Sunday, January 17, 2016
Berlin News to Know December 11th
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This communication is put together and distributed on a
volunteer basis by resident Corinne Stridsberg simply in an effort to share
information and build community, it is not from the town of Berlin
Please share this with your Berlin
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For current news
look for "Berlin , Vermont
For historical
news look for "Berlin , Vermont
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PLEASE take the time to read the details on Project J.O.Y.
Below you will find:
PROJECT JOY
WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE AN ART DIRECTOR FOR HIT TV SHOWS LIKE THE VOICE
LOCAL OPTION TAX
PRESENTATION
UPCOMING MEETINGS &
HOLIDAY HOURS
"THE OTHER SIDE OF CANNABIS" DOCUMENTARY SCREENING WED. DEC
16
WASTE DISTRICT VOTE TODAY
COULD PUT FACILITY PLAN IN MOTION
CVSWMD AUDIENCE CIVIL BUT
WARY OF PLANS
U-32 BUDGET WRITERS
CONFIDENT
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PROJECT J.O.Y.
The wrapping party for
Project J.O.Y. (Joining Old & Young) which brings gifts & goodies to
the residents of Berlin Health & Rehab will take place on Saturday,
December 19th at 10am at the
Congregational Church (1808 Scott Hill Road
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Finally, the presents and
goodies are distributed on Christmas Day at 2pm . There will
be entertainment, refreshments and caroling in the Day Room at Berlin Health
& Rehab. People are needed to help
distribute the presents there which each go to specific residents. Usually people visit for a few minutes as
they distribute the gifts. Can you give
some time in the afternoon of the 25th and be part of this?
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More on this wonderful
tradition -
Project J.O.Y. has been
happening here in Berlin
This event is
important. Taking time to remember folks
who are in our community and may not have family or friends to be part of their
holidays. Unfortunately, the Lacasse
family who have carried this wonderful tradition for so many years are not able
to continue after this year and nobody has stepped up to make sure it will go
on. Carole says she would really like
to see a big turnout of folks helping with this event that has meant so much to
them. Please look back at the three ways
you can be involved and be in touch with Carole if you have any questions
(229-9504)
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WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE AN ART DIRECTOR
FOR HIT TV SHOWS LIKE THE VOICE
Fantastic article about
Ellen Jaworski who grew up right here in Berlin
www.brit.co/jobs-you-didnt-know-you-wanted/#/.VmePCpOjWvo.facebook
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LOCAL OPTION TAX PRESENTATION
If you weren't able to
make it to the public hearing, here is the presentation that was given
regarding the possible 1% local option tax:
www.berlinvt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Local-Option-Presentation-2016.pdf
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UPCOMING MEETINGS & HOLIDAY HOURS
Monday, Dec 14 - Sewer
Commission 7pm at the Town office
Monday, Dec 14 - Berlin 6:15pm at the school
Tuesday, Dec 15 -
Development Review Board 7pm at the Town office
Monday, Dec 21 -
Selectboard 7pm at the Town
office
Wednesday, Dec 22 -
Planning Commission 6pm at the Town office
Town offices will close
early on December 24 and be closed for the day Friday, December 25th.
Town offices will have
regular hours on December 31st and be closed for the day Friday, January 1st.
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The CVMC Auxiliary invites
you to purchase a holiday love light in honor of or in memory of someone you
love. For just $5, a light will be
turned on and a tag attached with your name and the name of the person you are
remembering or honoring.
Donations are used by the
Auxiliary to fund request throughout the CVMC community, including student
scholarships.
Love lights can be
purchased by visiting the hospital website,
http://www.cvmc.org/about-cvmc/community/cvmc-auxiliary/love-light-tree;
print and fill out the form, and mail it in with a check. You can also purchase
love lights in the hospital gift shop during normal shop hours, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and noon to 3 p.m. weekends.
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How are Snow Days
determined in our school district? Be sure to read this and other informative
stories on a regular basis in Bus Stop Conversations
If you’d like to subscribe to Bus Stop Conversations and receive it by email in your in box every two weeks during the school year, please send an email to: dwolf@u32.org with "subscribe Bus Stop" in the subject.
www.u32.org/grades9-12/images/pdf/bus_stop/bus_stop12.9.15.pdf
If you’d like to subscribe to Bus Stop Conversations and receive it by email in your in box every two weeks during the school year, please send an email to: dwolf@u32.org with "subscribe Bus Stop" in the subject.
www.u32.org/grades9-12/images/pdf/bus_stop/bus_stop12.9.15.pdf
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"THE OTHER SIDE OF
CANNABIS" DOCUMENTARY SCREENING WED. DEC 16
Award winning film,
"The Other Side of Cannabis" will be shown at Kellogg Hubbard Library
in Montpelier 6-8 pm followed by discussion with medical and mental
health professionals. Teens, families, community members, healthcare providers,
educators encouraged to attend.
The documentary is edited into sections: Stories, Addiction, Family, Why Use, School, Consequences, Perception, Financial Effects, Mental Health Psychosis, Today’s Marijuana and the Brain, It’s Just Pot, IncreasedTHC potency, Marijuana as a Gateway, Physical Effects
and Recovery. Movie features Harvard researchers, neuroscientists, children and
adults dealing with the impact of marijuana use.
The film increases community awareness. It is not about legalization or the medicinal value of marijuana – both have their valid points, according to the film’s Producer/Director Jody Belsher. “Regardless of one’s view, the aim is to educate about the risks to help young people make healthy, informed decisions that may influence their lives forever.” With the increased legalization and normalization of marijuana in society today, the film’s goal is to illustrate how these risks exist for Adolescents, Teenagers, and Young Adults. Does legal mean safe?
More information at www.cvndc.org or agilbert@cvndc.org
The documentary is edited into sections: Stories, Addiction, Family, Why Use, School, Consequences, Perception, Financial Effects, Mental Health Psychosis, Today’s Marijuana and the Brain, It’s Just Pot, Increased
The film increases community awareness. It is not about legalization or the medicinal value of marijuana – both have their valid points, according to the film’s Producer/Director Jody Belsher. “Regardless of one’s view, the aim is to educate about the risks to help young people make healthy, informed decisions that may influence their lives forever.” With the increased legalization and normalization of marijuana in society today, the film’s goal is to illustrate how these risks exist for Adolescents, Teenagers, and Young Adults. Does legal mean safe?
More information at www.cvndc.org or agilbert@cvndc.org
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Note: Berlin
WASTE DISTRICT VOTE TODAY COULD PUT FACILITY PLAN IN MOTION
Pub. 12/2/15 Times Argus
by David Delcore
The envisioned facility
now has a name, a not-to-exceed price tag, a proposed location, suggested
dimensions and an expandable list of services it would provide.
In the last month, the
work of a series of committees has set the stage for today’s 5 p.m. meeting at which the 18-town district’s governing
board is expected to make some key decisions. The panel, which meets at the
Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce’s building in Berlin, will be asked to
double the per-capita fee for member towns — the district’s most predictable
source of revenue — and approve a freshly edited draft plan for the proposed
facility.
Supervisors then intend to
discuss behind closed doors the potential acquisition of the East Montpelier property where — with approval from residents in
the member communities — the Zero Waste Center
As expected, it won’t be the
$5.1 million version in an architect’s plan that members of the cost-conscious
board discussed last month. The district’s executive board and financial
oversight committee are both recommending a scaled-down 8,500-square-foot
facility as part of a first phase that would be financed over 30 years and cost
no more than $1.5 million.
It’s a more aggressive
approach than the one the district’s planning analyst recommended. That
involved proceeding with plans to acquire an abandoned 41.5-acre farm on Route
14 in East Montpelier but delaying a bond vote that had been tentatively
discussed for November 2016.
Though members of the
financial oversight committee did not agree with that approach and the
executive board has advocated pressing ahead with a $1.5 million project, it is
conceivable the full board could overrule both when it meets today.
It is at least as likely —
perhaps more given the size of the board and the fact that several members have
already weighed in at the committee level — that supervisors will stick with
the plan for a bond vote next November in hopes of constructing a facility that
would be ready for use by the fall of 2017.
That facility, as
currently envisioned, would accommodate the consolidation of the district’s
existing programs, including the Additional Recyclables
Collection Center North Main Street
Based on the time frame
now being discussed, a bond vote is still nearly a year off, but district
officials are moving more swiftly to acquire the former East Montpelier farm on Route 14 between Route 2 and the Barre Town
The property is owned by
onetime district critic Jerry Rappaport, who helped scuttle the district’s
long-abandoned plan to develop a landfill not far from the Route 14 farm. It is
a remnant of the much larger operation, Lylehaven Farm, that he sold to
Fairmont Farms last year.
Members of the executive
board have directed staff to check with legal counsel about the process for
acquiring property and have authorized staff to make an offer on the property,
which will be discussed in executive session today and be the subject of a
community meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at the East Montpelier Volunteer Fire Station.
When they meet today,
members of the district board will consider adopting a draft facility plan that
reflects recent adjustments and notes the facility might have to be reduced to
7,500 square feet to stay within the $1.5 million limit.
A proposed doubling of the
district’s population-based membership fee is a pivotal piece in financing the
project. The suggested increase, to $2 per capita, from $1 per capita, that the
board will be asked to approve today would be the first in a series of
increases needed to finance a bond.
A year from now, estimates
indicate, the cost of the bond would necessitate a per-capita fee of $2.47. The
assessment would climb to a high of $2.95 in 2018, when annual debt service on
a $1.5 million bond would peak at just over $50,000. Annual debt service would
then steadily decline until the bond is paid off.
david.delcore
@timesargus.com
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CVSWMD AUDIENCE CIVIL BUT WARY OF PLANS
Recruited to moderate
Thursday night’s community meeting at the East Montpelier Volunteer Fire
Station, the soft-spoken Gainza was never really needed to keep the
conversation focused and tempers from flaring.
It’s not that the
audience, which included town officials and people who could eventually be the
nearest neighbors of a district-run facility, did not have questions and
concerns. They do. They asked and expressed them, and odds are they’ll have
more as the process, which district officials hope ends with a successful bond
vote next November, plays out.
For the moment, their minds
are open and their arms aren’t closed, which is about as much as district
officials could have hoped for as they rolled out a plan that was conceptually
endorsed by the board of the 18-town cooperative less than 24 hours before
Gainza kicked things off Thursday night.
A collection of
understandably wary residents weren’t ready to roll out the red carpet for the
waste district. But, they didn’t run a delegation — which included General
Manager Leesa Stewart, Planning Analyst Cathleen Gent, and Fred Thumm, who
represents Barre Town on the district’s governing board and serves as its
chairman — out of town either.
A violent reaction to the
district’s latest proposal would likely have influenced a looming decision
involving whether to make an initial offer to buy the 41.5-acre farm from owner
Jerry Rappaport.
There is irony here,
because Rappaport once walked one of his prize cows into East Montpelier Elementary School East Montpelier
voters overwhelmingly veto plans for a district-owned landfill.
The district has long
since moved on, shifting its focus to “Zero Waste” programming that residents
were told would be aided by a new facility with plenty of room to expand.
Future growth and what
that might entail was the most common concern expressed by residents like
Charlie Woodhams.
“Just the thought of
expansion makes me nervous,” said Woodhams. “You have a history in this area of
trying to site a landfill.”
Stewart assured Woodhams
that isn’t what the district has in mind for the property.
“We are not looking to
site a landfill,” she said.
According to Thumm,
district supervisors haven’t seriously considered what to do with the vast
majority of the property if they are ultimately able to acquire it. The focus,
he said, has been on the roadside area that includes a condemned farmhouse, a
structurally questionable barn and a couple of concrete bunkers.
“Basically we want the
frontage,” he said.
Pressed for plans for the
balance of the property, Thumm said there is only one for the foreseeable
future.
“Let whoever’s mowing it
keep mowing it,” he said.
Deb Glottman, who lives near
an 11-acre East Montpelier site managed by Vermont Compost of Montpelier, said
she worried the district might one day look to create a similar operation —
one, she argued, that is as ill-suited for the Route 14 corridor as it is in
her neighborhood.
“Where are the limits
going to be placed?” she asked.
It was a sentiment shared
by Jamie Laquerre.
“The biggest concern would
be the future,” Laquerre said, suggesting the smell of food scraps and a spike
in truck traffic would sour his opinion of an otherwise benign project.
“A nice looking building
and recycling (televisions) and paint and all that would be great,” he said.
Stewart said the district
currently brings the food scraps it collects through its organics program to
Vermont Compost or Dog River Farm in Berlin
“It’s nearly impossible
for us to predict what might happen someday,” she said, suggesting on-site
composting isn’t in the district’s five-year plan.
The one promise Stewart
said she could make is that if the district acquires the Route 14 property —
and that is still a big if at this juncture — its use would be publicly
discussed and decided by an appointed board of municipal representatives.
“If we did plan growth in
the future there would be the opportunity for a public process just like this
one,” she said.
Residents were told the
district likely wouldn’t pay taxes on the property, most of which is now
enrolled in the state’s Current Use program, but that, along with East
Montpelier’s share of the $1.5 million project now being discussed, would have
a minimal effect on the town’s tax rate.
Although the district is
exempt from property taxes, it would be required to obtain a permit for the
proposed facility from both the town’s Development Review Board and the
District 5 Environmental Commission.
Though the size of the
facility has fluctuated some in recent weeks, it is expected to be between 7,500
and 8,500 square feet. That doesn’t include a pre-engineered trailer designed
to safely store household hazardous waste. The specialized trailer would
provide the district with a convenient, year-round drop-off for residents in
the greater Barre-Montpelier area, while serving as a repository for household
hazardous waste the district collects in some of its more rural towns.
Stewart said the turnout
and the tenor of Thursday’s meeting were cause for optimism and would be
weighed by the district’s executive board when it decides whether to make an
offer on the Route 14 property on Dec. 15.
david.delcore
@timesargus.com
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U-32 BUDGET WRITERS CONFIDENT
Pub.
12/8/15 Times Argus by Gina Conn
A community forum was held
Nov. 18 to solicit feedback from the community, but only three people showed
up, according to Washington Central Supervisory Union Superintendent Bill
Kimball. Two of them offered little input, and the third visitor argued for
additional cuts to the still-evolving spending plan for U-32 Middle and High
School.
As of now, nothing in the
fiscal 2017 budget proposal has changed since a board meeting Nov. 4. During
that meeting Kimball said he was confident the budget planning process could
move forward with few alterations to the school’s educational offerings. While
there was discussion about the possibility of eliminating certain programs with
low student enrollments, board members felt that more research was needed
before coming to any firm conclusions. And that still seems to be the case,
according to Kimball.
“There are some
instructional programs we will look at based on basic enrollments,” Kimball
said in an interview Monday.
One of the board’s tasks
will be to build a budget that meets the spending thresholds outlined in the
cost containment portion of Act 46, the new school district consolidation law.
Kimball said some cuts may be necessary to meet the Act 46 requirements. “Some
(programs) will have to be reduced or cut, but we can only do that when we have
a better idea of what the human needs are,” Kimball said.
That determination depends
in part on overall student enrollment, and Kimball said the board is waiting
for the state to issue the latest count of equalized pupils. When calculating
spending per student, Vermont
U-32 currently has 757.28
equalized pupils and spends $16,097.03 per equalized pupil. The latest figure
the U-32 board has arrived at for total spending next year is a little over
$15.12 million.
Districts will face tax
penalties for exceeding the spending increase caps set out under Act 46.
U-32 board member Scott
Thompson, of Calais
“There’s so much uproar in
Vermont
Thompson said he hopes to
have the new equalized pupil numbers from the state by Dec. 15, which would
allow the board to home in on a final draft budget.
It’s hoped the new draft
budget will be ready for the next meeting of the board Dec. 16.
gina.conn @timesargus.com
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# posted by Corinne's blog of Berlin and area happenings @ 4:36 PM 
