairman, and committee member Scott Williams volunteered to serve as secretary.
      In plotting their next steps, the committee plans to call in two representatives from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. That could happen as early as next Wednesday, but if scheduling is a problem would likely occur when the committee meets on March 7.
   Members aren’t yet sold on the state’s offer to develop a formal access area on the town’s land, which include 82.5 feet of frontage on Paine Turnpike South, roughly 85 feet of shoreline and is estimated to be between 150 and 180 feet deep.
   According to Williams, options involving that parcel range from simply stripping down the “Posted” signs that went up last year — “That’s access,” he said — to the “gold standard,” a more formal area for people to park their vehicles and launch their kayaks and canoes.
   Although all agreed it would be prudent to pick the state’s brain, Gentile said he was leery of an offer to develop and operate an access area because, he feared, the town would relinquish control and the pond might become more of an attraction than it otherwise would be.
   “The greater issue maybe we want to think about is: ‘How big a sign? How is it identified? Is it all over the maps now? Are we going to encourage so many cars to the pond because the... body of water is right between the metropolitan areas for rural (central) Vermont?’” he asked. “We could get a lot of usage if all of a sudden it becomes advertised.”
   Gentile predicted that he and other pond residents would look to the town to restrict or prohibit access in areas that are currently being used — most notably along Mirror Lake Road — if an alternative access area is created.
   “This is our front yard,” he said, suggesting many of those who live around the pond continue to be concerned by the level of use it has received.
   “There are a lot of taxpayers up there that pay a lot of taxes that aren’t necessarily thrilled with the idea of seeing 59 cars (parked) on the road,” he said.
   However, Wernecke suggested the “novelty” of being able to get out on a pond that had been off limits for so long would soon wear off and the number of people who use it would drop.
   Irons agreed.
   “I sailed it once, I’ll never go back,” he said.
   Wernecke said he would like to invite Montpelier to send a representative to the committee’s meetings, if only because the city owns the vast majority of the land around the pond.
   “We should offer,” he said. “If they (Montpelier officials) don’t want to participate that’s fine.”
   david.delcore@timesargus.com

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BERLIN BLOCKBUSTER WILL CLOSE
Pub 2/18/13 Times Argus STAFF REPORT
   BERLIN — The Blockbuster Video store on the Barre-Montpelier Road began liquidating its inventory recently and town officials say the store is expected to close for good by April 1.
   The store’s manager declined to comment and the company’s corporate headquarters did not return phone calls. But Town Administrator Jeff Schulz said he learned of the scheduled closing date during a recent conversation involving the tax bill for the store that is located in a building it shares with Bond Auto Parts next to Kinney Drugs.
   Used DVDs and games are being sold at cut-rate prices as part of the sale.
   The closing of the Berlin store is presumably part of Blockbuster’s recently announced plan to close 300 of its 800 U.S. stores, laying off about 3,000 nationwide.



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