The Commons/Issue of Dec. 22, 2010

By Randolph T. HolhutThe Commons

B R A T T L E B O R O — I n Vermont, cable television op-erators are required to provide public, educational, and gov-ernment (PEG) access program-ming, and provide the equipment and facilities to produce local programming as a condition of receiving a Certificate of Public Good (CPG) from the Public Service Board (PSB).

For the pas t 10 years , Bra t t l eboro Communi ty Television (BCTV) has filled that role for Southern Vermont Cable Co. (SVC), which serves the towns of Newfane, Townshend, Dummerston, Putney, and Jamaica.

“We want to provide public access programming and they need to have it, so it’s been a nice, symbiotic relationship,” said BCTV Executive Director Cor Trowbridge.

But that relationship has been strained of late.

BCTV and SVC have been working to upgrade the signal quality of BCTV’s Channel 8, and BCTV has been urging SVC to add Channel 10 — BCTV’s education and government chan-nel — to its system. BCTV rep-resentatives say they thought things were heading along the right path.

SVC was issued Certificates of Public Good allowing it to serve subscribers in Newfane

Raising thenumbeRsStudy will influence recycling coordinators’ next moves to boost recycling in Brattleboro

By Olga PetersThe Commons

B R A T T L E B O R O —Brattleboro is a town with curbside pick-up of recyclables, a mandatory recycling ordi-nance, and a population largely concerned with environmental issues — yet only 19 percent of its residents recycle.

The new town recycling co-ordinators, Moss Kahler and Cindy Sterling, seek to raise that 19 to a full 100 percent.

This winter, the duo has be-gun working to identify which habits or systems contribute to the low rate.

The town enacted a recy-cling ordinance in the 1990s, making recycling mandatory. For years, the town has lightly enforced the ordinance, said Sterling.

Kahler and Sterling plan to glean data that will help them launch new initiatives and prepare residents for stricter enforcement of the town’s mandatory recycling ordinance that begins March 1.

For want of a PaYt

At this year’s Representative Annual Town Meeting, repre-sentatives voted to create a re-cycling coordinator position to aid residents in the transition to the newly approved pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) trash dis-posal system.

Representatives generally agreed that if the town ex-pected residents to pay for spe-cial trash bags, it also needed to help them save money by

increasing recycling.Voters later overruled PAYT

in a special referendum vote. However, the recycling coordi-nator position, funded for one year, remained.

With the town not intend-ing to fund the position beyond one year, Sterling said the ulti-mate goal for her and Kahler is to make the improvements to Brattleboro’s recycling system sustainable.

The coordinators came to

DAVID SHAW/THE COMMONS

Moss Kahler, co-coordinator of Brattleboro’s recycling program with Cindy Sterling (inset), along for the ride as Triple T Trucking driver Andre Smith collects household recyclables. Kahler and Sterling are looking to reverse the town’s low compliance with mandatory recycling and are preparing to educate townspeople.


Even properly sorted recyclables should not be left in plastic bags, Kahler and Sterling observe.

Newfane voters decide to keep zoning bylaws

By Thelma O’BrienThe Commons

TOWNSHEND—Sharp dif-ferences between the Leland & Gray Union High School ad-ministration and the public were highlighted last Tuesday night as the LGUHS School Board voted to accept the proposed fiscal year 2012 budget by a vote of 10-4.

The budget of more than $6.3 million is nearly level-funded and will require no property tax increase.

The public wil l vote by Australian ballot on the budget as proposed Wednesday, Feb. 2.

A budget information meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 5, and the school district holds its annual meeting Tuesday, Feb. 1.

“This budget reflects the fis-cal realities of (and educational hopes for) the Leland & Gray community,” wrote Principal Dorinne Dorfman to the board regarding the 2011-12 budget decisions. “Reductions in depart-ments and co-curricular activities reflect low student enrollment and fiscal constraints.”

Low enrollments in art, for-eign language, health, music, and family and consumer science

Leland & Gray faces difficult budget choicesTowns to vote Feb. 2

Entergy agrees to pump more tritiated waterShumlin ‘grateful’ for meeting with VY officials

Cable company seeks state okay to drop BCTV programming in five towns


A screen at the Brattleboro Community Television studio shows state Rep. Mike Mrowicki’s “Montpelier Connection” program.

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page 8

Health reform may take years

page 3

VoicesANNIE hAWKINS

Tales of holiday stress

page 6

Life & WorkMEDICAL MIRACLE

Local family touched by historic kidney transplants

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SportsGIRLS’ hOCKEY

Colonels top Rutland

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E D I T O R ’ S N O T E

No paper next week

The Commons will suspend publication for a week so our staff and contributors can recharge their batteries, en-joy the holiday season, and otherwise gird themselves to produce a good newspaper for you in 2011.

The next issue will be pub-lished Wednesday, Jan. 3. Deadline for news and ad-vertising is Friday, Dec. 31.

All of us at Vermont Independent Media and The Commons offer our readers best wishes for a safe and happy rest of 2010. See you next year.

By Thelma O’BrienThe Commons

NEWFANE—The ballot measure to abolish Newfane’s zoning bylaw was soundly de-feated Monday as residents of Newfane, Williamsville, and South Newfane voted 326 to 103 to retain the land use laws adopted in 1975.

A stream of more than a third of the town’s 1,360 registered voters, out of a population of about 1,800, drifted through the

polling lines at the NewBrook Fire Station from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. to defeat the measure by about a three-to-one margin.

Monday’s vote was prompted by a petition circulated in June that called for the removal of what the signers considered overly restrictive regulations. Eighty-seven registered vot-ers signed it. After two infor-mation meetings were held, an Australian ballot election was finally set for Dec. 20.

Shelley and Deane Wilson,

who own 13.5 acres in Newfane, present a representative example of voters who view the regula-tions as draconian in detail, and therefore voted in favor of abol-ishing the laws.

But after voting, they each said they actually preferred modifi-cations to the law, rather than removal.

Deane Wilson described his frustration at not being allowed to build a 12-foot-by-12-foot shed on his property because of a 100-square-foot restriction.

But that paled in comparison to his children’s tree house he was forced to take down.

“I had to cut it down because it was over 10 feet tall,” he ex-plained. “I mean, it was up in a tree.”

Shelley Wilson, his wife, who also voted to abolish the laws, said she was really in favor of modifications.

“I mean, I’m not in favor of development everywhere but, yes, we need to change the laws.”

Dan and Sallyanne Kinoy

voted in favor of retaining the laws.

“I think there was a group of people who had had a number of projects turned down,” said Dan Kinoy, “and they tried to stam-pede this. I think a lot of people think the laws are over-strict.”

One woman in favor of retain-ing the laws asked to be anony-mous. She owned three acres in rural Newfane at the end of a town road. Someone bought 19 acres alongside her prop-erty, and pretty soon it became

a repository for junked cars and an off-road mud track.

She was able to buy six more acres from the owner, but only with the proviso that he gained right-of-way-use of part of her acreage. Eventually, his activi-ties overstepped the zoning set-back laws, and she was able to get help from the sheriff. He has subsequently moved.

A particularly galling restric-tion, according to those in fa-vor of abolishing the laws, is the

Brattleboro, VermontWednesday, December 22, 2010 • Vol. V, No. 34 • Issue #81

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www.commonsnews.orgW I N D h A M C O U N T Y ’ S A W A R D - W I N N I N G , I N D E P E N D E N T S O U R C E F O R N E W S A N D V I E W S

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n SEE BUDGET, PAGE 4n SEE RECYCLING, PAGE 2


VERNON—Entergy Corp. has agreed to resume pumping tritiated groundwater from the soils within the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant compound by the end of December. The Louisiana-based corporation has also said it will step up its envi-ronmental monitoring efforts.

Gov.-elect Peter Shumlin toured Vermont Yankee on Friday and met with Entergy

officials to discuss a formal re-quest he issued to the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In his letter last week to Michael Colomb, Vermont Yankee site vice-president, and Gregory Jazcko, head of the NRC, Shumlin asked Entergy to resume pumping radioac-tive water from the ground, continue monitoring an aban-doned drinking water well in the Construction Office Building,

n SEE ENTERGY, PAGE 8

Strained relationship threatens local programming

n SEE PUBLIC ACCESS, PAGE 2

n SEE zONING, PAGE 5

n Recycling FROM PAGE 1

n Public access FROM PAGE 1

139 Main St. #604, P.O. Box 1212Brattleboro, VT 05302

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the position separately but are glad to be working together.

Sterling, program direc-tor for the Windham Solid Waste Management District (WSWMD), had her full-time position cut to 25 hours last March when the district lost a grant it had received for 11 years.

She was looking to comple-ment her hours in July when Town Manager Barbara Sondag approached her about applying for the town recycling coordina-tor position.

Sterling thought that the po-sition sounded like a win-win. She could focus her waste man-agement experience, usually re-served for the entire district, on one town.

But she had reservations. Sterling said she felt she lacked local knowledge of Brattleboro because she l ives in New Hampshire.

Kahler led the charge against PAYT. Although he opposed that disposal system, he favors re-cycling and believes Brattleboro can do better.

“So I thought I should put my money where my mouth is,” he said.

Kahler worried that his ap-plying for the position would put Sondag in “a tough spot,” because they fell on opposing sides of the PAYT issue. But he thinks his background in recy-cling, and his history as a for-mer Selectboard member and Brattleboro resident, tipped the scales in his favor.

Kahler describes Sondag’s decision to split the job into two part-time positions as “a stroke of brilliance.” He and Sterling agree that the job would be “overwhelming” for one person.

Riding the routeThe coordinator job is “front-

end loaded,” Kahler said, requir-ing the new recruits to gather data, contact community orga-nizations, and assess residents’ current habits.

A 19 percent recycling rate is considered low when you have a municipal curbside pick-up program, plus the ability to drop items off 24/7 at WSWMD’s Old Ferry Road facility, said Sterling.

Kahler spent two cold morn-ings riding the route with Andre Smith, Brattleboro resource re-covery transportation facilita-tor with Triple T Trucking, the Brattleboro-based rubbish re-moval company contracted to pick up recycling at the curb. Kahler said the trip helped him see which households recycle.

Those belonging to the house-holds that don’t are “the people who have to change their habits the most,” said Kahler.

He said many households sort their recyclables incorrectly or toss in items not accepted by the district.

A common mistake Kahler no-ticed is households that have all the right items sorted properly in their green recycling bins but im-properly stash all their overflow items on the curb in plastic bags.

Kahler said these bags can “gum up” the District’s sorting machine.

Residents also put waxy milk and juice containers out for recycling that should go to the WSWMD’s Project COW (Commercial Organic Waste) compost drop off. People are also tossing unaccepted items like aluminum products, non-grocery related molded plastic, and Styrofoam into their green recycling bins.

Kahler said he learned from his field trip that recycling hab-its, good and bad, tend to be determined by neighborhood. Sterling said some of their edu-cational efforts will target these underperforming areas of town.

Kahler said even some families he knows who are avid recyclers incorrectly sort the items they place curbside.

Sterling said some people have the misconception that they don’t need to sort their recycla-bles because they all go to the same facility. The WSWMD’s facility doesn’t have the staffing to sort everything in one lump, she noted.

She feels that, for many house-holds, a little education is all it will take to change them into stellar recyclers.

“We intend in these next three months to push in a media cam-paign the information people need to recycle properly,” said Kahler.

Sterling said it helps that a lo-cal hauling company won the town’s hauling contract.

The previous hauler, Waste Management Inc., confused res-idents because it took recycling items to Keene, N.H., which ac-cepted different items from those that WSWMD processes.

Kahler feels the town’s con-tract with Triple T Trucking will help the recycling numbers rise. He said the owner and manager understand there may be some big changes on the horizon for residents and are willing to make adjustments.

Sterling and Kahler plan to conduct a survey to understand where Brattleboro stands on re-cycling, residents’ current recy-cling behaviors, what they think works, and how the program can improve.

This data will inform the team’s new programs in the spring.

Sterling said the WSWMD has a handle on how to assess and deal with illegal dumping, if any occurs — a concern raised dur-ing the PAYT debates.

“No one wants to be told what to do with their trash,” Sterling

bR AT TLEbORO

said.But she hopes people will re-

member that recycling has value.Good recycling helps the dis-

trict save money, she notes. The district passes its savings onto the municipalities in the form of lower districting and tipping fees, resulting in lower taxes.

Kahler and Sterling are look-ing for volunteers to fill two-hour shifts in December and January to help survey people dropping recycling at the Old Ferry Road site. A survey will also be mailed to residents.

Following the rulesSmith, the only Triple T driver

picking up recyclables, has done impromptu sorting of items im-properly set on the curb. But Kahler said this will stop.

Come March 1, Triple T will enforce Brattleboro’s mandatory recycling ordinance more force-fully, the coordinators warned.

Sterling hopes education will be the only enforcement needed for residents to properly adhere to the ordinance.

She said the first planned level of enforcement would entail Smith leaving unaccepted recy-clables curbside with a sticker explaining why they were not picked up.

“We hope that’s all they’ll need as an education piece,” Sterling said.

Sterling said she and Kahler will meet with repeat offend-ers one-on-one to discuss how to remedy the situation. Even though the recycling ordinance allows for some “hefty fines,” Sterling hopes she and Kahler will never need to dole them out.

“We would like to avoid that part of the stick. We’d prefer to use carrots,” Sterling said.

Kahler agrees and feels fining households for not recycling is akin to buying a PAYT bag. He said he and Sterling are devel-oping a plan to reward star re-cycling households.

Kahler knows that, for some, having the mandatory recycling bylaw enforced will come as a big change.

It will take these people more time to sort items, he said, “but it doesn’t take a long time.”

For more information on recy-cling, visit windhamsolidwaste.org. Residents looking to volunteer as survey takers or who have other questions should contact Moss Kahler at 802-257-4445 ([email protected]) or Cindy Sterling at 603-762-1488 ([email protected]).

and Putney in 1988 and Dummerston in 1995. When the PSB allowed SVC to take over the assets of the nonprofit Townshend TV in 2001, the board gave the company the authority to expand the system into Jamaica.

Officially, BCTV has had a longstanding agreement to pro-vide Channel 8 content only to Putney subscribers but has made its broadcast available over the years as SVC expanded its sys-tem, according to one person familiar with the negotiations.

The station set out to negoti-ate a new agreement that would formalize the arrangement for all five towns.

Meanwhi le the s ta t ion wanted to remedy what its staff and board considered a dis-parity: Comcast subscribers in Brattleboro, Vernon, and Guilford, who fund PEG pro-gramming through a 0.5 percent surcharge on the cable televi-sion portion of their monthly bills, pick up a disproportion-ate amount of the operational funding of the station’s content because the original Putney agreement was so nominal.

“That has paid for technol-ogy upgrades and expanded pro-gramming,” Trowbridge said. “SVC subscribers have benefit-ted from this.”

This dispute has heated up even more as SVC applies for a renewal of its CPG from the PSB.

In August, BCTV petitioned the PSB for permission to partici-pate in the hearings. Trowbridge pointed to a 2-inch-tall pile of documents in her office.

“This is all the written testi-mony that is to be submitted to the PSB,” she said. “If SVC gets its way, none of it will be seen or heard by the board.”

On Dec. 6, SVC broke nego-tiations and asked the PSB for permission to amend its CPG renewal to exclude BCTV from its public access plan, and to pre-vent BCTV from having party status in the renewal hearings.

At the same time, the com-pany is seeking an exemption from the PEG requirement be-cause it has a small subscriber base — roughly 1,700, accord-ing to the PSB.

“Obviously, after achieving success with our negotiations and eventual contract signing with Comcast, to have our local smaller provider pull out of ne-gotiations like this is surprising and disappointing,” BCTV Vice President Tim Wessel wrote on iBrattleboro. “We will continue to welcome negotiations for a fair agreement for everyone, so that those who enjoy BCTV pro-grams can continue to do so.”

Why the fight?In an e-mail statement, SVC

president Ernest Scialabba said that SVC “has provided fund-ing to BCTV for public access programming for approximately

the last seven years without pass-ing those costs onto Southern Vermont’s customers. BCTV is no longer satisfied with the level of funding and would like more.

“Rather than increasing the costs for our customers asso-ciated with public access pro-gramming,” he continued, “[we are] investigating alternatives that would meet the community needs at a more affordable level.”

Trowbridge said SVC has shouldered relatively little of the cost of funding BCTV.

She added that BCTV is pro-viding its programming for a nominal fee, and is willing to work with SVC to develop a pub-lic access strategy.

“We respect that SVC is a small operation,” Trowbridge said. “We’re a small operation, too. We have always been will-ing to work with them. We sim-ply want to be able to clear up the signal quality problems and add Channel 10 programming.”

Neither Trowbridge nor Scialabba offered information about how much SVC now pays to BCTV for its programming, or how much additional money BCTV is seeking.

According to BCTV’s public nonprofit filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the organiza-tion received $202,435 in pro-gram service revenue from all sources, including Comcast and SVC.

the needAccording to Trowbridge,

BCTV conducted a study in 2008 to find out how well its channels were meeting com-munity needs. They found that SVC subscribers had difficulty watching Channel 8 because of poor signal quality, and that they wanted to receive Channel 10 programming, especially from Brattleboro Union High School.

“Brattleboro is the hub of Windham County,” she said. “This is where people come to shop, to work, to play. Everything flows here.”

Putney and Dummerston are in the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union, so there is a demand in those towns for seeing the daily live programming pro-duced by BUHS students. State Rep. Mike Mrowicki, D-Putney, also hosts a regular webcast from Montpelier to his constituents that’s aired on BCTV.

There is not as much regu-lar programming for the West River Valley towns of Newfane, Townshend, and Jamaica, al-though Trowbridge said resi-dents in those towns have used the BCTV studios to produce programs.

BCTV reached out to its SVC towns in an attempt to set up broadcasts of its Selectboard meetings, a service that the five boards declined, according to one station volunteer.

What’s nextThe PSB is expected to rule

on BCTV’s petition on Feb. 18. Until then, Trowbridge said she is trying to get the word out that SVC customers may lose BCTV programming — programming that is touted on the SVC web-site as a benefit of a subscription to the service.

“There’s always something that needs to be done here at BCTV, but I’m having to spend energy on this,” she said. “It takes a lot of work and invest-ment to keep this all going, and the more people who are able to get our programming, the more support we can receive.”

Comments on the renewal may be sent to the Vermont Department of Public Service at [email protected] or 112 State St., Drawer 20, Montpelier, VT 05620-2601. Viewers may also call 800-622-4496. The docket number is 7633.

With additional reporting by Jeff Potter.


Cor Trowbridge, executive director of Brattleboro Community Television, stands in the BCTV studio at the Municipal Center.

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BRATTLEBORO—At the Vermont Citizens Campaign for Health’s recent annual meeting, two members of Dr. William Hsiao’s team pre-sented early findings gleaned from interviews with profes-sionals, elected officials, and advocacy groups involved with health care in Vermont.

Ashley Fox, Ph.D., and Nathan Blanchet, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard, said Vermont is in a unique posi-tion to remain a health care reform “trailblazer.”

They cautioned that this wouldn’t prove easy and would require, above all, a sense of unity among elected officials, businesses, residents, and advocacy groups.

Unity, said Blanchet, may not be easy in a state with a population of — as one Vermonter described them — “socialist libertarians,” who support working together as a co-operative community while wanting to be left alone, in-dependent, and free to do as they please.

Fox and Blanchet inter-viewed 70 people representing hospitals, health care provid-ers, legislators, business own-ers, and health care advocates in August and September.

According to Fox, an Agency for Health Care Research and Quality Fellow at Yale University, she and Blanchet tried to balance interviews between those pro-health care reform and those who are wary of such measures.

This year, the Legislature passed Act 128, which deals with health care financing and universal access. Lawmakers charged Dr. William Hsiao, a professor of economics at Harvard University, and his team to develop three plans to provide universal health care to Vermonters.

According to Act 128, of the three plans suggested by Dr. Hsiao, who helped design Taiwan’s health care system, one had to be a government administered single-payer op-tion, another had to be a pub-lic option and the third plan one of Dr. Hsiao’s own design.

Fox said she and Blanchet reviewed Vermont’s 1994 at-tempt to enact universal access to health care. At that time, the legislature was close to passing reform legislation but, in the end, lawmakers did not succeed in enacting any large-scale changes.

“The past shapes the pres-ent in a profound way,” Fox

said.Fox outlined some factors

that contributed to the leg-islation’s failure, including the absence of a clear fund-ing method, too many pro-posed plans, the Burlington Free Press “misrepresenting” a cost increase, and opposition from small, grassroots busi-ness groups.

Blanchet said the state faced opportunities, constraints, and concerns moving forward on reform in the present era.

He said having Democrats in control of the legislative and executive branches of government will provide one opportunity.

“We’d be in a different game if Brian Dubie had won the election — not sure what that game would be,” said Blanchet.

Other opportunities in-clude Governor-elect Peter Shumlin’s appointments of cabinet members with health care reform experience and the progress made in the “art and science” of successful health care reform, and in de-veloping new systems.

Constraints included fall-out from the recession, limits placed on states’ powers by the new federal health care bill, and no explicit allowances for waivers from the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which sets minimum standards for pensions and health care in private industry.

Blanchet called the biggest threat Vermonters’ diversity of interests.

Vermonters would need to unify their health care cover-age and benefits goals to en-sure successful future reforms, he said.

A unification of plans could prove an interesting feat in a state with a “patchwork” of benefit plans and delivery sys-tems, and a population with easy access to its elected offi-cials, said Blanchet.

Kate Kanelstein, an or-ganizer with the Vermont Worker s ’ Cente r , s a id Vermont is at an “exciting” point with health care reform.

“But we’re up against pretty big challenges,” said Kanelstein. “The opponents have a lot of power and a lot of money. But we have a lot of us.”

Dr. Hsiao and his team will present their findings to the Legislature in mid-January. The public and legislators will have a chance to comment on the proposed health care plans. Then, the team will re-view and present the revised plans later next year.

By Anne Gallowayvtdigger.org

MONTPELIER—Vermont’s health care system is broken, but it’s not beyond repair, according to Dr. William Hsiao, who has been hired by the Legislature to design three medical care reform plans for Vermont.

Fully integrating reforms, however, could take as long as 12 years, Hsiao told an audi-ence of about 100 people at the Statehouse on Dec. 14.

Hsiao made the remarks at a hearing before the Vermont Health Care Committee. He and his team gave the commit-tee a status update on their re-search for the full report Hsiao will deliver to lawmakers on Jan. 19, which will be followed by a two-week public comment pe-riod and then a two-week period for Hsiao and his group to make changes to the three plans. The final report will be presented on Feb. 17.

Hsiao, a Harvard economist and architect of Taiwan’s single-payer system, is charged with ful-filling the criteria set out in Act 128 for the design of three health care models that provide univer-sal access and high quality care to Vermonters. The approaches to health care — single payer, pub-lic option, and a third option to be determined by Hsiao and his staff — will be considered by the Legislature in the next session.

A “pure” single-payer system that offers universal coverage and comprehensive coverage for ev-ery Vermonter could be costly, Hsiao said. A public option ap-proach would create a govern-ment-administered insurance plan that would compete with other insurers and potentially of-fer lower premium rates because of the government’s bargaining power with hospitals and doc-tors. Universal coverage in that scenario would not be possible, Hsiao said.

The last option, Hsiao’s choice, will be “what we think is viable and practical.”

“When you look at your dreams, and you want your dreams to come true, in that pro-cess the rubber meets the road,” Hsiao said. “I’m confident our report won’t please everyone. I hope it will please most people.”

Sen. Jane Kitchel, chair of the committee, said panel members recognize the obstacles ahead, but they also understand the need to move forward.

“Working harder in a flawed system won’t get you where you need to be,” she said.

Before Hsiao’s team makes recommendations, it is com-pleting a detailed analysis of Vermont’s current situation. He said the state’s health care sys-tem will continue to erode unless fundamental changes are made.

“The cost is rising very fast in Vermont,” Hsiao said. “Also, the number of uninsured, in spite of Catamount Health and other efforts, remains at the 7.5 per-cent level.”

Vermont already has a high coverage rate compared with other states. On average, in-surers pay about 87 percent of health care costs incurred by Vermonters they cover.

Hsiao noted indicators that show fundamental flaws in the current medical system. Rural health care facilities are losing primary care doctors, Hsiao said, while the number of specialists is increasing. Community hospitals are weakening, he said.

“Your current system isn’t doing what you want it to do,” Hsiao said.

He said the Blueprint for Health initiative is a good posi-tive step, “but it’s a little step, and it’s not going to save you.”

His team divided the “stake-holders” that would be affected by reform into eight groups, and they interviewed 70 individuals as part of the research process.

What they found will help to guide their design, Hsiao said.

Some stakeholders want to maintain the status quo, he said.

Businesses, for example, are worried about any additional cost. “They are firm,” Hsiao said. “Whatever is proposed shouldn’t cost more money.”

The question, Hsiao said, is how do you pay for universal access while keeping insurance costs in check? The money has to come from cost savings, he said.

Administrative savings could be worth several hundred million dollars a year if a single-payer health care plan, or some version of it, is implemented, he said.

He recommended that the state move to an integrated de-livery system in which payments to doctors and health care facili-ties are based on a per-capita rate that includes “risk adjustments.”

In order to ensure that who-ever is paying the bill — whether it’s the state, employers or work-ers — “you want to pay for per-formance. You want to make sure you get the value.”

Measuring that value is diffi-cult. That’s why he recommends that performance-based crite-ria be developed. At the top of the list? “Did your patient get well?” Hsiao said. (Rwanda has the most advanced medical per-formance measures for medical personnel, Hsiao said.)

His team is preparing to of-fer quantitative modeling for

premium prices.He said they will calculate the

effect on household budgets, em-ployer premiums, state health care spending, Medicaid, and the new federal Affordable Care Act. Policy analysts Tom Kavet and Nick Rockler will analyze the impact of the three designs on the gross state product, or overall level of economic activ-ity in the state.

As part of its research, his team has considered tort reform, lowering administrative costs, and creating uniform prices for all procedures. Currently, the price varies widely depending on a patient’s insurance coverage.

“You’re going to have quite a lot to digest,” Hsiao said.

TERRY J. ALLEN/VTDIGGER.ORG

Dr. William Hsiao, right, and Steve Kappel, left, give an interim report to the Vermont Health Care Reform Commission.

COUNT Y & REGION

Planning health care for ‘socialist libertarians’Members of Dr. Hsiao’s team present at Vermont Citizens Campaign for Health annual meeting

Full health care reform in state: 12 years away?Legislative consultant testifies at Statehouse in preparation for full report in January

T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 22, 2010 NEWS 3

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n Budget FROM PAGE 1

classes dictated fractional reduc-tions in teacher hours for those subjects, according to Dorfman, Windham Central Supervisory Union Superintendent Steven B. John, and WCSU Chief Financial Officer Frank Rucker.

While teachers in those sub-jects have had their hours re-duced, and certain classes have been consolidated, no faculty member has been dismissed.

Two classes, music theory and a middle school health class, are to be discontinued.

An example typical of most of the reductions covers foreign languages.

“Low course enrollments warrant reductions in Chinese and French offering,” Dorfman writes. “Chinese will be reduced from 0.75 to 0.67 FTE (full time equivalent). The responsibility of teaching a Chinese course through the Virtual High School (i.e. online) increases the posi-tion by 0.33 FTE for a total of 1.0 FTE. Providing an online course in Chinese increases the number of L&G students par-ticipating in (online) courses, which have been oversubscribed in 2010-11.”

Similar reductions cover French, but, Dorfman writes, “Since student participation in one, two, or even three foreign languages over the course of six years is a priority for Leland & Gray, in the 2011-12 school year, the department will offer yearlong courses in Chinese and French to seventh- and eighth-graders. Students who complete two years of middle school for-eign language may earn one high school credit.”

John believes “more draco-nian measures” will take place if budget deficits are not at least partially resolved.

“What is lost here is student convenience,” he said. “We have not eliminated anything. We have larger classes and inde-pendent study, and the students can access subjects in the virtual high school. This proposal con-siders 38 teachers. No retiring is required.”

“Given the economic realities, you determine course enrollment and state requirements, and you (create) an action plan,” said Dorfman.

But her focus, she says, is equally on the academic needs of the school.

“You look at areas of weak-ness, areas that need attention based on standardized tests,” she said. “We need a strong literacy program here.”

She said that results show that in grade 11, students here did not meet state proficiency standards in reading, writing, math, and science. She has devised a pro-gram that invites teachers to take leadership roles in science, math,

and English, participating in pro-fessional development based each discipline’s best practices.

She has also working to re-design some biology, chemistry and physics classes with the goal of making them advanced place-ment (AP) courses.

“In 2008, 29 percent of Vermont high school students participated in AP courses,” she said. “Currently, 25 percent of L&G seniors participate in one or more AP classes. The goal is to increase the percentage to 35 percent of students in every graduating class, and increase the number of AP courses from two to four.”

Opponents of the proposed budget wanted cuts to academic programs restored, generally agreeing that the cuts represent a pattern that devalues academics, and that administrators too easily accept certain fiscal constraints. They also said they wanted a more comprehensive budget that voters could accept or reject by ballot Feb. 2.

Board members and admin-istrators have also received at least 22 letters, many detailed, from current students, alumni, and others advocating the status quo or better.

B o a r d m e m b e r D i a n e Newton, education director at Hildene, the Lincoln home in Manchester, voted against the budget.

“Here’s my thinking,” she said. “Leland & Gray’s extraordi-nary music program and Journey East (a program that sends stu-dents studying the Chinese lan-guage to China for several weeks) engages students at all levels. It seems totally illogical to com-promise our extraordinary music program. I wanted the process to go another step to let the vot-ers decide.”

Newton pointed out that Congressional actions last year provided funds to restore jobs for teachers across the country who were dropped because of budget constraints. The money is ex-pected to be distributed this year, but no one knows how or when.

She brought this up just as the meeting was ending and Board Member Dave Edgar from Newfane moved that if that money were forthcoming, about $19 million for Vermont, or about $100,000 for Leland & Gray, it would be used to restore faculty cuts.

“That passed unanimously,” Newton said.

Edgar was unavailable for comment.

Current senior Melissa Soule — who recently won early admis-sion status at Williams College, where she intends to study drama — is quoted often in newspapers and an extremely active stu-dent. She feels, because of her

continuing involvement in school affairs, that she’s in a position to comment on the reduced budget.

“As a student organizer for Dr. Dorfman and also a Rotarian, where I see a lot of people (in-cluding Rucker), I’m in a posi-tion to comment,” Soule said.

She feels that certain things are going downhill fast, espe-cially in the music department. “We used to have a prize-win-ning marching band, and now we don’t. We have a band, but not a marching band. I went to school concert recently, and there were 120 kids involved. You have to start music in grades four, five, and six, and give music the op-portunity to blossom.”

She agrees that economic issues can dictate budget

constraints but she says, “I do not understand why these par-ticular cuts were necessary I went through the budget line by line and I came up with $65,000 in maintenance costs, like com-puter repairs, that we could do ourselves.”

She also takes exception to the long-range planning practiced by the superintendent’s office. “They’re looking at declining enrollments four years down the road. But if you think of it, four years is someone’s whole high school education.”

While she agrees that increas-ing the budget could result in property tax increases, she says, “My basic argument is that we should give the public more choice.”

Patti Dickson of Jamaica, who works on hotel bookings at Stratton, is also distressed by the music cutbacks. Her daughter, a junior, has learned to write music recently and now writes her own pieces, she said.

“My big hope and desire is that everyone who votes looks at the budget carefully and doesn’t vote just on the bottom line, “ Dickson said. “I also want to en-courage parents to work on aca-demics at the school with their kids. You can accomplish a lot doing that.”

Susan Misnick, a school board member from Newfane, who is a computer programmer at the School for International Training, also voted no on the proposed budget.

WEST RIVER VALLE Y

COUNT Y & REGION

“I just wanted voters to get a chance to see if the people in the room were representative,” she said.

“It’s a chess game of the first order,” said Barbara Guerrero Marchant, Leland & Gray librar-ian and president of the teachers’ union. “It’s hard to know how to move.”

She takes exception to basing cuts on low enrollments, noting that the fractional reductions to someone’s teaching load affect a real person, and some staff facing cuts may seek other jobs. “It’s not a good formula. Small classes are good.”

She concedes that budget re-ductions are bound to affect the curriculum and devoutly wishes there were new ways to fund ed-ucation in the face of declining enrollments.

“It’s the continuing whittling away of education,” she said. She also bemoans the lack of in-terest and understanding among the voters.

Marchant is glad that neither the board nor the administra-tion “fell for the ‘Challenges for Change’ program.”

This voluntary budget reduc-tion plan asked all the state’s 280 school boards to reduce their budgets by at least 2 percent to save an estimated $23 million. Current figures indicate that a majority of the budget plans did not meet that challenge.

“It is regrettable that one of the first jobs for the new princi-pal was to cut back on the teach-ing staff,” Marchant noted. “But she (Dorfman) is very focused on academics, and I think she can communicate that to everyone.”

Since projections predict con-tinuing enrollment decline, Marchant sees an inevitable ef-fect on taxes.

“You get what you pay for,” she said.

By Randolph T. HolhutThe Commons

BRATTLEBORO—There are more than 4,000 nonprofit organizations in Vermont — ranging in size and scope from the University of Vermont to the Brattleboro Historical Society.

These organizations provide essential health and human ser-vices, arts and culture, commu-nity development, environmental stewardship, education, and a host of other services in every county of the state.

But this sector — which gener-ates $4.1 billion in revenue and accounts for nearly one-fifth of the Vermont gross state product — and the vital role it plays in the lives of Vermonters — is rarely looked at as a whole.

That has changed with a new report from the Vermont Community Foundation (VCF), which was founded in 1986 with the mission of strengthening the nonprofit sector and grow-ing Vermont’s philanthropic resources.

Vermont’s Nonprofit Sector: A Vital Community in a Time of Change, provides the first com-prehensive look at the sector in almost a decade. VCF worked

closely with the Center for Rural Studies at the University of Vermont and Common Good Vermont to conduct the surveys and interviews earlier this year that provided the basis for the report’s findings.

Stuar t Comstock-Gay, president and CEO of the Middlebury-based founda-tion, said in a recent visit to Brattleboro that the report goes beyond the numbers and looks at the impressions Vermonters have of the nonprofit world.

“Nonprofits don’t always tell their stories effectively,” Comstock-Gay said during an in-terview with The Commons. “It’s hard for them to do so, because they’re so focused on their mis-sions. But the better that non-profits can explain what they are doing and why it is important, the more that people trust and value what they do.”

According to the report, Vermont ranks seventh in the na-tion for its rate of volunteerism, and second in the nation for its teenage volunteer rate. About 20.7 million hours valued at $431.2 million are volunteered by Vermonters each year.

Vermonters are relatively well-aware of the nonprofit sector and there is room for that awareness to grow, the report finds.

And, according to the report, Vermonters trust and respect the nonprofit sector to deliver qual-ity services.

“This is a small state, and people know each other,” said Comstock-Gay. “Most nonprof-its are close enough to the people they serve that they know where the money is going and that it’s being used wisely.”

The trust that Vermonters have in nonprofits is significantly higher than the national average. While national surveys find only 1 in 5 Americans think nonprof-its do a very good job running programs and services, the re-port found that 46.2 percent of Vermonters have a “great deal” of confidence that nonprofits provide quality services, particu-larly local ones.

However, the lingering effects of the current recession have hit all nonprofits hard. While 60 percent of nonprofit leaders say

that individual donors are either “somewhat” or “much less” gen-erous than usual, 72 percent say demand for services has greatly increased.

As for the leaders of nonprof-its, the report found that they are concerned about declin-ing levels of support, but they remain resilient and commit-ted to their work. As nonprofits struggle to meet their budgets, economic pressures are moving many to be more creative and entrepreneurial.

Comstock-Gay said that a more effective nonprofit sec-tor not only delivers services more efficiently, but also attracts greater giving. He pointed out that area communities benefit from both.

“There are so many things that nonprofits do that for-profit enti-ties can’t or won’t do. Nonprofits are vital in making our state the compassionate, safe, and creative place that it is,” he said. “If for-profits could make money doing these things, they would be de-livering those services, and more power to them if they can make a profit. But as our economy changes, we’re going to need new delivery models.”

He said government, non-profits, and for-profits need to develop an “a-sectoral perspec-tive” to figure out which is best at delivering a particular service.

“There’s not one single solu-tion, and the models that worked in the past won’t necessarily work in the future,” Comstock-Gay said. “Most of all, we need to stop looking at nonprofits as ‘the other’ and start looking at them as another sector to work with.”

WWW.VERMONTCF.ORG

Stuart Comstock-Gay.

DAVID SHAW/COMMONS FILE PHOTO

Dorinne Dorfman, principal of Leland & Gray Union High School.

Taking stock of state nonprofit sectorNew report looks at challenges, opportunities among Vermont’s charitable organizations


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n zoning FROM PAGE 1

T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 22, 2010 NEWS 5

regulation that an owner may develop only 65 percent of his property.

But, as Town Clerk Gloria Cristelli points out, “That has to do with staying in accordance with the town plan,” and preserv-ing the well-known and admired aesthetics of the village.

Resident Roberta Dunham voted to retain the laws. “We need them to keep our environ-ment clean,” she said.

Selectboard chair Gary Katz said of the entire six-month ef-fort: “This was a good wakeup call that something needs changing. I am going to request that the Selectboard, at our next meeting, encourages the Planning Commission to begin revising the zoning laws, paying attention to the modifications residents want and eliminate the ambiguities. In general, in the process of revising, I want to reach out to the town.”

The board’s first meeting of 2011 is Jan. 6.

Cristelli agreed that actions such as a special election take a lot of time and money, although she wasn’t sure yet of the ex-act cost.

“I would say the whole thing took at least 30 hours of my time — getting the data ready, track-ing the absentee ballots (there were 97) and, of course, the en-tire day at NewBrook.”


BRATTLEBORO—The Selectboard agreed to make an addendum to Brattleboro’s mu-nicipal health care plan during a short special meeting Tuesday.

As of Jan. 1, 2011, the town will adopt the High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) for the remainder of union contracts. The town will pay 100 percent of the new plan’s premium and contribute one-half of the annual deductible into a health savings account. The HDHP replaces the town’s current Open Access Plus Health Plan.

The change will affect union and non-union employees alike.

Town Manager Barbara Sondag told Selectboard mem-bers this change would save the town money in 2011 and an es-timated $100,000 to $200,000 in 2012.

The town and the three unions representing town employees reached a tentative agreement prior to the Selectboard’s affir-mative vote.

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E S S A Y

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E D I T O R I A L

conflagrations, right?Only if we’re wearing halos

and wings.

WHEN I WAS a child, I be-lieved that I was tethered to the only wacky family in the history of the world.

My mother was particu-lar about the way the lights were strung on the tree. They couldn’t all be bunched on the outer branches, and there couldn’t be two of the same color next to each other.

She stood close by the tree, gesticulating at my father, who was tangled in the branches as he struggled to follow her deco-rating rules.

“Bob! There are too many red ones on that front branch, and not enough blue ones close to the trunk.”

Tension mounted as an hour passed, and my father’s face took on the same hue as Rudolph’s nose.

I rolled my eyes and recited my lines as if I were following a preordained script: “Who has ever seen an ugly Christmas tree? And why are we all so tense?”

“Nobody’s tense,” my mother said, talking through her teeth. From under the tree my father glanced my way and pressed a finger to his lips.

ON CHRISTMAS DAY, my mother’s bossy cousin Mary swooped through the door and insisted that we children pa-rade across the living room so “I can see how you’ve grown.” I felt like a heifer going to the auction block.

Uncle Jack arrived from New York with a fifth of Smirnoff, extended his personal cocktail hour through dessert, and told a lot of stupid Irish jokes.

My father agreed that yes, they were stupid jokes, but Jack was Irish through and through,

and he was genetically com-pelled to tell them.

I had to get out in the world and listen to lots of stories be-fore I realized that, compared to many other families, ours was a paragon of peace and virtue.

Men didn’t hunker down in front of the TV to watch foot-ball and bellow to the women for more drinks and snacks.

At the table, discussions about politics and religion oc-curred without rancor or spon-taneous combustion.

In the kitchen, several cooks contributed to the flavor of the broth, and deviations from the traditional menu were encouraged.

So what if my mother was over-invested in the flawless placement of lights? Did it re-ally matter that Uncle Jack’s jokes weren’t up to my stan-dards for entertainment?

Who did I think I was? The scriptwriter? The director of the pageant?

Somewhere in my slow, ar-duous evolution, I discovered that I had a very big investment in wanting my family to behave the way I thought it should. The persistent buzz in my mind was more irritating than cousin Mary’s annual parade.

The antidote was to de-lete my part of the script, im-provise, and just laugh. In the grand cosmic scheme, this was a minor epiphany, but I mistak-enly believed that I was on the path to enlightenment.

I WAS LONG-GROWN and married when circum-stances divested me of self-congratulation.

On Christmas Day, my hus-band E.B. and I went off for the afternoon to visit friends. We left our 13-month-old Labrador, Lily, at home. Lily had been the easiest, smartest

puppy I’d ever trained. She’d been perfect in every way, so perfect that we didn’t own a crate.

We came home to terrible carnage.

Lily had removed all the feathered bird ornaments from the tree — she was a bird dog, after all — and had scattered them over the floor in various forms of mutilation.

Normally, I didn’t get upset about the destruction of mate-rial goods. Accidents happen. Things break.

But the delicate cardinals, blue jays, robins, orioles, and sparrows had adorned my fa-ther’s boyhood tree. These birds were symbols of my fam-ily history: a grandfather who had died before I was born, a loving grandmother who had passed too soon.

The sight of the killing floor sent me into hysterics. I wailed. E.B. swept up the remains, took them outside, and buried them. I was too bereft to attend the service.

When I reported the tragedy to my father, he laughed and said, “Those birds didn’t owe us anything.”

His response lightened me up, as if he’d pinned a pair of loaner wings to my shoulders.

Many moons have passed since the demise of the birds. Real life-and-death tragedies have happened. Grief has been my teacher.

My criteria for a happy holi-day, or any day, have been dra-matically altered. If nobody is dead, paralyzed, or brain dam-aged, it’s a good-enough day.

The memory of the orna-ments is as sweet as their actual presence. The birds are under-ground, but the love and laugh-ter can’t be buried.

They remain in the air, eternal. n

ANNIE hAWKINS, a writer and storyteller, contributes frequently to these pages.

The birds didn’t owe us anythingA journey to stress-free joy in the holiday season

Putney

FOR THOSE of us who have been working for a safe and timely closure

of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant as scheduled in 2012, this has been an ex-traordinary year.

Much has changed in the past 12 months. Reflecting on this period, it is impossible not to feel proud and grateful to the people of Vermont for an intelligence and willing-ness to think for themselves in developing opinions re-garding the plant.

Some of us who live in the towns surrounding VY began the year with a “crazy,” yet amazing, winter walk from Brattleboro to Montpelier. We met with people in com-munities all along the way to share our message: that we are scared to be living in the shadow of a deteriorating nuclear power plant, and that there are energy alternatives to Vermont Yankee.

In the 11 days we were away from our homes and jobs, everywhere we were met by citizens who were wonder-fully supportive, providing us with places to sleep and eat lunch each day, with one woman in Barre even bring-ing fresh cookies to the side-walk for us!

During the walk, we were informed about the massive leak of radioactive tritium into the ground and wa-ter surrounding the nuclear plant. As the story of the leak unfolded, it became clear that Entergy, its owner, had lied to the state, under oath, about the existence of the

pipes from which the leaks had come. In some places, corporate lies are a daily oc-currence, but in our state, this was a really big deal.

People all around the state expressed their disgust with an out-of-state corporation that could not tell the truth to Vermonters.

IN A SERIOUS February snowstorm, the State Senate, led by Peter Shumlin, its president pro tem and now governor-elect, took the cou-rageous and unprecedented step of voting 26-4 to op-pose continued operation of Vermont Yankee beyond the termination of its 40-year li-cense in 2012.

During the entire day of this debate and vote, pages in the Statehouse carried hun-dreds of messages of support to legislators from all parts of the state. This vote was inter-national news, bringing the message that Vermonters will not passively accept the rub-ber-stamp extension of the life of an accident-plagued nuclear plant that is well past its prime.

All this year, Entergy has been spending lavishly on

a major public relations of-fensive — outspending our grassroots groups many times over. We have seen slick tele-vision advertising, full-page newspaper spreads, new me-dia entries, lawn signs, lob-byists, and more. It is a real testimony to Vermonters’ sophistication and willing-ness to read between the lines that Entergy’s spinning of the truth and attempts to look as if they have popular sup-port have largely fallen flat in Vermont.

In an election year in which Republicans swept the coun-try, with an implicit mes-sage that Americans don’t care about the environment, Vermonters elected a new governor who has a serious commitment to creating a green economy in this state. We have a real chance to be at the forefront of using gen-uine renewable power and strengthening the efficiency of our power usage.

One of the major issues in our gubernatorial cam-paign was replacing Vermont Yankee, and doing so was supported by a majority of our citizens.

As we look ahead to the many difficult issues of de-commissioning Vermont Yankee, we have faith that the residents of our state will continue to hold the owners accountable.

Vermont Yankee was given 40 years in Vermont. That time is nearly up. When it is, Entergy has pledged to return the site to a “green field.”

We will be here to make sure that pledge is kept. n

NANCY bRAUS owns and runs Everyone’s Books in Brattleboro, and serves as a member of the Safe and Green Campaign (www.safean-dgreencampaign.org), a grass-roots education and advocacy group active in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire towns within 20 miles of the Vermont Yankee reactor.

Grafton

IT MUST BE an epidemic.Google “coping with

holiday stress,” and you’ll find enough advice from

psychologists, life coaches, health clinics, etiquette ma-vens, and other “experts” to keep you in reading material for all the holidays of your life.

My cursory research has re-vealed that the experts have boarded the same bus headed toward the elusive destination called sanity.

Get organized. Don’t overin-dulge in food, alcohol, or spend-ing. Avoid shopping malls. Make time to exercise and rest. Learn to say no. Lower your expectations. Put aside differences. Remember the reason for the season.

It looks good on paper, doesn’t it?

SOME PEOPLE are stressed about conveying seasonal

greetings. “I don’t know what to say anymore,” a woman told me recently. “Merry Christmas or the generic ‘Happy Holidays?’ Whatever I say, it seems I’m bound to of-fend somebody.”

Her story activated my own stress meter. Prone to worry-ing about imagined difficulties, I fear a future when the word “happy,” uttered in December, will be forbidden in our excru-ciatingly correct, tightly bound vocabularies.

Then, there are the family stories.

The born-again son who came home to his parents and demanded that they dismantle the Christmas tree because it’s a pagan symbol. (He was right

about the tree’s origins, but short on graciousness.)

The middle-aged sisters who argued vociferously about how to make the gravy. (Giblets or no giblets?)

The militant vegan who pouted at the table, picking at bread and green beans. (Bring your own tofu turkey.)

There are darker stories, too — the ones that hurt the heart.

Is the tension really about the tree or the gravy? When we feel stressed, we tend to revert to our old bad hab-its of thought and deed un-less we have worked diligently to correct them. If we’re aware of them, we should be able to avoid dust-ups and

This is our last issue of The Commons for 2010. Our staff will be taking

next week off to catch our breaths after a busy seven months of transforming the paper from a monthly to a weekly. This week’s pa-per also marks the end of our first full five years of publication.

It’s been an exciting time here, and thanks to the sup-port we have received from our readers, advertisers, and donors, we’re moving ever closer to realizing the vision of the group of volunteers who struggled and gave birth to a publication that could belong to all of us.

The name of this news-paper “was inspired by the intrinsic nature of this ven-ture, which is to establish a vehicle for our common cause, to give voice, across the broadest possible spec-trum of interests and con-cerns, to all of the citizens of Brattleboro and our sur-rounding towns,” the paper editorialized in its second is-sue in 2005.

Those who founded the paper envisioned it “as the print equivalent of our own town common, a meeting place to exchange diverse views, a weekly gathering in which each of us can dis-cuss the issues that affect

our lives.”Windham County is a

great place to produce a newspaper. We have a lively and engaged readership, and so many intelligent and interesting people call this county home.

We strive to reflect the infinite variety of people that live and work here, and want nothing less than a weekly newspaper that embraces the whole of Windham County in all its feisty, complicated glory.

Telling your stories has been a pleasure, and it is what motivated us to cre-ate a weekly publication that can merit universal re-spect and create the com-mon ground that was only an imaginative vision in the early days of this paper.

Does that mean we de-mand that you like what we do? No way. We want to hear from readers who feel we missed the mark. If you think we missed the mark on a news story or disagree with a piece on the Voices page, talk to us. Get in touch with us, and we’ll have it out can-didly. Your engagement will make The Commons a better newspaper for you, and for all of us.

Our door is open, and we want everyone’s point of view in these pages. An example of this goal is our

diverse and wholly unpre-dictable Voices section. Some of the pieces we run might elicit a nod of recog-nition. Others might cause a bout of heartburn or vig-orous disagreement — even among those of us who edit the section.

That gamut of reactions is what we hope for. We trust that our readers can use their own intellectual equipment to weigh whether someone’s letter or opin-ion piece is on point or full of nonsense. We hope that each week’s mix of news and views will make you see things through fresh eyes and make you think anew, whatever your worldview.

Given the activist roots of The Commons — a prerequi-site for affecting change of any sort, including a change in Windham County’s me-dia landscape — we see it as a sign of the paper’s matu-rity that readers of all politi-cal ideologies are using the paper as a forum. We need to move beyond facile labels and treat one another and differing beliefs with respect. It’s the way toward frank discussions about a commu-nity that is so fragile in so many ways.

So thank you for all the support you gave us in 2010. We’ll see you when we re-turn on Jan. 5.

A maturing newspaper

DAVID SHAW/COMMONS FILE PHOTO

In January, participants rally before setting out on a walk to Montpelier in opposition to Vermont Yankee.

Three cheers for VermontersLooking back on a year of anti-nuclear activism

6 T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 22, 2010

L E T T E R S F R O M R E A D E R S

Williamsville

BY THE TIME this col-umn is printed, the voters in Newfane will have decided

whether or not to jettison their zoning bylaws. I’ve read these bylaws, I’ve attended the public hearings, and I’ve voted. But whatever the out-come, the issue will not be settled; there will be discon-tent. Indeed, even more than the issue of zoning, what the zoning petition has ex-posed is a raw nerve of civic displeasure.

The events that brought the zoning issue to the fore-front were undoubtedly com-plex — as events that involve humans often are — and my understanding of them is at most probably incomplete, as any single human’s under-standing often is.

But what I’ve gleaned from the meetings I’ve attended is twofold.

The first is that some resi-dents believe that they ought to be able to do whatever they want with their prop-erty because they own it and pay taxes on it, and it’s theirs. The second is that zoning by-laws, created by humans, are imperfect. Worse, it seems as if the enforcement of the by-laws has perhaps been un-fairly applied.

In the first instance, there is the issue of property rights. To submit to any infringe-ment on the use of one’s property is seen as an in-fringement on one’s freedom. If we lived in isolation, apart and indifferent to one an-other, we might be able to do whatever we want with our land, from conserving it, to polluting it, and everything in between. But the truth is, we live in community, and we live in a world of limited resources.

Because our resources are limited, we have laws protect-ing our groundwater, which means we have laws regulat-ing our wastewater. And be-cause we live in community, we have laws about how big those buildings can be and where they can be built.

In Newfane, the need to codify a set of community standards about what can be built and where was felt about 40 years ago. The town passed its first zoning bylaws

in 1975. As times changed, so has the character of the town. Now, we have no dairy farms in Newfane, and many of the people who reside here do not work here. As the popula-tion has grown and changed, the zoning bylaws have been amended and accepted by the voters, most recently in 2008.

NEVERTHELESS, this sum-mer, 87 voters signed a peti-tion calling for the repeal of all zoning. From what I’ve observed, there are two main complaints: The rules are anti-business, and they have been unfairly applied.

I am not in a position to evaluate the first of these complaints, and I know there is truth to the second, which is the unfortunate outcome of human imperfection and per-sonality conflict resulting in real and/or perceived injus-tice. Fed up, the petitioners have brought our civic im-perfections and dysfunction to light. They have done us a favor.

As political theorists have quantified in recent research, controversy is what engages people; civic engagement is highest when important is-sues are at stake. In Newfane, people have come out — twice — on weeknights, to speak out and listen to one another on the pros and cons of zoning, and they have come out a third time, to vote.

At these forums, the real underlying issue of the mo-ment has been revealed — and it’s not zoning, but governance.

Town government, includ-ing zoning, takes place in open meetings — meetings that are notoriously poorly at-tended. In truth, there have been years when Newfane has been pressed to find people willing to stand for office and run the meetings.

Holding public office takes time and commitment, but it also takes a certain amount of courage and belief in the

civic process, because even more than consuming time, it is thankless. Public servants must be inured to listening to complaints more often than praise, since it’s also human nature to complain.

Perhaps it’s also due to the drop in civic engagement that there is less understand-ing about how government works. The petitioners ad-vocating for repealing the zoning bylaws may have be-lieved repeal was their only recourse; they may not have realized that other methods to remedy their complaints ex-isted, such as amending the ordinances, instituting some mechanism for oversight in their application, attending meetings, and even serving on the Planning Commission or Development Review Board.

One Newfane resident who signed the petition has said at the subsequent hearings that he attended all the plan-ning meetings that led up to the most recent revision of the bylaws, but that no one listened. He has said this nu-merous times, and each time, someone else in town has ex-plained that being heard is not the same as getting one’s way.

NOW — whether Newfane voters have upheld their zon-ing bylaws or repealed them — there will be a discon-tented minority.

And it’s possible that an-other petition will be cir-culated, another round of hearings will be held, and another vote will take place. We could embark on an end-less series of petitions, hear-ings, and decisions. We could see-saw from one extreme to another ad infinitum, and at a fair bit of expense of both taxpayer money and human endeavor.

Or we could do what we humans do best, albeit imper-fectly: We could roll up our sleeves to tackle the difficult task of figuring out how best to live together.

To do so, we must speak up, and we must listen. We undoubtedly need to compro-mise, because to live together fairly and peaceably, we all have to give up a little of our individual freedom in or-der to advance the common good. n

Why isn’t Brattleboro talking strategically

about parking? Why doesn’t it reconsider not just the me-ters in the Harris lot, but the whole way parking is managed townwide?

Brattleboro’s Parking Enforcement department is an “enterprise” agency, which means it’s like a business that has to pay for itself, and hope-fully make a little money for the town from parking fees and fines. But while breaking even is a good goal, it’s more im-portant to have parking poli-cies that maximize convenience to shoppers and other visitors, and that maximize benefits to merchants as well.

To accomplish these ends, the town needs to think more strategically.

A few years ago, in a stra-tegic move, the town installed electronic meters that accept smart cards. You insert the smart card, wait a moment, pull it out, and the meter is loaded with the maximum amount of time available. Before you leave the parking space, you insert the card again and get credit for the unused time recorded on the card. In other words, you pay only for the minutes you actually used. That’s not an option when you put coins in the meter, which is why it is called a “smart card.”

But the full strategic value of the electronic meters has not been realized because most people are not aware smart cards are available. There’s no clear information on the meters to tell you where to buy them. (You can buy or reload them

only at the parking office in the transportation center garage on Flat Street.) So probably only a few hundred people are using smart cards. Moreover, they still don’t work in the lots where you buy a paper ticket from a machine, or the non-electronic meters in town.

Better marketing and wider availability of smart cards, along with the ability to use them everywhere, would make for a much smarter parking strategy. Here are some sugges-tions for other components:

• Upgrade the parking lot ticket machines to accept smart cards in addition to coins, or better yet, to accept standard debit and credit cards.

• Recruit merchants to sell smart cards in pre-loaded amounts like $10, $20 and $50.

• Sell them also at the Municipal Center, Brooks Memorial Library, the Senior Center, etc., and install a vending machine in the River Garden or outside the post of-fice. And sell them online.

• Allow paper tickets pur-chased from the parking lot machines to be valid anywhere in town until expiration, so you can take your unused minutes with you and use them in an-other lot or at a parking meter. Publicize this feature on the ticket machines.

• Install a dozen or so free parking meters here and there throughout downtown. These are meters that accept no cash, but have a button that gives you 15 to 30 minutes free (with an enforced limit of one free “punch”).

• Restructure the parking lot fees so the first quarter gets you a double or triple allotment of time. This feature also adds convenience for people run-ning short errands.

• Institute a “first time free” policy on all parking violations issued, so that visitors who get a ticket get their fine waived on their first infraction.

• Expand the value of smart cards by enabling merchants to accept them for small pay-ments — so your smart parking card can also pay for your cof-fee and a bagel, or other small purchases.

• Once instituted, review the policy often and make adjust-ments to maximize customer and merchant benefits, not revenue.

Yes, some of these changes and innovations would cut into revenues. Wider use of smart cards, portability of paper tick-ets until expiration, and free short-term meters would ben-efit customers but reduce the town’s take.

But increasing parking con-venience would draw more people downtown to do busi-ness and would encourage more return visits and better word-of-mouth, so the town benefits with greater revenue from multiple sources in the long run.

Such policies are working for many cities around the coun-try. Brattleboro should fol-low suit and get strategic about parking.

Martin LangeveldVernon

I write this letter in regard to the recent budgets pro-

posed for the Leland & Gray Union High School music department.

This letter comes from a freshman who has recently left the cozy, comfortable world of southern Vermont for the much broader horizon of “the real world” at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in up-state New York.

College is an incredible learning opportunity that needs to be taken advantage of in a world where job opportuni-ties are becoming rapidly more competitive.

I am extremely thankful that I was able to go Leland & Gray, where I was given a wide range of opportunities to explore education in whatever way I wanted.

Like many others, I chose to extend myself through the mu-sic department, a perfect outlet for many of us. It provided us with another type of learning that did not involve textbooks or equations, but expression through and appreciation for music.

Music does not exist within a bubble, as many may think. Understanding music requires a set of skills represents the epitome of interdisciplinary learning.

Music teaches us to focus on more than a single aspect of an issue; a sonata cannot be approached only by think-ing of the rhythm or the notes. Each component must work to come together with equal importance.

We learned to work with other students in a large group and in smaller ensembles. I challenge you to think of a sin-gle profession that does not involve working with others. Music taught us how to work cooperatively far more realis-tically than any group poster project ever could have.

I shudder to think that the incoming freshmen at Leland & Gray will not be able to have the same opportunities that my class had. I would not be where I am today if it had not been for the music department and everyone involved.

I implore those with say to reconsider taking funding from

an incredible program — a pro-gram like no other high school.

The program is intimate, yet it offers an incredibly broad range of learning opportunities: concert and small-group en-sembles, samba band, chorus, a cappella, and all of the work done in collaboration with the theater department.

All have given time and time again to the students and to community.

A scholarship in music is the only thing allowing this 18-year-old to continue her education. So thank you to ev-eryone who helped, especially Matt Martyn, Ron Kelley, Annie Landenberger, and Daniel Timmermans.

To those who have the power to salvage to music pro-gram at Leland & Gray — which once was a huge draw to the school and can be again — I ask you, please, to do all you can. We cannot hope to bring back a strong music program with these proposed cuts.

Amy van LoonNewfane

If you’ve made the drive along Route 5 between

Westminster and Bellows Falls, or walked around downtown Bellows Falls over the past two months, you may recognize the expression “Parents Who Host Lose the Most — Don’t be a Party to Teenage Drinking.”

The campaign, sponsored by the Greater Falls Prevention Coalition, encourages parents to consider the consequences of providing teens with alcohol.

This campaign promotes community awareness around social hosting and the far-reaching implications such ac-tivity can have on both parents and children. Providing al-cohol to minors is illegal and can be detrimental to a child’s development.

The financial and legal risks of hosting an underage party are numerous and severe. If a minor who consumes alcohol at a party breaks the law, the parent may be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. This is the case if there were a fight, property damage, or a sexual assault.

Additionally, if a minor were to cause an accident while driv-ing under the influence, result-ing in serious bodily injury or death, the adult could be im-prisoned for up to five years or fined up to $10,000.

Furthermore, insurance

polices have an exclusion clause that stipulates the in-surer will not protect or defend a homeowner if some-thing were to happen during a gathering where alcohol is provided.

Legal consequences only tell half the story. Allowing some-one under the age of 21 to consume alcohol can disrupt brain development and cause a host of behavioral problems. Research shows that teenage consumption of alcohol can impair memory, learning, de-cision making, and impulse control. Additionally, under-age drinking increases the like-lihood of addiction as an adult. Prevention is the key to de-creasing substance abuse by adults.

As parents, making decisions with our children can be one of the most challenging things we do. On the one hand, it is im-portant to maintain an open, honest relationship with our children so that trust may blos-som. On the other hand is the need to create firm boundaries that support positive, healthy decisions.

A Dear Abby letter pub-lished in October highlights this dilemma. In it, a father identifies the challenge of say-ing no to hosting an underage drinking party while maintain-ing open communication with

his son. The column rightly reaffirms the father’s decision to not host a party and points out the legal and liability con-sequences parents face if some-thing were to happen. While there may be strain on the re-lationship, setting firm bound-aries is necessary to supporting healthy child development.

The Greater Falls Prevention Coalition would like to thank the many busi-nesses, organizations, schools and individuals that helped to promote this campaign.

Chad SimmonsBellows Falls

The writer works as the me-dia and marketing coordinator for the Greater Falls Prevention Coalition, which promotes pre-vention efforts that reduce al-cohol, tobacco, and other drug abuse and supports fun, produc-tive, safe and healthy lifestyles for youth and adults in Windham Northeast. For more informa-tion, go to www.gfpcandtheline.org. The “Parents Who Host Lose the Most” campaign was developed by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Brattleboro needs to get strategic about parking

Graduate urges Leland & Gray to save its music program

Teaming up to prevent underage drinking

Bitter bylaw debate hits raw nerve of civic displeasure

T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 22, 2010 VOICES 7

You can make a difference and alleviate hunger in our communities. The problem is growing so fast that local food shelves can’t keep up without your support. Here’s how you can help the area’s biggest food drive help your neighbors.

• Donatenon-perishablefood and personal care items at drop-offlocationsinstores and businesses near you.

• Donateonlineat ProjectFeedTheThousands.org

• Orsendacheckdirectlyto your local food shelf to buy food at a special bulk discount, making the food go farther.

Let’s not ignore the problem. Let’s be the solution.Your donation helps provide nutritious food for thousands of hungry people at over 25 food shelves and community kitchens throughout southern VT and NH.

Mail your check toProject Feed the Thousands, c/o:

Brattleboro Area Drop In CenterPO Box 175, Brattleboro, VT 05302

Chester–Andover Family CenterPO Box 302, Chester, VT 05143

Deerfield Valley Food PantryPO Box 1743, Wilmington, VT 05363

Hinsdale Welfare Dept.11 Main Street, Hinsdale, NH 03451

Our Place Drop In Center (Bellows Falls)PO Box 852, Bellows Falls, VT 05101

Springfield Family Center365 Summer St., Springfield, VT 05156

Townshend Community Food ShelfPO Box 542,Townshend, VT 05353

Enclosed is my check for $_____________ made out to Project Feed the Thousands.

Name:______________________________

Address: ____________________________

Town: ______________________________

State: _______ Zip:__________________

Or donate online at ProjectFeedTheThousands.org

How can we live with ourselves if our neighbors are living with hunger?

D E b O R A h L E E L U S K I N

n Entergy FROM PAGE 1

bR AT TLEbORO

Selectboard approves new parking pay-and-display machines


BRATTLEBORO—Four of the town’s parking lots will get new pay-and-display machines.

Harris, Harmony, High Grove and Preston lots will each receive a new machine. Three of the ma-chines will accept coins and the town’s parking Smart Cards. The final machine, slated for the Harmony Lot, will also accept dollar bills.

The cost for the units, instal-lation, and enabling use of the Smart Cards totals $47,950.

The town had considered set-ting up the machines to accept credit cards but decided the monthly fee of $45 per machine too prohibitive.

With the addition of a pay-and-display machine, the Harris Lot will revert to its original split of permitted and open parking spaces, said Selectboard Chair Dick DeGray.

Accord ing to DeGray , the Parking Enforcement Department over the summer removed 50 of the 64 meters from the lot to make way for per-mits and posted a “permit park-ing only” sign.

The change and sign confused

drivers, despite the fact 14 me-tered spaces remained.

The cost of the new machines will come from the parking bud-get, said Town Manager Barbara Sondag.

The improvements are con-sidered a capital expenditure and came before the Selectboard at Tuesday’s meeting because it had not been previously approved.

Selectboard member Martha O’Connor said that the board needed to have more “serious discussions” about parking in Brattleboro soon.

In a separate interview Tuesday, DeGray said the board would discuss revising the park-ing ordinance in January.

The board will consider two changes, he said: removing me-ters on Elm Street and requir-ing the Parking Enforcement Department to get Selectboard approval before altering permit-ted and metered spaces.

Revenue generated by park-ing in Brattleboro, both park-ing fees and enforcement, goes toward paying the debt accrued by building the Transportation Center, said DeGray.

MIDDLETOWNEYENEWS.BLOGSPOT.COM

Parking meters removed this summer will be replaced by pay-and-display machines that will accommodate the Smart Cards that can be used in some of the newer town meters like this one.


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STILL STANDING,

NOWTruck accident sparks fire at

Calvary Chapel — and knocks

the building off its foundation

Reversal of fortuneVermont Yankee will be a tough sell, even if Entergy can

find a buyer in the aftermath of the company’s fall from grace

‘Not all jobs are

created equal’Working group rethinks

the region’s economy

Bringing it all homeBUHS students shift focus

to local anti-hunger efforts

Last train to ChesterWith freight trains demanding more track resources,

railroad discontinues scenic rail rides from Bellows Falls

n SEE ENTERGY, pagE 2

n SEE CLEA, pagE 12

n SEE RAILROAD, pagE 3

n SEE RAILROAD, pagE 13

By Allison Teague

The Commons

BRaTTLEBORO—Having

just returned from a trip to Cuba,

three Brattleboro Union High

School seniors found the transi-

tion following a trip to such a dif-

ferent culture noteworthy.

What they brought back to

CLEa’s (Civil Leadership and

Education in action, formerly

the Child Labor Education and

action project) involvement with

project Feed the Thousands is an

awareness that goes beyond the

scope of mere school projects.

For 11 years, a steady group

of 20 to 30 students involved in

CLEa at the high school have

learned about community issues

and problems and have worked

on ways to change or help those

affected by these problems in

their community.

Ka i -Ming pu, S tudent

Council president, arianna

Wolfe and Sam Stevens, both co-

presidents of CLEa, were among

By Allison Teague

The Commons

BELLOWS FaLLS—green

Mountain Railroad will not be

running its green Mountain

Flyer excursions out of Bellows

Fal ls next year, Deborah

Murphy, manager of passen-

ger service for Vermont Rail

Systems, confirmed last week —

a consequence of increasing de-

mand on the company for freight

transportation.The Santa Express trains that

were run between Bellows Falls

and Chester Depot last Saturday

and Sunday were the last sched-

uled passenger runs on the line

for the foreseeable future.

For now, the Depot remains

open for intermodal services re-

lated to greyhound and amtrak,

according to Destination Bellows

Falls (DBF) president gary Fox.

Regular hours for greyhound

ticketing, and the greyhound

embarkation and debarkation

point in Bellows Falls, will con-

tinue, Fox said, and the station

will remain open for the daily

northbound and southbound

stops for amtrak’s Vermonter.

Whether the intermodal ser-

vice center will move its opera-

tions to the Waypoint Center

across the street in the spring re-

mains to be seen, Fox said.

“We are considering propos-

als,” Fox said.There are no plans, for now,

to dismantle the historic depot,

according to Murphy.

“gosh, I certainly hope not,”

By Olga Peters

The Commons

go ahead. Blame

the current credit

crunch for the lack

of jobs paying a

livable wage and

businesses exiting the region.

But economic crunches

are nothing new to Windham

County. In fact, some say that

the area has been in a recession

for the last 20 years.

The Southeastern Vermont

Economic Development Strategy

(SeVEDS), a group consisting of

community and business leaders,

has the recession in its crosshairs.

SeVEDS participants met

Nov. 16 in Bellows Falls for its

second meeting, with its mem-

bers hoping to rehabilitate the

region’s economy by increasing

wages, population and the re-

gional gross domestic product

within five years.Wilmington hosted the inau-

gural meeting in early autumn,

other meetings have been held,

or are planned, in Dover and

Brattleboro.Jeffrey Lewis, executive

director of the Brattleboro

Development Credit Corp.,

and Brattleboro Town Manager

Barbara Sondag estimated 50

people attended the Nov. 16

meeting.Sondag said seven core com-

mittee members worked for three

years before bringing the devel-

opment process to a wider au-

dience of community, industry,

and economic leaders. Fairpoint

Communications is partially sup-

porting the project.

Lewis said the energy and tone

at the Bellows Falls meeting felt

lighter than at the first meeting

and the participants were excited

about the process.

“We lit a fuse in Wilmington

and the explosion happened in

Bellows Falls,” said Lewis.

The state laws that define re-

gional planning commissions

define the Windham Region

as the 23 towns in Windham

County, plus Weston, Searsburg,

Readsboro, and Winhall.

Lewis said that towns can no

longer navigate the economic

prosperity river alone.

W i t h t h e h e l p o f

aLLISON TEagUE/THE COMMONS

The Green Mountain Flyer prepares to pull out of the

Bellows Falls station on an excursion in August. Last

week, the Green Mountain Railroad announced it

would now longer run passenger trains on its Bellows

Falls-Rutland line.

By Roger Witherspoon

Special to The Commons

VERNON—Entergy

Corporation’s low-

key announcement

might well have been

posted on Craigslist:

For Sale: Vermont Yankee

Nuclear Power Plant. Used,

unpredictable radioactive leaks,

occasional fires, poorly run, finan-

cially indebted, locally unpopular,

politically shunned and currently

not working. $180 million — or

best offer.“Selling an old nuclear plant

is like trying to build a new one,”

said economist Mark Cooper of

the University of Vermont Law

School’s Institute for Energy and

the Environment.

“No one in their right mind

would buy it or try to build it to-

day,” Cooper said. “Most of the

projects that have been proposed

in this country have been delayed

or abandoned. The simple fact

is that the economics of nuclear

power today are terrible and the

market for these things is just

not there.“Why Entergy thinks they can

sell it is hard to see. putting it up

for sale is a sign of desperation.

gREENpEaCE USa

Entergy Nuclear has announced its willingness to sell

Vermont Yankee. As it stands now, the substation

cannot get state authorization to operate past 2012

unless the state Senate reconsiders its February vote.

WWW.CaLVaRYCHapELWRV.ORg

The 1817 Calvary Chapel.

THELMa O’BRIEN/THE COMMONS

David LeBlanc, left, and Chris Toles, center, members of the Calvary

Chapel congregation, and Pastor Ron Millette, stand near the cracked stove,

installed 100 years ago in the chapel.

By Thelma O’Brien

The Commons

TOWNSHEND—You

might call the Calvary Chapel

in West Townshend the church

too tough to die.How else would you explain

why the building is still stand-

ing after a runaway moving van

careened down Windham Hill

Road last Monday, flew across

Route 30 and slammed into

the ground between the cha-

pel and the West Townshend

Community post Office and art

gallery building?Ron Millette, the non-

denominational Christian

church’s pastor and also a

logger, called the forces that

rocked the original 193-year-

old structure and all its addi-

tions “shock waves.”

No one was hurt in the Nov.

22 crash, but the impact of the

United Van Lines trailer truck

cracked a 110-year-old wood

stove, in place on the main

floor for about 100 years, and

started a fire beneath the main

floor.The fire was discovered and

extinguished before it caused

extensive damage.

But then church members

discovered that the shock

waves from the crash blew in

a section of the stone apron

beneath the timber structure,

shifting the chapel’s floor joists,

beams and girders and tilting

the building about six inches

westward, once again casting

doubt on the building’s future.

David LeBlanc, who serves

with Millette at the church and

owns a carpet cleaning busi-

ness in Newfane, said the shock

waves “had a cascading effect.

Everything went northwest to-

ward Jamaica.”

Firefighter averts disaster

The moving van, which

was carrying the belongings of

four families, reportedly was

traveling about 45 mph when

its brakes locked on Windham

Hill Road, about a mile before

the stretch of steep road ap-

proaching Route 30.

The vehicle finally came to

a stop after overturning in the

chapel parking lot, closer to the

post office, but only a few feet

shy of the chapel.

Household goods gushed

out on impact, as did about

250 gallons of hazardous die-

sel from the two recently-filled

fuel tanks.Townshend Fire Chief Doug

Winot said he was working

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NewsVERNON

Vermont Yankee gets

new resident

inspectorpage 12

VoicesJOYCE MARCEL

Caretaking,

aging, and

death by a

thousand cutspage 6

The ArtsNEW VPT fILM

Documentary

looks at history

of newspapers

in Vermont page 14

Life and Work

GObbLE, GObbLE

Thanksgiving

in Brattleboropage 9

SportsWINTER IS hERE!

Ski areas get

a jump on

the seasonpage 11

Brattleboro, Vermont

Wednesday, December 1, 2010 • Vol. V, No. 31 • Issue #78

fREE

www.commonsnews.org

W I N D h A M C O U N T Y ’ S A W A R D - W I N N I N G , I N D E P E N D E N T S O U R C E f O R N E W S A N D V I E W S

weeklyvYour membership in

Vermont Independent Media

can make this the

best free newspaper

you’ve ever paid for.

See page 5.

n SEE ChuRCh, pagE 4

N o w h i r i N g

Advertising Sales

Representative

The Commons is growing! We

seek an additional energetic,

organized person to serve

as our ambassador to the

business community by selling

advertising.

Written response only,

please; send letter of interest

and resume to Betsy Jaffe at

[email protected].

The

At Turn iT up and The book cellar

in Brattleboro and on the Web at Amazon and CDBaby.

Sunbathing in Siberia, The War of the Wild Goose, & other songs of peace, love, and global warming

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on

which has tested positive for tri-tium, and continue its testing of Connecticut River fish and plant life for radioactivity.

Entergy spokesman Larry Smith said Entergy could an-swer “yes” to all three requests. “I think we’re in full agreement,” he said.

Smith said extraction would resume by the end of December once pumps have been installed.

He contended Entergy’s de-cision to continue extracting tritiated water from the site was based on information the com-pany recently obtained – not on the letter or the meeting with the future governor. Smith did not elaborate, except to say, “[The meeting] was very good from our perspective.”

On Friday night, Shumlin said the visit was “worthwhile.”

“As governor I have to work with everybody — that’s my job,” Shumlin said.

As president pro tem of the Senate, he led the charge to block the Public Service Board from issuing a Certificate of Public Good for the plant, which is scheduled to be retired in March 2012. Even if the plant receives a renewal of its federal license from the NRC, Vermont Yankee can-not operate in the state without the CPG.

Throughout Shumlin’s cam-paign for governor, he aggres-sively used the Yankee issue against his opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie.

Shumlin said he did not dis-cuss Entergy’s relicensing bid with Vermont Yankee officials on Friday. After the meeting, he struck a more conciliatory tone, saying that he was grateful for the officials’ willingness to meet with him.

“As governor, I want to have as productive a relationship with Entergy, who is the owner of our only nuke plant, as possible,” Shumlin said. “I appreciate their willingness to sit down with me. Obviously, I’ve been one of their lead critics. It would be easy for them to slam the door on me.”

Shumlin said the tritium plume is now close to the former Construction Office Building drinking water well. The soils in this area of the plant compound are compressed, he said, as a result of the fill that was used to construct the facility in the early 1970s. The compacted soil will slow down the extrac-tion, he said.

“Every gallon we pump out now is a gallon we don’t have to deal with later,” Shumlin said. “The most important part of the visit was the conversations about minimizing as much as possible

the damage from the leaks.”Tritium leaks at Vermont

Yankee were first reported last January. A leaking underground pipe and clogged drain sent wa-ter containing radioactive iso-topes, including tritium — the form of radioactive hydrogen that can contaminate water — into the ground around the plant.

According to Smith, the plume of contaminated water has continued to follow the site’s hydrology, west to east, toward the Connecticut River.

Last spring, Vermont Yankee officials identified the source of the leaks, excavated the area around the leaks, began extract-ing tritiated water from the site, and dug monitoring wells on the compound to measure tritium levels. Over the course of the spring and summer, testing re-sults showed declining levels of the radioactive isotope.

The Vermont Department of Health recommended the ex-traction, and Entergy originally agreed to pump 300,000 gallons

of tritiated water from the soil and to re-evaluate whether con-tinued extraction was necessary once the target amount had been removed.

Smith said Entergy removed 309,000 gallons of groundwa-ter. Extraction was halted on Nov. 18. Smith said that in the interim, Entergy had been wait-ing to hear about the site’s hy-drology and to see if “what we’ve been doing was having an effect.”

The amount of tritium found in routine testing in the wells closer to the original leak site is “trending down,” according to Smith. The wells closer to the river, east of the leak site, are showing higher numbers, as expected.

“It’s headed toward the river, and we’ve never denied it,” said Smith. “But we can’t measure tritium above background levels in the river.”

Shumlin said he wanted to keep Vermonters safe and that the end goal of dealing with the contaminated ground water was

to “mitigate all radioisotopes,” such as the Strontium-90 also found in the soil surrounding the leak site.

“The challenge is to mitigate as much as we can,” Shumlin said. “It’s prudent to pump out as much tritium as we can. I’m grateful to Entergy they’ve agreed to continue pumping.”

Additional reporting was pro-vided by Anne Galloway, editor of VTDigger.org.

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Green Mountain National Forest (GMNF) officials recommend that snowmobilers exercise caution when operating on National Forest, and all lands, in Vermont this winter.

Weather permitting, snowmobile use is allowed on designated trails within the Green Mountain National Forest for the next four months through Friday, April 15, 2011.

“Given the significant number of injuries and fatalities that occurred last season, we are con-cerned about user safety. Patrols which are aimed at enforcing rules and regulations, monitoring trail conditions, and providing visitor information will occur throughout the Forest,” said Colleen

Madrid, forest supervisor for the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests.

The GMNF will continue to work closely with state and local law enforcement agencies as well as the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers (VAST) to make sure users of the trail system are respectful, responsible, law abiding, and safe.

The GMNF and VAST cooperate to maintain 472 miles of National Forest system trails that are part of the larger statewide snowmobile network. VAST is one of the only snowmobile associations in the United States that has a cooperative part-nership agreement with the U.S. Forest Service.

“All of these trails allow mixed uses, so people

are snowshoeing, hiking and cross-country ski-ing as well as using snowmobiles. Snowmobilers should travel responsibly and yield to other us-ers,” said Madrid.

The maximum speed on state lands is 35 m.p.h. and Vermont has a tough Snowmobiling While Intoxicated Law that covers alcohol as well as drugs.

The Forest Service is also warning all snow travelers of the dangers in riding, hiking, and skiing on frozen water bodies. Trail users are en-couraged to be mindful of fallen trees and other hazards they may encounter.

Operators must maintain control of their

snowmobiles while riding, keep to the right at all times, and stay on designated trails only. All snowmobiles must be legally registered, have li-ability insurance, and operators must purchase a VAST Trails Maintenance Assessment decal. Helmet use is also required. Officials also en-courage winter trail users to pack a flashlight, cell phone, food, and extra warm clothing in case of an emergency.

For more information, visit www.fs.fed.us/r9/forests/greenmountain/index.htm or www.vtvast.org/VAST.html.

Forest Service urges caution for snowmobile riders

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LIFE & WORK

By Fran Lynggaard HansenThe Commons

BRATTLEBORO—Nancy Systo grew up next door to Tom Smith in Guilford.

Both homes had lots of children. Both Nancy and Tom are graduates of Brattleboro Union High School. Several years later, when Nancy went to college in the Burlington area, she reconnected with Tom, by then an engineer with IBM.

They fell in love and, in 1986, they married. The pair has six children, and they all live on a small farm in Charlotte, where they home-school their kids.

When Mary Ellen Copeland, Tom’s mother, received a call from Nancy about one of her grandsons, she could not pos-sibly have guessed that three of her grandchildren would become seriously ill with a rare hereditary disease, or that four years later, the Smith family would partici-pate in a record-breaking chain of kidney transplants in Texas.

In that first phone call, Copeland recalls, Nancy Smith reported that their son, Samuel, then 13, had been sitting by the wood stove all day with cramps all over his body.

After a trip to the emergency room, the Smiths learned that

their son was in kidney failure. When a kidney is functioning at only 20 percent capacity, the patient often begins dialysis. Samuel started right away.

“We were totally shocked,” Copeland says.

Very soon, the Smith family received more bad news. Sam and two of their other children were diagnosed with the same disease, called Familial Juvenile Nephronophthisis.

Nephronophthisis, which of-ten results in renal failure around the age of 13, is a rare, genetically recessive disease. Both parents must be carriers. This means that the chances of having this disease are about one in 8.3 million.

“Although, in our case, we’ve been told it’s possible that the national statistics might change just because of our family,” says Nancy Smith, with a wry laugh.

“Statistically, any children that Tom and I had would have a 25 percent chance of having the disease. As it turned out, in our family, 50 percent of our chil-dren had it — three children out of six,” Smith says.

“As my husband the engineer commented, ‘We overachieved,’” she adds.

“This is such an unusual dis-ease and a rare gene as well,” Copeland says.

“So few people in the entire

United States have it, and what happens?” she adds. “Two peo-ple who lived next door to each other their entire lives happen to have it, and they happen to get married, and happen to have three children who have it.”

“What are the statistical chances of that happening?” Copeland asks, further pointing out that “neither side of the fam-ily has any evidence that we can find of kidney disease.”

Diary of a diseaseThe story gets more compli-

cated from here, but one thing is clear — during all of what fol-lowed, Smith and her husband never lost their senses of humor.

“I started by filling a note-book full of all the information I could gather on the disease be-cause three of my children have it,” Smith says. “Before I filled that notebook, I began calling it, ‘The Smith Family Kidney Adventure.’ From there, I filled many more notebooks as the years went by. It was just so un-real; we had to have a sense of humor about it.

“We are Christians. We knew that God hadn’t lost control of the universe. He knew what He was doing, and we just had to trust, and walk through it, and see where it led. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t fun, but we’ve all grown, and I think it’s really going to shape who all of my children will

n SEE KIDNEYS, PAGE 10

9

n Kidneys FROM PAGE 1

B R A T T L E B O R O —University of Vermont profes-sor Frank Bryan will discuss the history of ranking presidential “greatness” and consider the Obama presidency in a talk at Brattleboro’s Brooks Memorial Library on Jan. 5.

His talk, “The Impossible Presidency and Obama’s Chance for Greatness,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series and takes place at 7 p.m.

Bryan will point out that though scholars rank several presidents as “great” who served prior to 1952, there is no agree-ment that the United States has had a great president since.

Bryan will examine the tenures of these later presidents and con-sider President Obama’s and his successors’ chances for reversing the trend.

Bryan is the author of Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How it Works and is a professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont.

The Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays series is held on the f irst Wednesday of every month from October through May, featuring speakers of national and regional renown. Talks in Brattleboro are held at Brooks Memorial Library. The program is free,

accessible to people with dis-abilities, and open to the public.

Upcoming Brat t leboro talks include “Beethoven’s Sketchbooks” with pianist Michael Arnowitt on Feb. 2, “The Towering Inferno” with Dante translator Michael Palma on March 2, and “Did Karl Marx Predict the Cuban Revolution?” with Amherst professor Javier Corrales on April 6.

For more information, con-tact Brooks Memorial Library at 802-254-5290 or the Vermont Humanities Council at 802-262-2626, [email protected], or www.vermonthumanities.org.

BELLOWS FALLS—Works on Paper’s gallery at 7 The Square is exhibiting a collec-tion of drawings, Figments of the Imagination, by local artist Gil Perry.

This is the first time his draw-ings have been seen together as a comprehensive body of work. The drawings will be on display through Jan. 21.

Perry’s drawings are incred-ibly detailed imaginations built up by intensely layered marks of graphite and ink on the paper.

“I reach a state of wonder and

discovery when I draw,” he said. “In an unconscious way, I am de-veloping an extraordinary vocab-ulary of design by letting go and giving my imagination voice As the drawing unfolds and my po-etic imagination takes over, there is a great deal of restraint in my conscious mind to not give way to ‘pareidolia’ — or seeing faces in non-face objects, and to grab just any image that first emerges.

“In this way, I descend into deeper strata of the unconscious to a more mythic realm. Leaving the mechanisms of the conscious

mind behind, there is a sense of leaving the world of time and en-tering the realm of the Eternal. It is this threshold that I call the Whispering Gallery. When the ego becomes transparent and the center of the self dissolves into an emptiness, or cloud of unknowing, this absence is ac-tually a presence where the di-vine dwells.”

Works on Paper is an art con-servation studio specializing in prints, drawings, watercolors, maps, documents, and other artistic and historic works on paper. The front of the studio was recently converted to gal-lery space to feature the work of local artists who also work on paper. The studio and gal-lery are open Monday-Friday from 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and by appointment. Contact them at 802-460-1149 or [email protected].

Perry’s ‘Figments of the Imagination’ on display at Works on Paper

UVM professor to discuss presidential greatness

10 LIFE & WORK T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 22, 2010

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become. Our daughter Grace is currently in college studying nursing.”

Although Familial Juvenile Nephronophthisis is a pediatric kidney disease, the Smiths’ old-est daughter, Katie, made it all the way to 20 before she got sick. Their other daughter, Esther, was in need of a kidney by 2009, when she was 13.

Tom, Samuel’s father, do-nated one of his kidneys in October 2007, but there were complications. Samuel had to go back to dialysis right away.

“It is very hard to do dialysis,” says Copeland. “It is five hours a day, three days a week. Samuel would get severe migraines; his blood pressure would get very high. He would barely recover during the three days’ break, and then he would go back for an-other session of dialysis. We saw him often, but he was too sick to even be himself. He barely ate, and he became horribly thin.”

Copeland remembers the difficulty of scheduling the treatments.

“Every morning at 7 a.m., Samuel had to be at the hospital on dialysis days. He also spent quite a bit of time as an inpa-tient in the hospital, one time for over 2½ months. Almost half that time, he was in the Intensive Care Unit.

“Hannah, who was 17 at the time, did a lot of mothering, because her parents had their hands full. My son’s family is really close. They always home-schooled, and that turned out to be a good idea, because I don’t think they could have done all this otherwise.”

Meanwhile, Samuel’s sisters were also becoming ill.

Katie received a donated kid-ney from a woman she didn’t even know. Brattleboro resi-dent Kelly Sweeney decided to give her kidney when she heard Katie’s story from Copeland.

Esther received her new kid-ney from her grandmother’s niece (her first cousin, once re-moved), Katherine Copeland-Blume, who f lew in from

California. Both became healthy and continued to recover from their illnesses.

Samuel did not. A new kidney could not be found.

The reasons for that had to do with Samuel’s antibodies. He had become what is referred to as “highly sensitized.” When a patient has blood transfusions, he or she receives other people’s proteins. When an immune sys-tem comes in contact with these foreign proteins, it develops an-tibodies to them, since the body views them as invaders.

“Samuel had a lot of transfu-sions,” Smith says. “He’s young, and so his body had created plenty of antibodies, but mostly because he’d already received a kidney, he was highly sensitized. This combination made finding a compatible kidney that much more difficult.”

a second chanceWhile Samuel was waiting

for a second transplant kidney, much was evolving in the field of kidney donation.

“The new thing that is hap-pening in the kidney world is called ‘paired exchange,’” Smith says. “Kidneys are one of the few organ donations you can give while you are still living. Most people are born with two kid-neys, and if you have no other health issues, you can live a per-fectly healthy, happy life without two kidneys.”

Under ordinary circum-stances, if a kidney recipient finds a willing donor with a in-compatible blood type, the re-cipient must undergo treatment before receiving the kidney. However, in a paired exchange, two recipient-donor pairs “swap” kidneys. That is, when the do-nor in each pair is a compatible match for each recipient in the other pair, each donor’s kidney goes to the compatible recipient.

The Vermont Legislature will be designing legislation during its upcoming session to create a living donor registry, one of a very few so far in the nation. The Vermont Kidney Foundation is

making that proposal.“It’s in its infant stages, but

it’s really exciting that our state will be one of the first to achieve a living donor registry,” says Mike Scollins, the coordinator of that effort.

This is an important break-through for people who need transplants.

“More and more transplant centers are doing these paired exchanges,” says Smith. “All across America, the National Kidney Registry works on finding matches for people who have in-compatible donors. Most people can find someone in their circle of friends [and] family, or loved ones, can find a donor, but the chances of that one person being a match or being compatible with them doesn’t always happen.

“It used to be that was the end of the story,” Smith continues. “You’d then have to wait until your name went to the top of the list for an organ donor to die and hope that the next available kid-ney was a match for you.”

That wait might take three to five years or more. Many peo-ple die every day waiting for the right kidney, and Samuel had become incompatible with 99.9 percent of the population of kid-ney donors.

“I think of it this way,” says Smith. “I was told by a surgeon in Texas that the world of kid-ney donation is like waiting for a train. If you miss the first train, there is always another train coming. If you miss the kidney because it isn’t a match, for most people, there will always be an-other train.

“For Samuel, it was more like a comet,” Smith says. “If he didn’t get this one, he might not see another one in his lifetime.”

hil reaches outAt this point in the story, the

first of several miracles takes place.

A man that the Smith family had never met, Garet Hil, had a daughter with the disease. He is the founder and director of the National Kidney Registry.

“The kidney world is pretty small,” Smith says with a laugh, “but I’m so grateful he took an interest in us.”

The Texas Transp lant Institute in San Antonio pro-vides the largest and most expe-rienced living donor program in the country.

“It isn’t a large hospital,” says Smith, “but they have a great team, and they are wonder-ful at what they do. They were setting up this chain of kidney paired donations, and wanted to make the record books as a way to raise awareness about paired exchanges, and to share

information about the program. Because they are in this business, and because they know what it means to be as highly sensitized as Samuel is, we knew this was going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“Lo and behold,” says Smith, her voice now cracking with emotion, “there was a match for Samuel.”

In order to participate in the program, the Smith family had to now find a person willing to donate a kidney so that Samuel arrived at the program with a donor for the pool of patients and donors.

As it turned out, Samuel’s sis-ter Hannah had been ready to donate for some time. She was simply waiting for a match to be found for her brother. When it was first recognized that Samuel would need a donor, Nancy wanted to donate hers, but it turned out that their daughter was a better candidate.

“This all happened very quickly, and the surgeries had been all set and complete to go,” says Smith. “They shuf-fled things around in order to fit Samuel and Hannah into the chain of paired donations.”

On very short notice, four members of the Smith family flew to Texas. Samuel was the only kidney recipient who wasn’t already a patient and was in-vited into the chain. He was the youngest at age 17, and he was the patient who was the farthest from the hospital.

The historic surgeries, covered by all the major news organiza-tions, took place from Nov. 11 through Nov. 13. “It took place over three days with five sur-geons, 32 surgeries, 16 people donating, and 16 people receiv-ing kidneys,” Smith says.

“Samuel gave an interview to CBS News,” Copeland notes.

The chain was started by one woman who decided she wanted to donate one of her kidneys. This type of donor is called a “non-directed altruistic donor,” meaning that she didn’t have a loved one for whom she wanted to donate, but instead simply

decided on her own to give a kid-ney to a person who needed one.

Because this chain was started by an altruistic donor, the cycle of donation from this original donor continues to this day. Because each person participat-ing in a paired exchange has to provide both a donor and a pa-tient, the circle comes up with one additional kidney to start the next cycle. The donor is called a “bridge donor.”

The chain that Samuel Smith participated in stopped at 32 surgeries.

The second round of dona-tions from the original chain be-gan again last week with seven more people receiving kidneys with seven more donors, for a total of 14 surgeries. Once again, there was one kidney left at the end of the cycle, whose donor is now the bridge donor to begin the third set of surgeries that be-gin in January. This round may involve as many as 10 more pairs.

“Talk about a gift that keeps on giving!” says Smith.

“This feels like such a big mir-acle,” she says. “Samuel could have waited a very long time with difficult consequences. It was mind boggling to think about the probability of his getting a kidney, and he was so very sick when the news came. When they discovered there was a match for him in Texas, the profes-sionals all recognized this was his chance.

“He was so very fortunate,” Smith notes. “We all recog-nized that he simply couldn’t have gone on much longer. He wasn’t able to eat in between his dialysis. He was slowly starving to death.”

Since the surgery, both Samuel, who received a kidney, and Hannah, who gave a kidney, are recovering nicely.

Nothing is known about the donor from whom Samuel’s kidney came or the recipient to whom Hannah’s kidney was donated.

“The hospital is very careful about maintaining confiden-tiality for all concerned,” says Smith, “but we are hoping to be

able to meet Samuel’s donor one day so that we could thank them in person.

“Two more people are alive in the world today — Samuel, be-cause he received a kidney, and another person because his sis-ter donated one. And, of course, all told, 16 people have a chance because of this circle.”

The screening process for a kidney donation is stringent. Only 25 percent of those who would like to donate are able to make it through the screening process and go on to donate. Hospitals are clear that they don’t want to put the patient or the donor at risk.

“This is an amazing story about amazing parents,” says Copeland. “I know that it is im-portant to all of us to get the word out about live kidney do-nation. Think how many more people won’t have to die of kidney disease because of this breakthrough.”

“This is how kidney disease affected us,” says Smith. “In our immediate family, there are eight members. Two members became donors, three were re-cipients, two were rejected as donors, and one was too young to donate. I can’t possibly count the number of surgeries we’ve all had,” said Smith.

“To celebrate Christmas this year, where no one is in the hos-pital and no one is on dialysis, is amazing,” says Smith. “We are no longer chained to the hospital. We are so very grateful.”

People who would like to consider donating a kidney may contact Fletcher Allen Medical Center in Burlington at www.fletcherallen.org or call 877-467-5102 for more in-formation. Libby James, a neigh-bor of the Smith family, has set up an account for donations to help the family defray the expenses of four years of illness. Donations should be mailed to Merchants Bank, in care of bank manager Christine Collette, 25 Monkton Rd., Vergennes, VT 05491. Be sure to write “Smith Family Kidney Fund” on the memo line.

R A N D O L P h T . h O L h U T

Sports Roundup

Colonel girls enjoy first win over Raiders in five years

RANDOLPH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS

Brattleboro’s Travis Elliott-Knaggs, right, leaps past Essex guard Ben Ferris during the first half of their game Saturday at the BUHS gym. Ferris scored 32 points and Elliott-Knaggs had 17 as Essex beat Brattleboro, 62-50.

T h E C O M M O N S • Wednesday, December 22, 2010 11

SPORTS & RECREATION

HAPPY HOLIDAYSTHANK YOU !

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NO foil paper, ribbons, bows,styrofoam, plastic packaging, bubble wrap, etc.

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HAPPY HOLIDAYSTHANK YOU !Brattleboro Recycling Coordinators

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The Rutland Raiders have had the Brattleboro Colonels’ number in girls

hockey for the past five years, most recently when Rutland knocked them out of the play-offs last season.

That made last Wednesday’s 1-0 win over the Raiders at Nelson Withington Rink that much sweeter for the Colonels.

Brattleboro — which lost its opening game to Northfield, 2-0, on Dec. 11 — came out against the Raiders playing what Colonels coach Linda Burke called “smart, disci-plined hockey.”

Great defense and goaltend-ing marked this game. Colonels goalie Brianna Snow made 12 saves, and defenders Jesse Woodcock, Rebecca Potter and Madison Doucette were outstanding in disrupting the Rutland offense.

The great effort on de-fense was needed to help the Colonels’ lone goal stand up. Emily Wilson scored with 7:37 left in the first period off a pass from Logan Robinson, and while the Colonels had other chances, Rutland goalie Brittany Pelkey kept the Raiders in the game with a

stellar effort between the pipes.The Colonels built on their

success against Rutland with a 9-0 rout of Woodstock on Saturday. Miranda Moseley scored four goals, Wilson scored twice, and Robinson, Maddie Rollins, and Tylynn Isaacson each added a goal. Rollins and Jen Hutton also tallied two assists each as the Colonels outshot the Wasps, 36-6.

boys’ hockey • The Brattleboro Colonels’

woes on offense continued on Saturday in a 4-1 home loss against the Burr & Burton Bulldogs. Again, Brattleboro’s lone goal didn’t come until the third period, when Andy Harris scored with 5:28 left to spoil the Bulldogs’ shutout bid. Now 0-2, the Colonels are off until Dec. 27 and 28, when they play in the Middlebury Tournament.

girls’ basketball • The Brattleboro Colonels

have plenty of speed this sea-son, but what they don’t have is height. Unfortunately for the Colonels, Spaulding has plenty of height and the Crimson Tide exploited that advantage to a 48-44 win at the BUHS gym last Thursday.

Spaulding center Aliza Benoit scored 17 points and pretty much had her way against smaller defend-ers Lindsay Johnson, Kelsey Patterson, and Erin LeBlanc. Even though she fouled out midway through the fourth quarter, Benoit did her job.

LeBlanc led the Colonels with 13 points and 11 re-bounds. Ariel Kane added 12 points. The Colonels led 24-21 at the half, but Spaulding went on a 14-4 run in the third quarter to put the game out of reach, despite a late flurry by the Colonels.

Brattleboro lost its road opener at St. Johnsbury last Tuesday as the Hilltoppers used great defense to earn a 42-32 win. Brattleboro led 30-29 going into the final quarter, but the defending state champion Hilltoppers held the Colonels to just two points the rest of the way. Taylor Kerylow had nine points, four assists, and three steals to lead the Colonels. Mary Richardson added seven points and LeBlanc had six points, seven rebounds, and three steals.

• Leland & Gray got by Twin Valley, 28-23, in the sea-son opener for both teams last Monday in Wilmington. Bethany Robinson was the Rebels’ top scorer with 10 points, while Sam Bernard led the Wildcats with nine points and 11 rebounds. It was Leland & Gray’s first win over Twin Valley since 2006.

• Twin Valley stayed on the skids with a 42-19 loss at Poultney last Thursday. The Wildcats were held to just one point is the first half. Bernard led Twin Valley with six points and 11 rebounds.

• Bellows Falls lost its home opener to Burr & Burton, 46-13, last Monday. Sara Dumont scored six points for the Terriers.

boys’ basketball • The Brattleboro Colonels

played host to the North-South Classic at the BUHS gym over the weekend, with mixed results.

On Friday, the Colonels got past Burlington, 65-61.

Brattleboro had great scor-ing balance as four different players scored in double fig-ures for Brattleboro — Tommy Heydinger (13 points), Soren Pelz-Walsh (12 points), and Travis Elliott-Knaggs and Travis Beeman-Nesbitt (10 points each). A 14-1 surge to start the fourth quarter helped put the game away for the Colonels.

On Saturday, Brattleboro got beaten by Essex, 62-50. Brattleboro led 26-25 at the half, but good defensive pres-sure by Essex and three three-pointers by Ben Ferris put the game out of reach in the third quarter. Ferris led all scorers with 29 points. Elliott-Knaggs was the Colonels’ top scorer with 17 points, including a trio of three-pointers. Pelz-Walsh and Heydinger chipped in 10 and 9 points, respectively.

The Colonels opened their season last Tuesday with a 64-49 home win over Hoosac Valley. Elliott-Knaggs (16

points), Beeman-Nesbitt (15 points), and Heydinger (14 points) led the scorers.

• Bellows Falls opened its season in the Springfield Tournament. After losing 43-40 to Lyndon on Dec. 11, the Terriers got clobbered by Hartford, 85-26, last Tuesday.

• Twin Valley opened its sea-son in the Mount St. Joseph Tournament in Rutland. The Wildcats lost the first game to Otter Valley, 41-24, as Troy Birch had 11 points and 12 rebounds.

• Leland & Gray appeared in the Arlington Tip-Off Tournament last Wednesday, where they stomped the host team, 68-16. The Rebels sped out to a 22-2 lead over Arlington after one quarter. By the half, it was 44-9. Matt Bizon led the Rebels with 21 points, while Colin Nystrom added 14. As a team, the Rebels had 25 steals for the game.

Learn to ski for free

If you are an aspiring skier or snowboarder, and want to help turn on a friend or family member to the sport, January is the month to do it.

Stratton and Mount Snow are both offering a “Share the Love of Winter” promotion. Two people aged 13 and up can share their first day on the slopes learning to alpine ski or snowboard together for the price of one beginner pack-age. This offer includes a be-ginner lift ticket, group lesson and rental equipment for the full day.

This is a month-long pro-motion, excluding the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend blackout dates of Jan. 15-17.

Reservations are recom-mended. Call Mount Snow at 800-889-4411, or Stratton at 800-STRATTON, and tell them you are interested in Ski Vermont’s two-for-one learn to ski and ride package.

RANDOLPH T. HOLHUT/THE COMMONS

Brattleboro’s Emily Wilson, center, prepares to take a face off during the Colonels’ Dec. 15 game against Rutland. Wilson scored the game’s only goal as Brattleboro beat Rutland, 1-0.


M I L E S T O N E SBirths, deaths, and news of people

from Windham County

Brown & Roberts Hardware182 Main St., Brattleboro, Vt.Mon. - Thurs. 7:30 - 5:30; Fri. 7:30 - 7; 7:40 - 5:30; Sun. 10-2

Happy Holidays from tHe Brown & roBerts family!Happy Holidays from tHe Brown & roBerts family!

Bernard Putnam

Jack Van

Anothony Oliva

Paul Putnam

Mike Szostak

Ron Macie

Amos Putnam

Kurt Jillson

Ivan Hennessy

Pat Putnam

Katie Stockwell

Helen Sontag

Robert Putnam

Ed Morse

Brian Baker

Michael Putnam

Kathly LeBlanc

Paul Taylor

Steven Putnam

Rosaly Enos

Leslie Muessig

Rob Putnam

Chris Dandrea

802-257-4566

205 Main StreetBrattleboro, VT 05301Phone. 802.275.4732

Fax. 802.275.4738info@biologichealthcare.comwww.biologichealthcare.com

Acupuncture

Chiropractic

General Family Medicine

Lifestyle medicine

Massage Therapy

Naturopathic Medicine

Nutritional Assessment/Individualized Programs

Physical Therapy

Psychotherapy

Obituaries

Editor’s note: The Commons will publish brief biographical in-formation for citizens of Windham County and others, on request, as community news, free of charge.

• Marjorie “GG” Raymond estey, 78, of Springfield. Died Nov. 30 at her home. Wife of the late Russell W. Estey. Mother of Karen Peck, Ellen Graham, Raymond Estey ( Joanna) , and Alison Lillie (Arnold) of Springfield; and Lynette Potter (Mike) of Greenfield, N.H. Predeceased by siblings Clayton (Tracky), Robert, Beverly, and Maxine. Born in Bellows Falls and graduated from Bellows Falls High School in 1951. MEMORIAL

INFORMATION: No services are planned.

• C h a r l e s P. “ D a m i e n ” evans, 64, of B r a t t l e b o r o . Died Dec. 14 at Brattleboro M e m o r i a l Hospital. Former

husband of Alison Doe. Brother of Michael Evans of California. Predeceased by his parents and his sister, Sharon Doyle. From 1969 to 1974, he was a Brother in tem-porary vows with the Society of St. Edmund. As a Brother, he worked in the printing shop at Enders Island and he taught CCD at St. Patrick’s Church in Mystic, Conn. He had also been employed as a child care worker at St. Joseph’s Child Care Center in Burlington and as cafeteria manager in the North Campus at St. Michael’s College in Winooski. Most re-cently, he was a cook and director of youth ministry at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Brattleboro, and a Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus, Leo Council #917. MEMORIAL IN-

FORMATION: A funeral Mass was held Dec. 18 at St. Michael’s Catholic Church with burial in St. Michael’s Cemetery. Donations to St. Michael’s Catholic Church, 47 Walnut St., Brattleboro, VT 05301. Condolences may be sent to Atamaniuk Funeral Home at www.atamaniuk.com.

• Kenneth Elmer “Ken” Fisher, 75, of West Brattleboro. Died Dec. 15 at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. Father of Brian Fisher of Brattleboro; Mark Fisher of Limestone, Maine; and Isaac Allen of Boulder, Colo. Brother of Gordon Fisher of West Brattleboro; Dorothy Jones of Dummerston; Marjorie Ryan of West Brattleboro; and Yvonne Bernier of Brattleboro. Predeceased by a sister, Evelyn Sirois. Graduate of Brattleboro Union High School, Class of 1954. Served in the Army dur-ing the Korean Conflict, and was stationed in Germany. Had been employed at Cersosimo Lumber for 19 years. Previously worked at American Optical in Brattleboro. Loved the outdoors and enjoyed hunting, fishing, sugaring, berry picking, and time shared with his family. MEMORIAL INFORMA-

TION: There will be no formal funeral services. Burial will be in West Brattleboro Cemetery. Donations to the Windham County Humane Society, P.O. Box 397, Brattleboro, VT 05302. Condolences may be sent to Atamaniuk Funeral Home at www.atamaniuk.com.

• I l e n e A . ( E a r l e ) Laurendeau, 59, of Bellows Falls. Died Dec. 20 at home. Mother of Lloyd Laurendeau of Rockingham; Dawn Laurendeau of Bellows Falls; Donald Laurendeau and wife, Michelle, of Bellows Falls; Eric Laurendeau of Bellows Falls; and daughter Sara Lique and husband, Gary, of Grafton. Predeceased by her parents, Linton & Mavis (Marckres) Earle, and her brother, Loren Earle. Enjoyed her flowers, knitting, scrapbooking, baking, and most of all, spending time with the loves of her life, her grandchildren, who she adored. MEMORIAL INFOR-

MATION: A service will be held on Dec. 27 at Fenton & Hennessey Funeral Home in Bellows Falls. Donations to the Alzheimer’s Association, 172 North Main St., Barre, VT 05641-4124 or to the American Breast Cancer Association, 113 Redbud Lane, Martinez, GA 30907.

• Daniel Frank Long Sr., 67, of Athens. Died Dec. 10 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. Son of the late Carl and Gladys (Delano) Long. Husband of the late Darlene Brown Long. Former husband of Shirley Long. Father of Daniel Jr. of Rockingham; Carl Long of Claremont, N.H.; Shelia Neathawk of East Dummerston; and Crystal Long of Bellows Falls. Stepfather of Dwight Tester of Kentucky. Brother of Robert of Rockingham; Ethel Lockerby of Athens; Alice Benware of Putney; and Nancy Gonzels of Missouri.

Predeceased by a son, Frank Long, and a sister, June Walityniski. Born in Alstead, N.H., and at-tended schools there. Worked at Robertson Paper, Unified Data, and was self-employed in carpen-try and roofing. Was a member of the Loyal Order of the Moose, the American Legion, and the Polish American Club. Enjoyed hunting, fishing and boating, and spending time with his family. MEMORIAL

INFORMATION: A graveside ser-vice took place Dec. 20 in the Cambridgeport Cemetery.

• E d i t h marion morse, 9 1 , f o r m e r l y of Brattleboro. Died Dec. 15 at Vernon Green Nursing Home. Wife of Harry

A. Morse for 68 years. Mother of Nancy Brosz of McKinney, Texas; and Howard C. Morse of Snohomish, Wash. Predeceased b y s i b l i n g s M a r y W h i t e , Ruth Woffenden, and Henry Taylor. Raised and educated in Wilmington, graduating from Wilmington High School, where she served as captain of the girls’ basketball team and played field hockey as well. She later attended the Thompson School for Practical Nursing in Brattleboro, where she received her L.P.N. degree. She worked as a bookkeeper for her husband’s business, Harry’s Auto Body in Brattleboro. Was a member of the former Brattleboro Women’s Club and a member at Trinity Lutheran Church, helping in all aspects of church life. Served as a 4-H leader, started the Spruce Street Stitchers, and led this club for seven years. MEMORIAL IN-

FORMATION: A private funeral service was held. Burial will be in the spring in Morningside Cemetery. Condolences may be sent to Atamaniuk Funeral Home at www.atamaniuk.com.

• Rose Mary Royce, 85, of Enterprise, Kan. Died Nov. 15 in Enterprise. Husband of the late Charles Marshall Royce for 52 years. Mother of Charles Royce of La Habra Heights, Calif.; John Royce of Seattle; and Rose Aguirre of Chapman, Kan. Sister of Frank Waryas of Coeur de Alene, Idaho; and Stanley Waryas, Richmond, Va. Predeceased by a brother, Clarence Waryas. Born in Rockingham, Vt., and spent most of her life in North Walpole, N.H., before retiring in 1987 and moving to Enterprise. She was a devoted and loving wife, mother, sister, grandmother, and great-grandmother. MEMORIAL IN-

FORMATION: A funeral Mass was held on Dec. 4 at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Abeline, Kan. Donations to the American Cancer Society.

• Betty Lou Andersen Scott, 44, of Wilmington. Died Dec. 11 after a long battle with lymphoma. Daughter of Andrew and Nancy Andersen of West Dover. Wife of Claye Scott of Wilmington. Stepmother of Tyler, Brandon, and Lyndsey Scott. Sister of Andrew Andersen of Wardsboro; Nancy Houghton of Guilford; Ruth O’Hearn of Readsboro; Dreama Rozanski of Wardsboro; and Steven Andersen of Georgetown, Ky. Predeceased by her brother, William. MEMORIAL INFORMA-

TION: A funeral Mass was held on Dec. 17 at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church in Wilmington. Donations to the Wings Program, 22 Gates Pond Rd., Whitingham, VT 05361.

births

• In Boston (Massachusetts General Hosptial), Dec. 20, 2010, a daughter, Willa seares schachter , and a son, Leo seares schachter, to Carrie Seares and David Block-Schachter of Cambridge, Mass.; grandchil-dren of Peter Seares and Emily Bernheim of Brattleboro.

• In Keene, N.H., (Cheshire Medical Center), Dec. 5, 2010, a son, Cullen Michael Nichols, to Megan Marynok and Joshua Nichols of Hinsdale, N.H.

• In Keene, N.H., (Cheshire Medical Center), Dec. 1, 2010, a son, gavin Lucas hoard, to Ashley (Wright) and Kyle Hoard of Brattleboro.

• In Brattleboro (Memorial Hospital), Nov. 30, 2010, a son, Calvin Michael Sargent, to Liza (Hearne) and Scott Sargent of Chester; grandson to Nancy Sargent and the late Peter Sargent, and Helen and Steven Hearne.

College news

• Kayden Manning, a sopho-more from Vernon, was named to the Dean’s High Honors List for the fall 2010 semester at Marietta (Ohio) College. Manning, a grad-uate of Brattleboro Union High School, is majoring in International Leadership Studies at Marietta.

A R O U N D T h E T O W N S

CelebrateVT, the offi-cial inaugural committee for Governor-elect Peter Shumlin, has announced the details for the events surrounding the inauguration.

According to Mary Powell, the inaugural chairwoman and President/Chief Executive Officer of Green Mountain Power, the Vermont National Guard Charitable Foundation will benefit from all proceeds from inaugural events.

In 2009, Shumlin helped lead an effort to raise more $200,000 to bring deployed National Guard members back to Vermont to celebrate the holidays.

“The governor-elect wants this inauguration to celebrate our state and the great poten-tial we have at the dawning of a new decade,” said Powell. “Vermonters are facing the toughest economy in decades and this event will contribute to our economy by focusing on local products, artists and venues. At the same time, the generosity of Vermonters and our businesses will help support our National Guard members and their families.”

The official inauguration ceremony will take place Thursday, Jan. 6, in the State House at 1:30 p.m. Vermonters are invited to visit the Winter Village on the State House lawn to enjoy Vermont products and musical acts, as well as a “bunny slope” for the kids (weather permit-ting). Gov. Shumlin will visit the village directly after he is

sworn in.On the eve of the in-

augurat ion — Jan. 5 — Vermonters are invited to a “Homecoming” reception in Brattleboro with the gov-ernor-elect. Shumlin will be the first governor from south-ern Vermont in more than 30 years. Vermonters are asked to RSVP for the event on the inaugural website www.cel-ebratevt.com.

Finally, the Inaugural Ball will be unique: The ball will take place at a ski resort for the first time in the history of Vermont. On Friday, Jan. 7, Sugarbush will host the governor for a night of local food and local music. Tickets are available for purchase for $50 and are limited to the first 1,100 people. Tickets can be purchased through the Flynn Box Office ticketing system.

All the information and updates for the inaugural ac-tivities are available at www.celebratevt.com. Also avail-able on the website are the full disclosures for any donor contributing to the inaugural committee. No taxpayer dol-lars will be used to fund the activities and the committee is dedicated to transparency on all sources of donations above $100.

More announcements on musical guests, Winter Village sponsors and other updates can be found on CelebrateVT’s inaugural Twitter feed and Facebook page.

“The first series of business-oriented workshops proved very worthwhile to those artists at-tending. Since this pair of work-shops is nearby, we thought it would be a good investment in Windham County artists to help with their tuition,” said Greg Worden, president of the ACWC. “Scholarship winners will be expected to share infor-mation about their experience.”

For more information, visit www.acwc.us.

Winter Carnival preparations begin

BRATTLEBORO — The annual Brattleboro Winter Carnival, Vermont’s longest running winter festival, will be held on Feb. 18-28.

Auditions for the annual Variety Show will be held on Sunday, Jan. 9, from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., and Sunday, Jan. 16, from 2-4 p.m. at Kelly’s Dance Academy on Putney Road. Skits, singers, bands, dancers, comedi-ans, baton twirlers, or anything else you can think of, are all fair game for this event. Contact Belinda at [email protected] for more information.

Entries are also being sought for the Queens Pageant (for young ladies ages 17-21) and the Princess Pageant (ages 7-9). Contact Sarah Desrosier at 802-579-6415 for the Queens Pageant. For the Princess Pageant, contact Debbie Partrick at 802-254-9561 or [email protected].

The winner of the Winter Carnival’s raffle for a new Subaru Forester or a cash prize was won by Jane Lord Deubler. She was presented with a cash prize of $15,000 at Brattleboro Subaru on Dec. 11. The carnival committee thanks Ralph Ellis of The Shoe Tree, Greg Worden of Vermont Artisan Designs and John Sciacca of Brattleboro Subaru for their support of this successful fundraiser.

For more information about the Winter Carnival, find them on Facebook or www.brattle-borowintercarnival.org, or contact Rosemary Harris at [email protected] or 802-257-0305.

Scholarship funds available for county artists

BRATTLEBORO — The Arts Council of Windham County (ACWC) is providing $150 in scholarship funds to be divided among Windham County artists accepted into a two-day work-shop focusing on professional development for artists.

The Vermont Arts Council is once again sponsoring a two-day workshop on business and marketing planning specifically tailored to the needs of art-ists. The program is open to Vermont artists of all disciplines (visual, performing, media, liter-ary, crafts and traditional) and is facilitated by Maren Brown and Dee Boyle Clapp from the Arts Extension Service at the University of Massachusetts at

Amherst. These “Breaking into Business Workshops” will be held at the Windsor Welcome Center, 3 Railroad Ave.

“Business Planning for Artists” will be offered on Feb. 12, and “Marketing For Artists” will be offered on Feb. 13. Applications must be made to the Vermont Arts Council by Jan. 12.

Attendance is limited to 25 participants. Artists may ap-ply to attend one or both days. Applications will be reviewed on a competitive basis. Preference will be given to artists that apply to attend both workshops. Upon completion of the program, art-ists will be eligible to apply for special Arts Council funding of up to $500 to implement some aspect of their business plan. The cost is $75 for the two-day program; $50 to attend a single workshop.

BMH offers free tobacco cessation class

B R A T T L E B O R O — Brattleboro Memorial Hospital is offering another multi-session tobacco cessation program.

This six-week class of the Vermont Quit Network starts on Tuesday, Jan. 4 and goes to Feb. 8. It will be held in the Tyler Conference Room on the first floor of the main hospital. Class times are 5:15 to 6:30 p.m.

The weekly program offers group support as well as indi-vidualized strategies to help par-ticipants quit smoking for good. The tobacco cessation program provides a logical progression to quit smoking, including aware-ness of the smoking habit, ad-diction problems, and actual behavior change.

Participants will experience a step-by-step process to quit smoking. Weight control, stress management, and social interac-tions will be covered during the program. Free nicotine replace-ment therapies such as the patch, gum, and/or lozenges will be available for Vermont residents.

Placing emphasis on long-term maintenance, these classes and the group coaching pro-grams are designed to help in-dividuals gain control of their own life and to help them stay off tobacco.

There is no cost for these programs. Help is available at the Vermont Quit Network, 800-QUITNOW. For more in-formation about the BMH class, or to register, call 802-251-8456.

Plans announced for Shumlin inauguration

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www.BrattleboroChamber.org

The Commons/Issue of Dec. 22, 2010

Documents

Transcript of The Commons/Issue of Dec. 22, 2010