Featured Stories

There is one award that stands out in Shelburne for its recognition of residents whose strong spirit of volunteerism has made a lasting impact on municipal government — the Colleen Haag Public Service Award, named after the town’s clerk of more than 35 years.

A Chittenden County resident was cheated out of a large sum of money through a jury duty scam, according to the Chittenden County Sheriff’s Department.

School board members with the Champlain Valley School District last week voted to keep a budget vote on the March 5 ballot, declining to take advantage of a new state law allowing districts to push the vote back to rework their budgets amid the current state education chaos.

The 2024 Vermont Francophonie Celebration will be held Thursday, March 28, in the performing arts center of the Winooski School District, 60 Normand St. The official ceremony will be held from 1-2 pm.

“Our Songs Remember” is a combination lecture and performance focusing on the ways in which the Abenaki oral traditions of storytelling and music play a part in the preservation of Indigenous ways.

Non-native invasive plant species have long threatened the health of ecosystems, wildlife habitat and populations of native plants in the Lewis Creek watershed. Management can be difficult because they are easily spread via seeds, roots, fragments, animals and humans.

Marjorie Major celebrated a major milestone in February when she turned 100 years old. She is seen here celebrating at Wake Robin with daughters Jackie Goss, left, and right, Terre Murphy, along with her friends.

Open government mattered to all of us during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Government played an outsized role in our day-to-day lives then. Schools closed, storefronts shuttered and the officials making decisions about quarantines, mask mandates and vaccines often met in secret or exclusively online.

My body feels as though I’ve volunteered for a scientific study; becoming a proving ground of sorts, evaluating various pieces of adaptive equipment as I put my own durability to the test, slipping, sliding, slogging and crunching over back roads whose fluctuating consistency becomes more unpredictable with each passing winter.

It may be time for the changing views of Vermonters toward wildlife to be addressed, but bill S.258 will not accomplish it. Currently, and historically, the 14 members of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board have been appointed by the governor with input from the Legislature. One seat represents each county.

It is frequently said that when writing regulations, we will know we’ve done it right when everyone is equally unhappy, because there are many competing interests that need to be balanced against one another. I understand that it can feel that way, but I disagree, wholeheartedly. It does not have to be that way.

I want to raise a concern about the minimal amount of protection the PlaceSense consultants are proposing in their zoning rewrite draft for Shelburne’s remaining forest habitat blocks.

Has anyone not heard about drug addiction problems in Vermont? About substance use in municipalities and neighborhoods? Residents have found used needles near local schools and friends and families are severely affected by the loss of loved ones from addiction or death.

When I first played Old Maid as a child, I thought the old maid in question was an elderly housekeeper. That’s understandable, though it didn’t make the title of the card game any less offensive.

In 2022 Vermont passed Act 127, with the laudable intent of continuing the state’s commitment to providing a quality education to Vermont kids regardless of zip code. Based upon the impact to school spending and tax rates, the results have been a budgetary disaster.

Children truly are our future, and it is our duty to invest in them and support their health and well-being. I felt strongly about meeting the needs of children before, but it hits closer to home now that I am the mother of a 10-month-old who lights up our lives.

We’re halfway through the 2024 legislative session. Our work for the second year of this legislative biennium officially began on Jan. 3. We’ve worked diligently on some significant legislation in these first two months, and this report provides a few highlights.