The town and village of Johnson on Tuesday announced they were entering into a partnership with Vermont State University to relocate town services onto the school’s campus in Johnson.

Essential town services like Johnson’s municipal offices, post office, and the town’s health center could move onto the university’s campus — which sits on higher ground, out of reach from the Lamoille and Gihon rivers’ floodplain, according to a joint announcement from officials with the town, village and university.

Johnson was hard hit by the July 2023 floods. The town offices, health center, post office and grocery store were all displaced, along with many homes and businesses in the area. The town in April this year moved its public library a half-mile through town and across the river — not far from the university’s Johnson campus.

The parties plan to apply for funding from a federal community development block grant for disaster recovery in response to the July 2023 floods, according to the announcement, which was posted on social media.

The project, if borne out, would transform the university’s Martinetti Hall into a Community Services and Resilience Center. While final details will still need to be worked out, officials said the arrangement could blend the roles of the university and the town in new ways.

“We have the opportunity to create something here that’s a new model for how college campuses or other facilities in their communities can more purposefully work together,” said David Bergh, the president of Vermont State University.

Tom Galinat, the town administrator for Johnson, said they were “facilitating, hopefully, a new arrangement that allows both of us to prosper and to grow into a more resilient community.”

“There’s this wonderful symbiosis where the needs are crossing at the same time,” he said. “It’s really exciting.”

Vermont State University is in its third year of an integrated statewide university system. The Vermont State Colleges System in 2021 merged Castleton University, Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College into a single institution.

Much of the institution’s building stock is not being used to its current and anticipated needs, Bergh said. Meanwhile, the university, like many small colleges and universities, has seen declining enrollment.

“Across the country, you have college campuses closing, merging, being shuttered,” Bergh said. “Our intent is to keep these campuses vibrant, but to find a way to do so where we’re reducing our operational footprint and expense, and to do so really thoughtfully, and to do so in ways with partners that connect to our mission.”

The parties in their announcement said the “flood-resilient and energy-efficient hub” could “strengthen the campus-community connection, a long-held community goal.”

The futures of the campus and the community are “inextricably intertwined,” Bergh said, and he envisioned the partnership would bring services to campus that could connect to academic programs. A health clinic, for example, could tie in with the university’s nursing program on campus, he said.

“For us to recruit students and employees who want to be there on a campus, they want to come to a place that has a vibrant community with active businesses,” he said. “And then for those businesses to be successful, they need, in part, for us to keep bringing people in the community.”

While both sides expressed optimism for the “one of a kind” partnership, they acknowledged they are still early in the process, and, in their announcement, said “there are hurdles to clear before determining how best to move forward.”

The university will host a forum at the school’s Stearns Hall Performance Space to discuss the partnership on Tuesday, Sept. 16. The final application for the grant is due Sept. 30, Galinat said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont State University, Johnson announce partnership to relocate town services onto the school’s campus.

This story by Patrick Bilow was first published in the Stowe Reporter on Aug. 28, 2025.

Carol Weaver has been riding a specialized mountain bike for most of her life.

She was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that affected all four of her limbs. A few years ago, she suffered a riding accident that left her paralyzed from the chest down.

Most riders would have abandoned the sport at that point, but Weaver doubled down in order to combat creeping feelings of depression. Today she lives near a network of accessible trails in Maine and rides two to three times a week, but it was sometimes difficult for her to find a cycling community and trails that suited her needs.

A few years ago, Weaver began traveling to Stowe for an annual group ride in Cady Hill Forest, a destination for adaptive-ready terrain. This year’s ride, organized in partnership with Green Mountain Adaptive Sports, was held last weekend and featured 24 athletes from all over New England.

“These events are a big deal,” Weaver said. “Getting out on the trail and letting the public see us out there sends an important message that people with disabilities can live active, full lives. It’s good for our mental health. It’s also a good way to see how different riders tackle the trail.”

On Saturday, August 23, a handful of two-wheeled guides led adaptive riders through Cady Hill, and on Sunday, several of them competed in the Race To The Top of Vermont, a foot and cycling race to the top of Mount Mansfield. Weaver took first among the adaptive riders, an annual goal of hers.

Adaptive bikes are typically custom built with a range of different components and configurations. They can cost up to $25,000, but organizations like Green Mountain Adaptive Sports and the Kelly Brush Foundation help riders purchase a bike.

Weaver’s bike was built by ReActive Adaptations, complete with three wheels — two up front and one behind — three sets of shocks and brakes, and hand pedals to move the machine. Her model, the Hammerhead, places riders in a prone position, but models like the Nuke are operated from a recumbent position. Sometimes a bike shop will work on an adaptive bike, but Weaver said she does all her own mechanic work.

It’s a misnomer that adaptive riders require special trails to ride, Weaver said — all they really need is three feet of clearance for the front wheels and relatively even ground. Many trails in Stowe already meet that requirement, but the Stowe Trails Partnership has been working for years to further expand adaptive trails.

Stowe currently has about seven miles of adaptive-ready terrain, most of which are in Cady Hill, according to Kenzie Brunner, director of the Stowe Trails Partnership. Before her current role, she worked for the Vermont Mountain Biking Association, taking annual inventories of adaptive terrain in Vermont. She said Stowe always came out on top.

The town has been expanding terrain since taking an adaptive trail assessment in 2020. Converting an adaptive-ready trail mostly involves widening the trail and features like bridges and berms

Charlies Bypass and Eagle Ridge in Cady Hill saw the biggest renovations, and Brunner said the organization might expand adaptive terrain in the Kirchner Woods over the coming years. Stowe Trails is also building a new adaptive and beginner-friendly trail behind the Village Inn, which should be ready by October.

“We aren’t dumbing down the trail,” Brunner said. “There’s some terrain my adaptive friends will fly over that I won’t even touch.”

Still, Weaver said they appreciated having guides who knew the trails and could call out potential hazards. Jeff Kauffman, a Stowe Trails Partnership member, was one of the guides for the event. He knows the trails like the back of his hand and was happy to facilitate the adaptive group ride.

“It takes a lot of courage to get out there,” Kauffman said, “It was really nice to see able-bodied riders cheer them on last weekend.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Adaptive riders hit accessible Stowe trails.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in the News & Citizen on Aug. 21, 2025.

A Morristown lawmaker last week called on state health care regulators to block or delay the planned closure of Copley Hospital’s birthing center until the decision could be further analyzed by the state.

Rep. Dave Yacovone, D-Morristown, made his pitch Aug. 13, during Copley’s budget presentation to the Green Mountain Care Board.

Copley, one of the smallest critical access hospitals in the state, was the last to present its annual budgetary plans to the board. A team of administrators led by CEO Joe Woodin and Kathy Demars, vice chair of the hospital’s board of trustees, provided an explanation of the high profile and controversial decision to close the birthing center, and asked the board for support.

Woodin presented data from a consultant’s analysis that paired a declining birthrate with the expense of operating the birthing center, which ultimately swayed most of the trustees to vote to close the center by Nov. 1. An analysis that Copley presented to the Green Mountain Care Board claimed that maintaining birthing center operations would have resulted in the hospital running a $3.7 million loss, based on 2023 data. Also according to the analysis, the hospital would see a $2.9 million gain by only providing pre- and post-natal care.

Woodin’s presentation also emphasized the emotional toll the process had put upon the administration and volunteer trustees, with several slides dedicated to criticism the hospital had received during the process. Woodin claimed last week, as he had previously, that the nurses’ union had collaborated with community members to protest the closure.

“It was more than anything I’ve ever seen, and it made it really hard. But at the end of the day, it came down to a discussion of, ‘Can we afford this?’ and ‘Do we have enough volume to justify a direction towards growth?’” Woodin said. “That’s hard to say, and people really fight over those issues.”

Demars said the trustees had received hundreds of letters at their homes, some of which were unkind.

“We’re a volunteer board, and we really appreciate any support we can get from the Green Mountain Care Board in making tough decisions,” she said.

‘Defer, delay’

Yacovone, in the public comment portion following the presentation, urged the state board to prevent the hospital from closing its birthing center as planned on Nov. 1, so that its full effects on Vermont’s health care landscape could be considered and the decision could be made in accordance with the Agency of Human Services’ ongoing analysis of how to make Vermont’s health care system more efficient and less expensive.

“My request to the board is that you work to defer, to delay any decision on the Copley birthing center until the (Agency of Human Services’) strategic health plan is developed to see if this kind of decision would even comport with the strategic health plan as envisioned,” Yacovone said. “I would also ask that Copley revise their community health needs assessment to see how a community without a birthing center would be impacted and what would need to be done.”

Yacovone, a former Copley trustee, commended the current trustees for attempting to fulfill their fiduciary duty to the hospital, but said the birthing center’s closure would make health care more expensive for Vermonters, even if it helped Copley’s bottom line.

He added the travel time for residents of Morrisville and other areas of Lamoille County would be dangerous for expecting mothers.

Yacovone was not alone in his request that the birthing center be delayed. Vicki Rich, a local lactation consultant and birthing coach, asked the board to give maternal health care providers more time to respond.

Other meeting attendees, including a nurse-midwife at Copley and former birthing center patients, emphasized the importance of the birthing center in maternal health care in Lamoille County.

Yacovone contends that the Green Mountain Care Board has the ability, in setting Copley’s budget, to dictate the hospital take a specific action and require it to work with the Agency of Human Services to under Act 68, a law passed earlier this year meant to help stabilize and reform Vermont’s health care system. However, Kristen LaJeunesse, a spokesperson for the care board, said that it was beyond the board’s authority.

“Decisions about whether to continue or close specific service lines, such as birthing centers, are made by the hospitals themselves,” LaJeunesse said. “The Green Mountain Care Board’s responsibilities include hospital budget regulation and review of certain projects through the certificate of need process, but we do not have the authority to direct a hospital to keep a department open or to close one.”

Communications previously obtained by the News & Citizen between Woodin and care board chair Owen Foster show that the Copley CEO had sought the board’s endorsement of the birthing center decision. Woodin ultimately received a statement acknowledging that “transformational efforts will require hard decisions and trade-offs.”

Foster, during last week’s meeting, endorsed the idea that Vermont hospitals shouldn’t decide what services to cut purely based on their financial burden following tearful testimony from a mother who had suddenly gone into labor but was able to make it to Copley due to its proximity.

“With some of the budgets we’ve seen, there’s often a request for finances for services that lose money,” Foster said. “As we go forward with transformation, we definitely don’t want to see cherry picking and lemon dropping. It has to be consistent with the transformation plan that the Agency of Human Services is leading.”

Modest request

While the birthing center closure decision continued to be the center of attention, Copley’s actual spending proposal was more modest than in years past.

The hospital requested a 3.7% decrease to net patient revenue, a 1.6% increase to operating expenses and a 4.2% increase to commercial insurer reimbursement rates. Woodin previously asked the board for double-digit percentage increases to its commercial reimbursement rates after complaining of financial issues and a cost for services that are far lower than other hospitals in the state.

Copley also asked for spending exemptions for its financial support of the beleaguered Lamoille Health Partners and for the construction of a fourth operating room at the Morristown hospital.

The hospital gave Lamoille Health Partners a $150,000 lifeline last year after the federally qualified health care center suddenly found itself in a financial crisis. The hospital also took back some of the laboratory diagnostic work the health center had previously outsourced to a different company and provided additional services following the closure of the partner’s Stowe office.

The hospital said the construction of a new operating room was necessary to meet the demand for more space from across the hospital.

“The addition of a fourth OR is in direct response to increased demand across multiple service lines. This expansion is essential to meeting our growing patient care needs, improving financial stability, and keeping care local,” Copley’s presentation to the care board said. “The additional capacity will directly reduce patient wait times for surgical procedures, improve overall patient experience and provide surgeons with additional block time availability, supporting both provider satisfaction and recruitment efforts.”

Woodin touted the cost savings of the New England Health Care Collaborative he announced last year, and Foster encouraged hospital staff to lean into its status as a relatively low-cost health care provider and more aggressively compete with larger hospitals like the University of Vermont Medical Center.

“I think as Vermonters become more aware of the affordability challenges we have as a state, I think they probably are more sensitive to the fact that your prices are lower,” Foster said. “We would like to see you be a competitor and would like to see others compete on your prices.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: State of Vermont urged to stop Copley Hospital birthing center closure.

This story by Patrick Bilow was first published in the News & Citizen on Aug. 14, 2025.

As resident concerns linger about a proposed industrial park across from the Morrisville-Stowe Airport, a new wrinkle has drawn even more people to the opposition party — the possibility of exposure to silica, a potentially harmful rock dust, during construction.

Morrisville’s Manufacturing Solutions Inc. has been working for years to secure local and state permits to allow the development of a sprawling industrial park on an 89-acre parcel just off Route 100. According to local planning and zoning officials, it would be one of the largest developments of its kind in the region. Company management say it could help boost the local economy — if it ever comes to fruition.

Though many Morristown residents have yet to be convinced, and a groundswell of people spoke against the project at a development review board meeting in 2023, the application cleared local approval and is currently making its way through the state’s Act 250 land-use approval process.

Many residents, particularly those who abut the property, are making last ditch efforts to block the project from state approval. For two years, they’ve said the project at all phases will have a negative effect on the area’s appearance and community’s health.

During a Morristown Selectboard meeting last week, two residents — Thea Alvin and Kristin Fogdall — gave a presentation about the project to a packed room, focusing on new application materials that have surfaced as part of the Act 250 process. The thesis focused on silica, and the possibility of exposure to the dust during construction.

The first phase of the project would involve demolition of the knoll in the center of the property, allowing MSI to flatten out the land and maximize the footprint for the industrial park.

According to application materials, MSI would set up a temporary quarry to break down the knoll over a decade, crushing and trucking 49,000 tons of material each year. Morristown’s development review board approved the operation, but the exposure to silica comes as new information to residents.

As required by Act 250, the developer recently submitted a rock sample, which confirmed the presence of silica in the knoll. The mineral, when crushed into a fine powder, can become airborne, potentially causing lung and kidney disease and other respiratory illnesses for people who come in contact with it, according to some of those at last week’s meeting.

Following the presentation last week, several residents again spoke against the project.

“I’m very concerned about the health of our community,” Dacia Rockwood, a nurse at Copley Hospital and neighbor to the project, said. “I see patients everyday with (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and cancer … and this is putting everybody at a huge risk for new or worsening problems.”

For Rockwood, the potential health impacts from silica exposure hits close to home. Her husband and son both have a genetic kidney disease, and last year her husband received a kidney transplant.

“To think his new kidney is at risk of failing because of our proximity to this is very upsetting,” Rockwood said. “We will probably have to move, and nobody will buy our property because of this project.”

Rockwood echoed the presenters, stating, “I didn’t move next door to this project; it moved next door to me.”

Patrick Towne, another neighbor to the project, agreed.

“There’s just no way I’m going to get away from the dust from this project,” Towne said. “I’ve been sick to my stomach over this project because of all the problems it’s going to cause.”

According to application documents, MSI plans to wet down the area during extraction to reduce the amount of dust, but everyday enforcement over 10 years could prove difficult. Selectboard member Laura Streets was sensitive to concerns about enforcement, stating there’s no way the town could always have someone on site.

MSI founder and CEO Garret Hirchak was invited to last week’s meeting, but the selectboard instead read a statement from his lawyer Chris Roy. In 2021, Hirchak purchased 437 acres behind the airport and only 89 of those acres are proposed for the industrial park. The knoll lies on an even smaller fraction of that land — 27 acres.

During an interview after last week’s meeting, Alvin, who presented at the selectboard meeting on the threat of silica exposure, questioned why demolishing the knoll is even necessary.

“How important is this one corner of that land that we need to put the entire community at risk?” Alvin said.

She also rebuked MSI’s classification of a temporary quarry operation. “How is 10 years of our lives temporary?”

Roy, MSI’s lawyer, pointed to the allowed used of MSI’s property, which was zoned as “light industrial” more than a decade ago, when new development at the airport was taking shape, a project that has since stalled.

According to Act 250 documents and Roy’s statement, MSI is interested in maximizing the footprint of the land, and extracting rock from the knoll will allow the company to generate initial revenue to fund the remainder of the project.

Although the project has advanced to Act 250 review and a hearing is still open, residents last week urged the selectboard to speak up, particularly if the developer mischaracterized the project in the initial development review board hearing.

As a stakeholder in the project, the board has interested party status and can submit testimony on behalf of the community, even to dispute previous local decisions.

The selectboard last week agreed to send a letter highlighting resident concerns. The board will draft the letter at its next regular meeting on August 18.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the weight of material MSI would be breaking down.

Read the story on VTDigger here: A rocky finding at a proposed industrial park raises more eyebrows in Morrisville.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in the News & Citizen on Aug. 7.

“We started basically something new and innovative, honestly without really knowing what the heck we were doing at that time, but we kept our eyes open and our ears open, listening to people that had some experience, that could see what we were doing.”

With this remark, Greg Tatro articulated the spirit behind Jenna’s Promise — the substance use disorder treatment organization he and his family founded five years ago after the opioid-related death of his daughter, for whom the organization is named — and alluded to the source of its success.

Outside the former Johnson church the organization converted into a community center four years ago, Tatro was flanked by Jenna’s Promise staff, a bipartisan coalition of supportive politicians, and his family — wife Dawn, son Gregory and daughter-in-law Amy.

The genesis of Jenna’s Promise is a story the family has told many times. Jenna Tatro, in the throes of opioid dependency, in and out of rehabilitation homes, had a seed of a dream to build a program that would work for her and others, before she succumbed to her substance-use disorder in 2019.

That dream, to open a sober home “with a little more substance,” as Greg Tatro put it, began with the Rae of Hope sober home and, in the span of just a few challenging years, shot up, like the organization’s symbolic sunflower, to forever alter their family, the Johnson community and opioid treatment efforts in Vermont.

The Tatros brought in experts like Dan Franklin, who now leads the Vermont Association for Mental Health and Addiction Recovery, and developed a trauma-focused, holistic approach to treating substance use disorders that afforded residents the opportunity to stay far longer than the typical two-week timeframe at other treatment centers.

They melded this holism with a novel village recovery model, bringing together the Tatro family’s business acumen forged in its construction business, G.W. Tatro, to address the underlying material conditions that trap many in the cycle of substance use disorders, by helping them build up their resumes at two Johnson staples — JP’s Promising Goods and Jenna’s Coffee House.

These vertically integrated businesses — which also includes a coffee roasting company — didn’t just provide a leg up for those trying to address substance use disorders and produce revenue for the organization. They also helped revitalize the village of Johnson, even after the flood of July 2023 put others out of business permanently.

“Johnson is a safer place now than it was,” Tatro said. “A lot of the people that were pushing things are gone. They don’t want to be here when there’s so much recovery going on.”

Last year, Greg and Dawn stepped down from leadership roles on the Jenna’s Promise board of directors, though Greg is still involved in the day-to-day operations of the businesses, and Dawn continues her work helping “more people get into rehab in the last couple of years than anybody else in the state,” according to her husband.

Part of the transition away from a mom-and-pop substance use disorder rehabilitation organization includes bringing on Aimée Green as its new executive last fall. With her background in health care administration in behavioral and psychiatric work, she’s been working to bottle Jenna’s Promise recovery magic and codify its practices to prepare the village recovery model for further expansion.

“This isn’t some one-off miracle infrastructure. The partnerships, the blueprint — it can scale, and it should scale,” Green said on Saturday. “Communities across the country are fighting the same battles against addiction, isolation and economic decline, and Jenna’s promise is proof that we don’t have to choose between compassion and practicality.”

Recovery numbers

A report published by the Vermont Department of Health, Division of Substance Use Programs, which funds Jenna’s Promise operations along with private philanthropic efforts, looked at “phase one” of Jenna’s Promise and how it operated in fiscal years 2023 and 2024.

During those two years, the organization served an average of 31 people per year across three different sober homes. Of those who left the program, 47% were considered “successful program completions,” a number much higher than the national average, according to Gregory Tatro.

The report noted the most common reason for early departure from the program is a return to substance use.

This work comes at a cost, however, which the health department estimated is five times that of other state-funded recovery programs. But the uniqueness of the Jenna’s Promise model might make direct comparisons difficult. According to the report, it costs Vermont Foundations for Recovery in Essex Junction about $10,000 per bed, while Jenna’s Promise costs over $68,000 per bed.

Nonetheless, the Jenna’s Promise business network generated $56,000 in revenue for the organization in 2024, Green said, though the organization has struggled with staff retention over the past few years, according to its phase one report, especially in the wake of the floods which hit Johnson hard.

Partners who have worked with the organization over the past years reported satisfaction with the responsiveness to problems that may have arisen in the partnership. A minority of respondents shared concerns about a “lack of operating procedures,” an issue that Green has specifically worked to rectify.

“I like to use the term ‘bake.’ Let’s fully bake the model,” she said. “Let’s ensure we have all of our processes, systems, policies, procedures — all that stuff — fully in place, so that when we do expand, whether on this footprint or to other communities, we can share that.”

New horizons

The Vermont Department of Corrections already refers many women to the program, where, as Gregory Tatro said, they’re able to address the root causes of their anti-social behavior for a fraction of the cost of incarcerating them.

Green hopes the organization can expand its bed count with a new sober home right on the hill near Jenna’s House. She is also eager to bring the Jenna’s Promise to other towns, and perhaps even Vermont’s population centers.

The week prior to celebrating their five-year anniversary, Green and other members of Jenna’s Promise — along with state officials — met with One Brattleboro, a municipal leadership group working to address the challenges presented by, among other factors, substance-use disorder.

“Brattleboro is a great little place to visit, but there’s a lot of need,” Green said.

The organization continues to garner attention and praise at the state and federal level, thanks in part to Gregory Tatro’s agnostic interest in presidential politics, which has garnered Jenna’s Promise rare bipartisan praise. Tatro will quote a conversation with Republican Chris Christie in one instance and talk about his relationship with New Jersey Democrat Corey Booker in another. Saturday’s anniversary featured speeches from state lawmakers like Rep. Jed Lipsky, I-Stowe; Lt. Gov. John Rogers, R-Glover; and a keynote speech from Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Shelburne, the Senate majority leader.

While some current federal policy may seem to directly inhibit the work the organization is trying to do, Jenna’s Promise aims to begin accepting Medicaid insurance just as severe cuts to the program were mandated in the federal budget. Tatro believes his big tent approach can help people of all political stripes see the value in funding harm reduction.

It’s this willingness to help anyone and everyone see the Jenna’s Promise vision that both Green and Tatro believe will be key to growing one sunflower into a field.

“(My parents) helped blaze the trail,” Gregory Tatro said. “Now, it’s our job to put the pavement down, put the road markings and the guardrails up and the signs.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In Johnson, a holistic substance use treatment organization turns 5 and eyes expansion.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in the News & Citizen on July 31.

Lamoille County’s new affordable housing nonprofit has spent the last seven months settling into its new role as some towns look for assistance in addressing the ongoing housing crisis.

Downstreet Housing and Community Development, the Washington County-based nonprofit has taken over an array of affordable housing properties previously overseen by Lamoille Housing Partnership in Cambridge, Johnson, Morrisville and Stowe, even as the full merger of the organizations is not yet completed.

The merger should be finalized in September, according to Downstreet executive director Angie Harbin. In anticipation of the resolution, the organization has added three seats to its board.

Even as the nonprofit sets up in the county, the need for its services have grown.

“Just like the entire state, Lamoille County needs more affordable housing,” Harbin said. “There’s probably not a community in Vermont right now where that’s not true.”

A statewide housing assessment conducted by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency published earlier this year said that 13% of the county’s rental stock was built with public funding, and 6% of that rental housing is available with income-sensitive rental assistance. That same report identified a third of Lamoille County occupied households as cost-burdened, where residents use more than 30% of their annual household income on housing.

Though no specific projects have been announced, towns particularly eager to expand or replace their affordable housing, like Johnson and Stowe, have begun identifying Downstreet as a potential partner in that effort.

Part of the incentive for the merger, outside of the leadership vacuum at Lamoille Housing Partnership, was Downstreet’s size — roughly double the Partnership — and thus capacity to access more federal funding and expand faster.

In Stowe, where committees are exploring potential solutions to the lack of accessible housing, town officials identified Downstreet as a potential partner that could operate and administer housing through a a community trust fund, according to a recently published housing needs assessment.

In Johnson, DEW Construction has proposed a project like the one it oversees in Barre by coordinating with Downstreet on the grant-funded construction of housing on town-owned land. The nonprofit and builder could potentially build a mix of housing types, including single-family, owner-occupied and mixed-use rentals.

The town is hoping to potentially move quickly to take advantage of $67 million in community development funds recently announced by the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, which are intended to assist communities hardest hit by the July 2023 flood. “A majority of funding will be focused on creating new housing units outside of flood plains and supporting infrastructure in the identified regions,” according to an agency press release.

“Not only are we operating existing affordable housing in Lamoille County but also making sure that we have the capacity to continue to develop there,” Harbin, the Downstreet executive director, said, noting that the group is currently exploring some properties in Johnson. “We are really committed to making sure that there’s at least one housing project that’s utilizing that (block grant) funding. We’re generally exploring real estate development opportunities in Lamoille County.”

Downstreet, like other affordable housing developers, is attempting to balance demand and funding. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is no longer replete with pandemic-era money, and there is now a great deal of uncertainty around federal funds amid the disruption of the Trump administration.

“We were seeing pretty significant cuts at the state level, because there has been so much Covid-era funding that was winding down, so we’re already looking at far fewer affordable housing projects developed across the state, and then there’s the federal funding,” Harbin said. “We don’t have a clear idea what’s going to happen or what’s going to be cut as at this point.”

Evictions avoided

The transfer of properties from the Lamoille Housing Partnership portfolio hasn’t been without its share of hiccups, particularly for a Jeffersonville property with a history of management issues.

Last October, just as Downstreet was about to take over management of the building, the Mann’s Meadow senior housing apartment complex was beset by a disabled elevator, stranding some of the less mobile residents on the upper floors of the building. At the time, Harbin requested patience as the nonprofit assessed each property and its maintenance needs.

Several residents at Mann’s Meadow recently received “notice to terminate tenancy” letters and warnings despite not owing any back rent. The notice was concerning enough to tenants that they reached out to the Cambridge Selectboard for help.

By the time selectboard members could inquire about the issue, according to a discussion at the board’s July 15 meeting, it had already been resolved. Downstreet had received incomplete information from the building’s former property management company, according to Harbin.

The former company abruptly ended its property management services at Mann’s Meadow, and transitioning to a new property management system quickly proved tricky.

“It’s a very alarming (notification) to receive, and we also weren’t aware that the previous property management company wasn’t using this type of notification, because it is typical all over the state,” Harbin said. “All of that has been straightened out, which is great, and we’ve been leasing up units right now, some at a bit of a clip, as we’ve been turning them over, getting them ready to lease up and then moving new folks in.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In Lamoille County, Downstreet nonprofit takes over affordable housing efforts.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News & Citizen on July 17.

With the pending purchase of an adjacent tract of land, the Peter A. Krusch Nature Preserve is set to greatly expand the publicly accessible forestland in Cambridge.

The Krusch Preserve Committee, which in 2021 established the preserve on land acquired by the town from resident Sally Laughlin, opened a 51-acre tract of dynamic woodland to the public, and created an accessible route to the Cambridge Pines State Forest.

A neighboring piece of land known as the Bormann property was considered for the preserve at the time, but an initial grant application was denied. Now, four years after the preserve first opened, the town is planning to acquire nearly 30 acres of additional land with assistance from the Vermont Land Trust.

The purchase will also connect the central section of the preserve with another piece of land owned by Cambridge village. Part of that land is off-limits to the public due to the existence of a wellhead on the tract, but trails that will be built through the area will more than double the area of publicly accessible forest, Laughlin said.

The expansion will add more diversity to the preserve, she said, and expand the preserve to over 200 acres.

“I was delighted when we walked up into the Bormann land, which is more hardwood forest, more maples and so forth,” Laughlin said. “There are wood thrush there, and there’ll be some different species of birds and plants and so forth.”

The Cambridge Pines State Forest contains some of the oldest trees in the town — it is a second-growth forest that has been mostly left intact since it was logged about 200 years ago. The current preserve contains meadow, forest, wetlands, Dragon Brook and a sand blow, land that has been rendered sandy and unvegetated by stiff winds.

The new portions opened up by this purchase will add higher elevation habitats to the range, and even features what Laughlin says is “probably the oldest yellow birch in Vermont,” just over the line into the village’s property.

The preserve has become regionally popular in its four years of public use, with a tracker borrowed from the Lamoille County Planning Commission indicating the preserve saw thousands of visitors within a 10-month span.

The Bormann family has entered an agreement to sell its property to the land trust, which will then transfer it to the town for the appraised value of $235,000. With additional costs, the land trust has estimated that the overall cost of the project to be at around $300,000, most of which will be covered by a grant they’re seeking from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Trust, along with $20,000 from the Cambridge Conservation Commission and additional funding raised by the nonprofit Friends of the Krusch Nature Preserve.

Bob Heiser and Friends of the Krusch Nature Preserve president Mary Fiedler, in a letter to the selectboard from land trust project director, noted that expanding the preserve has important environmental benefits.

“The forestland is part of a larger forest block identified by the State of Vermont as a Priority ‘Connectivity Block’ and Priority ‘Interior Forest Block,’ providing critical ecological connectivity on a statewide level,” the letter said.

The Cambridge Selectboard voted at its July 1 meeting to sign a letter of support to the housing and conservation board in support of the grant.

A public informational meeting about the project will be held Monday, Sept. 8 at 6 p.m. at the Cambridge Historical Society.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Cambridge nature preserve plans major expansion.

This story by Patrick Bilow was first published in the Stowe Reporter on July 17.

Watch out, Gov. Phil Scott – Dean Roy, a 14-year-old from Stowe, is running for your job.

It started as a bit of a joke with one of Roy’s teachers at Stowe Middle School. If Roy ever ran for office, the joke went, he’d have a campaign manager in his teacher.

Over time, it became less of a joke, and while Roy’s teacher isn’t running his campaign, the rising freshman hit the streets with a few of his peers last week collecting signatures. As of Monday, he had just shy of 100, with almost a year left to reach 500 and make his campaign official.

To be clear, Roy isn’t expecting to oust the Republican governor of nearly 10 years, and he understands when people tell him he’s too young for the job, but Roy is looking at the big picture. He said politics is his lifeblood, and he wants to start proving himself as a viable option for voters now.

Roy is running as part of the Freedom and Unity Party, which emerged in Vermont around 2022. As far as he knows, he would be the youngest third-party candidate for governor in the nation. In 2018, Ethan Sonneborn, a 13-year-old from Bristol ran for governor as a Democrat. Both Sonneborn and Roy benefit from a Vermont election rule that doesn’t set an age limit for running for public office.

Roy is no stranger to the Statehouse. Over the winter, he served as a legislative page in Montpelier, a distinction given to a handful of students throughout Vermont every year. He shadowed politicians, gained an inside look at the legislative process and mingled with a few of Vermont’s top lawmakers.

During one interaction, he challenged Lieutenant Governor John Rodgers on his electric vehicle stance. Rodgers has been outspoken about the negative impacts of the electric vehicle industry and, while their opinions differ, Roy still went a few rounds with Rodgers before they went their separate ways.

Roy’s campaign is centered around affordability and rising property taxes in Vermont, the number one issue facing the state right now, he added. Roy acknowledged the irony that, as a 14-year-old, he doesn’t own a home.

“When a kid in Vermont understands that there’s a housing and affordability crisis, that’s when you know it’s bad,” he said.

Scott might be his opponent for governor, but Roy applauded the work his administration has done to reform education spending in Vermont and reduce property taxes. Roy said H.454, the recently-signed education reform bill, isn’t perfect, and he admitted it might not be great for rural districts like his own, but he thinks the state must take big – and sometimes painful – steps if it’s going to save money for residents.

Roy leans conservative when it comes to finances, and he said a variety of political voices is important to creating good laws. But, like many conservatives in Vermont, he wants to keep it about the money. As for social issues, he believes women have a right to choose and he’s opposed to the way immigrants are being treated in Vermont and across the country.

“This country needs immigration reform badly,” Roy said. “No one should be pulled from the home, and it shouldn’t take decades to become a legal citizen in our country. That’s wrong.”

If elected, he would also work to restore Vermont’s relationship with its neighbors to the north, which has been tested by the President Donald Trump and his administration.

When it comes to hyperlocal issues, Roy said he’s witnessed how short-term rentals have impacted his hometown — those issues exist throughout the state, he added. Roy is a proponent of short-term rental caps and a five-percent tax on those properties statewide.

Part of his motivation for running is to engage his peers – Vermont’s youth – in politics. His friends Charlie Bass, Paul Slesar, JP Rozendaal and Roger Andelin have all been active in his campaign, and he wants to bring in more people.

“We’re all looking for something different,” Roy said, which is part of the reason he’s running as a third-party candidate.

Even if he doesn’t win, Roy wants to stay politically active. He’s currently vying for a letter of recommendation from Bernie Sanders – a political idol to Roy’s – to become a U.S. page in Washington D.C., a highly competitive process.

As for his political candidacy, voters can expect to see Roy on the ballot until he reaches office, he said.

“I want to do great things for the state of Vermont,” he added. “I know I’m young, but I hope I can get my name out there and start building some credibility this year. That way I can run a very serious campaign when it’s time.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Stowe teen preps for gubernatorial race.

Milky skies were carrying smoke and haze from Canadian wildfires across northern and central Vermont on Tuesday — prompting state officials to issue a one-day air quality alert across the state. 

Smoke and haze rolled in early Tuesday morning and are expected to linger through the afternoon and night, according to Tyler Danzig, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Burlington. 

Officials warned that sensitive groups should take breaks and monitor their conditions when spending time outdoors. 

Individuals with heart or lung issues, older adults, children, people who work outside and those experiencing homelessness are especially at risk, according to state health officials. Sensitive groups can spend time outside but should take more breaks than usual, according to officials. 

People with asthma are recommended to keep medication handy. Those with heart disease should watch out for palpitations, fatigue and shortness of breath. 

Sensitive groups could continue to feel the effects of exposure up to 24 hours after the haze has passed, according to Danzig. 

The alert spans across Grand Isle, Franklin, Orleans, Essex, Chittenden, Lamoille, Caledonia, Washington, Addison and Orange counties. 

Officials recommend Vermonters sign up for air quality alerts, limit their exposure and keep an eye on forecasts. 

The smoke and haze are coming from wildfires in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Danzig said. Many of those fires have been ablaze for weeks and caused similar conditions in Vermont earlier this summer.

Skies may tinge orange this evening, but the air should clear overnight, Danzig said. The alert stands all day Tuesday and will not likely be extended for another day, according to Bennet Leon, who monitors air quality for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the length of the alert.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Officials issue air quality warning for northern and central Vermont .

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News & Citizen on July 3.

A Morristown sculptor whose roadside artwork was destroyed when a commercial truck hit it three years ago has reached a settlement with the insurance company over the value of the destroyed stones.

In April 2022, the driver of an Isuzu street sweeper fell asleep at the wheel on Route 100 near Morrisville, crashing through the Phoenix Helix, a swirling stone sculpture built at the roadside of MyEarthwork, the home gallery of Morrisville artist Thea Alvin.

Alvin told the News & Citizen at the time that the driver had been working all night and was tired, was not injured and sincerely apologized, but emphasized the loss she had suffered in the incident.

“It was a very important part of my identity as a sculptor, as an inventor — defiant and strong and a little insecure, a little imperfect, beautiful and steady and heavy and profound but also carefree,” she said at the time. “When it was crashed into, it felt like my identity was broken.”

Stonemason friends ended up coming to her aid and a new Phoenix Helix rose from the ashes, but a battle with the insurer of her work was more protracted. Three years after the sculpture was destroyed, Alvin said she has finally reached a settlement over the value of the artwork and concluded a disagreement over how the piece should be assessed.

Prior to the final mediation session, she posted on social media that she was close to settling with the insurance company over whether the destroyed sculpture should be considered art or just a stone wall.

“I have stood my ground that art is art, even if it is, especially, if it is, made of stone,” Alvin said.

The settlement was reached in mid-June, but Alvin — after conferring with legal counsel — declined to share the specific terms, prior to leaving to teach stone wall restoration on a private island in Brittany, France.

Alvin confirmed that a monetary compensation was reached, though not for the full appraised value of the work. She also confirmed that the insurer acknowledged that the Phoenix Helix’s value was due to its status as a work of art and not just a wall.

The destruction of the stone wall hasn’t been the only time a driver has veered onto her property off the busy nearby highway; Alvin said an errant driver recently took out her apple tree.

Alvin is well-recognized for her art both locally and internationally, though she’s made more headlines recently for her efforts to preserve open space along the Route 100 corridor. She’s led an effort to oppose the approval of a sprawling new industrial park planned across from the Morrisville-Stowe Airport under Vermont’s environmental regulatory law and put her skills to use in the effort by building handmade dioramas to illustrate the potential impact the development would have on the land.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Morristown sculptor settles over damage to roadside attraction.

This story by Aaron Calvin and Patrick Bilow was first published in the Stowe Reporter on June 26.

Data from Stowe’s new short-term rental registry, which went live at the beginning of May, shows that most of those properties’ owners don’t live in town full-time.

Of the 891 registrants who provided the town of Stowe with information about their rental properties as of late May, just 196, or 22 percent, listed their “owner mailing address” in Stowe.

Another 86 registrants have mailing addresses listed in Vermont. Nearly as many properties — 260 — are registered to Massachusetts mailing addresses.

According to assistant town manager Will Fricke, about 90 short-term rental owners have failed to respond to mailed requests that they participate in the registry.

The registry requirement was codified last year, after a 3-2 majority of the Stowe Selectboard voted to pass an ordinance that would establish a short-term rental regulation. That ordinance requires property owners to share information about themselves and their property managers with the town and adhere to certain regulations for public safety purposes.

The ordinance was opposed tooth and nail by a class of rental owners and property managers who were able to petition for a public referendum on the law. A town meeting held in May 2024 saw Stowe residents overwhelmingly support — in a 435-240 vote — the establishment of a town registry.

The data collected in the registry reveals what many advocates for the proposal suspected: there are many short-term rentals in Stowe and most of them are owned by non-residents. What implications this has for Stowe’s housing access needs, an ongoing subject of analysis and public discussion from the formation of the new town plan to the town’s nascent housing task force, remains to be determined.

Selectboard reactions

Stowe selectboard members said it’s too early to draw conclusions about the registry, but next month’s highly-anticipated report from the housing task force — after a year-long charge to study housing in Stowe — could spark selectboard discussions about short-term rentals and other housing topics.

According to emails between town manager Charles Safford and Jeff Sauser of CommunityScale, a housing consultant who outlined a timeline for Stowe’s registry and other housing goals, the selectboard wants to wait until next year to discuss the results of the registry, after gathering a year’s worth of data.

Short-term rental property owners in Stowe aren’t required to register with the town until their property becomes active, so a year’s worth of data would give the town a full picture of how many properties there are in Stowe. But with a good chunk of properties already registered, selectboard chair Paco Aumand said the board might want to discuss the registry sooner than a year.

“Creating the registry has accomplished what it was set out to do, and that is provide valuable data around how many short-term rentals we really have in Stowe,” Aumand, who initially voted against the registry, said. “Now it’s time to take a hard look at what that means in terms of action.”

For Aumand, the ultimate goal is to boost Stowe’s full-time population, which aligns with the town plan and stated public opinion. But targeting short-term rentals is just one tool in the toolbox, according to McKee Macdonald, chair of the housing task force. He pointed to other tools like deed restrictions, new housing development, or establishing a housing reserve fund.

Sauser agreed.

“Short-term rentals have been a popular topic in Stowe for years, but there are many more housing ideas that frankly haven’t been baked through,” he said. “We don’t want the conversation to start and end with short-term rentals.”

Rep. Jed Lipsky, I-Stowe, is in favor of short-term rentals for homesteaders, but not for out-of-staters or “private equity types looking to build a portfolio,” and he agreed with Sauser.

Lipsky advised against “scapegoating” short-term rentals for Stowe’s housing crisis. He admits they play a role, but they’re also an important revenue source for some working-class families in Stowe.

“We could take every short-term rental off the market tomorrow, but then who in Vermont could afford to buy those properties?” Lipsky said. “The solution must be multifaceted.”

Next month’s housing task force report will offer a slate of options for the selectboard — including how the board might deal with short-term rentals in Stowe — rather than specific recommendations, McKee said. From there, it’s up to the selectboard to decide on a path.

Selectboard member Ethan Carlson said that while the registry validates some of the assumptions around short-term rentals and their impact on Stowe’s housing market, the board still needs to take its time rolling out potential policy changes.

Carlson, echoing some of Lipsky’s comments, is sensitive to property rights of short-term rental owner and the 196 properties that are registered with Stowe addresses, some of which might be operated by longtime Stowe residents looking to bump up their income.

“I’d like to see the process play out,” Carlson said, referencing the task force’s upcoming report, “I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that short-term rentals would be the first action or the most logical until we kind of look at the situation holistically.”

Few big owners

Of the 891 property owners currently registered as part of the Stowe registry, 64 of them own two or more of those properties, but few own more than five.

Chuck and Jann Perkins — former “ski bums,” original owners of the Alpine Shop in South Burlington and inductees to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame, to which they made a million-dollar donation in 2023 — are technically Stowe’s largest short-term rental owners by volume.

The Perkinses, whose primary residence is in Burlington, have registered 10 short-term rentals with the town of Stowe. All of them are condominiums located in a single building at The Lodge at Spruce Peak, the mountainside complex that features a mix of seasonal lodging, traditional hospitality and other amenities.

The couple began acquiring condos at Spruce Peak as it was being built at the turn of the century, and each time they sold a property elsewhere in town and didn’t know what to acquire next, they would pick up another and, over time, they have accumulated, Jann Perkins said.

They own 19 different properties in town, according to the Stowe grand list. She said they primarily rent those residences out on a long-term basis, and the tenants have lived in them for years. She added they may be primarily Burlington residents, but they spend most weekends in Stowe, where they are devoted members of the Stowe Community Church.

Sam Gaines, Spruce Peak Realty president, declined to say how many properties are managed as short-term rentals by the company, but a property manager with Stowe Mountain Rentals told Fricke in an email related to the short-term rental registry that the company manages more than 45 properties at The Lodge at Spruce Peak.

Gaines argued that the Spruce Peak condos, like the ones the Perkinses own, shouldn’t be considered housing units in the traditional sense, but are essentially hotel rooms. With hoteliers in Stowe managing rooms or condominiums on sites like Airbnb and VRBO, the line is increasingly a blurred one.

“Practically, we do not believe they are ‘short-term rental’ units. However, the town adopted a very unusual definition of (short-term rentals) to include hotel rooms that are owned through a condominium governance structure,” Gaines said. “We believe this is bad policy and inconsistent with most similar municipal regulations around the country.”

Another one of Stowe’s larger short-term rental owners, Ryan Rabidou, who owns five, also uses them as part of his hospitality business, Om Home Residences.

Colin Moffatt, a Stowe resident and coach at Mt. Mansfield Academy, is also among the town’s largest short-term rental owners, with six residential units in two different buildings in the heart of Stowe village.

Jose Saavedra, one of Stowe’s largest short-term rental owners and who is primarily based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, operates five short-term rentals across three separate properties. Saavedra owns nine properties through his limited-liability company in Stowe, a downsizing from the 17 residential units he owned in 2022.

Saavedra became an illustrative example of the ways in which the short-term rental market could affect housing access in the resort town after a 93-year-old was forced to leave his residence after Saavedra decided to convert the rental from long to short-term.

Read the story on VTDigger here: In Stowe, short-term rentals are owned from afar.

Copley Hospital will close its birthing center, the hospital announced in a press release late Friday afternoon, though no specific closure date was given.

Copley’s Women’s Center will remain open, and pre- and postpartum care will continue to be offered at the Morristown hospital. More details will be provided to staff and patients of the birthing center in the coming weeks, the press release said. 

“We will share detailed information about our partner labor and delivery hospitals to help facilitate birthing family decision making,” the statement read. “Current staff will be given assistance to transition to new appointments and positions both at Copley and in the region.”

Copley Hospital has been formally considering closing the midwife-led birthing center since March when its board of trustees announced that a consultant was being hired to review several options, though concerns about a potential closure had been raised months earlier. 

Since then, community members, including current and former patients, have been organizing public showings of support to try to keep the birthing center open. They hosted a Mother’s Day rally in downtown Morrisville, wrote personal letters of appeal to the hospital’s board of trustees and distributed lawn signs throughout the surrounding area. 

The Copley Hospital Board of Trustees voted for the closure of the birthing center on Tuesday, the press release said. 

Board Chair Anne Bongiorno acknowledged the outpouring of testimonials board members and administrators had received in the release.

“The Board is grateful to the community, Copley staff, and everyone who shared their personal stories, family connections or professional experiences with the birthing center. It has been a privilege to know how much our community cares for our hospital,” Bongiorno said as quoted in the statement. “With the diligent work by everyone over many months, including the consultant’s thorough research and report, we believe we have made the best decision possible in a challenging situation.”

The press release announcing the closure noted Vermont has the lowest birth rate in the nation and Copley has experienced a downward trend in births at the hospital. Currently less than half of all births in Lamoille County take place at the center, according to the release.

Copley Hospital, like other small community hospitals in the state, struggles with maintaining financial stability. The birthing center operates at a loss of between $3 million and $5 million annually, hospital administrators have said. In recent years, the number of births at the center had dropped to less than 200 per year, below the threshold necessary to maintain efficiencies of scale, according to a report by the consultancy Oliver Wyman that proposed ways to reduce overall health care costs. 

Mary Lou Kopas, one of three full-time nurse midwives at the birthing center, said Friday she was “just heartbroken” by the news, which staff had received earlier in the afternoon. 

“I love this group of people,” she said. “It’s a really special practice.”

The Copley birthing center’s staff had just been celebrated recently for the quality of its care and its outcomes at the annual conference for the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine, she said.

Kopas acknowledged the financial challenges faced by Copley and the state’s broader health care system, but said  there were strategies hospital leaders could have tried in recent years to boost the number of births if volume was a concern.

“If there was truly a commitment to keeping the service for the community, why was there none of that?” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Copley Hospital decides to close birthing center.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published by News & Citizen on June 12.

Just south of the popular summer destination of Lake Eden lies a quieter body of water.

South Pond, an idyllic retreat populated mostly by modest bungalow camps and accessible only to property owners, is, like many such bodies of water in the state, managed by a collective. The South Pond Land Owners Association charges a small annual fee for the maintenance of roads and property owned by the association, and the cost of insurance.

Among the shared assets is a small dam at the pond’s northwestern edge where it feeds into a tributary that eventually runs into the Gihon River. The 2-foot-thick concrete core is embedded within a sloping earthen wall, with only a concrete auxiliary spillway at the hill’s summit and a green box sitting just beyond it in the water as clues to its existence.

The century-old dam is a crucial one, however. Not only is it responsible for maintaining the water level in South Pond, but it also controls the flow of water out of the pond and into the lowlands. It was reclassified within the last few years from a “significant hazard dam” to a “high hazard dam” by the state, a designation indicating the outsized risk for loss of life and property should the dam fail. South Pond Dam is one of five dams with such a designation in Lamoille County.

This increased risk designation, though it has nothing to do with the condition of the dam — both the landowners association and the state attest to it being in excellent shape and at no risk of failure — and the increasing scrutiny of state regulators toward privately owned dams has pushed the South Pond community to take proactive measures to ensure the safety of their dam, which has meant a greater shared cost.

A routine inspection of the dam in 2022 concluded with the state recommending that the hydrologic and hydraulic analysis studies be conducted to evaluate the dam’s performance, including a detailed dam failure analysis, and act on the recommendations that come out of those studies.

After the issue was discussed by association members, the majority decided to begin conducting such studies despite the increased expense to its members.

“As one association member put it at our last annual meeting, we feel we have a moral obligation to follow up on the (dam safety program) inspection recommendations in order to minimize the risks to the people living downstream,” association officer Mark Frederick said.

A history of the South Pond dam

Even before the dam was built, South Pond had been a notable water formation in the county, albeit an inaccessible one, locked away in an Edenic wilderness considered remote even by Vermont standards, although the Lamoille Newsdealer noted in 1871 that was used by the local community as a reservoir.

In 1922, a St. Albans utility company constructed the dam, expanding the pond and turning it into a reserve for downstream hydroelectric facilities, or basically turning the pond into a big battery, as Ben Green, head of the state’s dam safety program, put it.

The dam failed in the flood of 1927, contributing to the most devastating deluge Vermont has experienced to date, according to Frederick. A dam inspector brought up from New York a year later declared it to be safe, but worth watching at times of heavy rain, according to a contemporaneous report in the News & Citizen.

In the intervening decades, campers marked out their territory along South Pond’s shores. The dam was acquired by the now-defunct Central Vermont Public Service. Property owners and the utility coexisted peacefully for years, until the owners petitioned the state to tighten regulations on the publicly accessible portions of South Pond in 1988.

This prompted the utility to claim it owned all the land within 15 feet of the shore. Though some landowners had deeds dating back decades, the records for the properties had “turned up missing,” according to the News & Citizen.

After a protracted legal battle, minutes from the South Pond Land Owners Association’s annual meeting in 1990 shows its members voted unanimously to acquire the rights to the pond — and its dam — for $98,500, paid off in installments.

‘Unintended consequences downstream’

For years, it was the responsibility of a designated neighbor to alter the flow of the dam during times of intense rainfall or in danger of flooding and to “exercise” the dam annually. Still, according to Frederick, the dam was “overbuilt” and water has never been close to rising to the height of the dam as it towers 15 feet above the pond’s usual water level.

This hand-operation method was replaced in 2004 by a spillway, a green box that sits in front of the dam and allows the free flow of water through it, allowing the pond to self-regulate. A primary concern of the state remains that the dam tunnel allowing water to pass through it has been unchanged since it was built, and there is no auxiliary spillway except at the top of the dam, where water can flow out and erode the ground encasing the dam.

A spot inspection conducted by the state following the July 2023 floods found the dam to be in good condition and in no danger of failure, though investigators recommended debris be removed from its spillway.

According to Green, who has worked closely with Frederick and the landowners association to address the concerns raised in the 2022 inspection, Vermont has lagged behind the rest of the country in regulating dams, and its authority to regulate privately owned dams has historically been weak, with the state unable to step in unless a failure is imminent.

That’s beginning to change, though efforts to phase in new regulations have been stymied by the distraction of multiple 2023 floods and another last summer requiring more immediate attention. Still, Green praised the South Pond landowners for being proactive and cooperating with the state of their own volition.

Frederick said the cumulative studies recommended by the state should cost between $100,000 and $150,000, a price tag that the association members were unable to afford to pay in a single year of collected dues. The state has allowed the association to pay for the undertaking study by study in annual installments, though this still means that landowners used to paying a few hundred dollars a year are now paying over $1,000 each year for the privilege of living on South Pond.

These studies could potentially lead to an eventual reconfiguration of the dam, Green said, which could in turn allow for the reduction of the dam’s hazard level and a higher condition rating.

The amount of water the dam pushes into the Gihon brings its own considerations. The dam’s spillway, particularly in extreme flooding events, simply releases the water gathering in South Pond into the Gihon, whose flooding contributed to the excessive damage that has reshaped the town of Johnson and other downstream villages. It’s the size of the passage below the dam, unchanged for over 100 years, that will be important to get right if any changes are made.

“Whenever you modify a spillway, you have to be careful in doing so. It might be attractive to release a bunch more water,” Green said. “While that sounds attractive, that can have unintended consequences downstream.”

South Pond is the model for the rest of privately owned dams in the state, Green said, but as the state increases its regulatory scrutiny, what are now recommendations being made by the state may become requirements.

“I think a lot of owners have gotten into a little bit of a groove of not really spending the money necessary, so this is going to be, unfortunately, a little bit shocking for some owners,” Green said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Eden property owners look to solve problems with South Pond dam.

This story by Patrick Bilow was first published in the Stowe Reporter on June 5.

A yearslong effort to coexist with the beavers around Memorial Park in Stowe is proving futile, according to town officials.

Last week, the selectboard voted to remove a “beaver deceiver” from the park, which was installed last summer to deter the industrious animals from damming up culverts. The board also reiterated its authorization to trap beavers in the area, if necessary.

The Memorial Park beavers have been busy for years, building dams that have exasperated an already-inadequate drainage system in the park. Culverts, of which there are several in Memorial Park, serve as a prime location for beaver dams, but their structures are notorious for blocking up the park’s stormwater system and worsening flooding events, which occur regularly in the area.

In response, the town hired Skip Lisle to install beaver deceivers in Memorial Park last summer. Lisle is a Vermonter who installs his deceivers throughout the country. The contraptions deter beavers from culverts by altering the water flow at the inlet, eliminating them as a prime location for dams. They’re also designed to collect debris without interrupting water flow, but their effectiveness in this category depends on who you ask.

Lisle’s deceivers were successful in driving the beavers out of Memorial Park, but they’ve been building a metropolis upstream, including a dam at least 30 feet long and 8 feet high, a hut and a sizable pond.

Over the weekend, during a period of heavy rain, the dam burst in one spot, releasing a rush of water that quickly overran the culverts, flooding the park’s baseball fields and reaching the cafeteria of the nearby elementary school.

This is far from the first time the park has flooded, and selectboard member Nick Donza urged the board to act, saying people are starting to get frustrated when little league games are canceled due to floods, or there’s water in the school.

The beavers were quick to patch up the dam and the pond filled up again almost overnight, but Harry Shepard, Stowe’s public works manager, doesn’t want to wait until the dam bursts again.

To curb the impact of another flood in Memorial Park, the town removed one of Lisle’s beaver deceivers, which Shepard said was collecting debris and worsening floods, and utilized a pump to reduce the water level of the pond. The town has plans to slowly disassemble the dam this summer.

“The issue with the deceivers is they compromise the hydraulic capacity of the culverts,” Shepard said.

Lisle was staunch in his disagreement of that assessment and accused the town of scapegoating his devices, one of which remains in Memorial Park.

Lisle said his deceivers were “mischaracterized” by Shepard to the selectboard. The deceivers aren’t the problem, he said, it’s the culverts, which are “too small and in a state of disrepair.”

Shepard agreed the culverts are inadequate, but that’s the system the town is stuck with for now, he said. A multimillion-dollar project to renovate Memorial Park, including improving the park’s grading and stormwater system, is currently making its way through a gauntlet of zoning approvals, and might not even be possible considering Memorial Park’s state classification as a protected wetland. But that hasn’t eased Lisle.

“This is the dumbest possible thing they could have done,” Lisle said, adding the park has been flooding since long before his devices were installed. “These are valuable devices the town is now just disposing of.”

The deceivers cost the town about $17,000. When the selectboard voted to hire Lisle, it was part of a plan to entertain alternatives before the town resorted to trapping.

The town has employed other tactics over the years, like installing wire around the base of trees, but Shepard and some selectboard members have indicated that cohabitation isn’t really working out.

Last year, the selectboard said it would start trapping the beavers around Memorial Park if the alternatives failed, and during last week’s selectboard meeting, Donza asked, “Are we not there now?”

The town doesn’t need additional approval from the selectboard to trap the beavers, ultimately killing them, according to town manager Charles Safford. Trapping, if it occurs, would take place during trapping season in October. Safford added the town is following guidance from the Agency of Natural Resources in dealing with the beavers.

Brenna Galdenzi, president of Protect our Wildlife and a Stowe resident, has helped the town explore alternatives to trapping for years, and she doesn’t think the town did its best to assure the success of the beaver deceivers and she’s certain trapping won’t solve the problem either.

According to Galdenzi, the town should have cleared the beaver deceivers of debris more frequently. Shepard said there was never a discussion about maintaining the devices after they were installed. He ticked off a long list of tasks and projects for his staff, clearing the deceivers has not been a high priority.

Galdenzi said trapping isn’t a one-off action and, often, when beavers are removed from an area, a new family shows up and they can revive a dam almost overnight. If you trap once, Galdenzi said, you trap every year.

The selectboard was not unanimous in its vote to remove the beaver deceiver, with Paco Aumand casting the sole nay vote.

“I’m sensitive to the flooding issue,” Aumand said, “but I don’t think this solves our problem for this summer.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Stowe officials contend with beavers building dams near a downtown park.

When rumors about closing the Copley Hospital Birthing Center started to circulate last year, Sarah Chouinard, the president of the hospital’s nurses union, and many of her colleagues thought they were just that: rumors.

“There have always been cycles of this threat of closure,” she said. “But we’ve been protected because of community public relations and the service we provide for the community.” 

Then, one of the hospital’s four midwives scaled back her hours to work on an as-needed basis. The hospital initially made no plan to hire a replacement, then posted the job, found a good candidate but never made the hire. The other three midwives grew suspicious. 

Chouinard also began emailing Copley President Joe Woodin, similarly seeking clarity: Were these just more rumors swirling around the birthing center? Would her nurses need to worry about being reassigned? 

She said she got no response.

“The more that was not said, the more we knew what was happening,” Chouinard said. 

In March 2025, the Morristown hospital announced it was launching a comprehensive review of the birthing center to explore closing or expanding its operations. Those were the options suggested by a landmark report published by a state-hired consulting firm last year that outlined radical changes needed to make the health care system in Vermont more accessible and affordable. 

Hospital leadership said it does not plan to make a decision until a consultant hired to do the review submits its recommendations, which are expected in mid-June. The hospital’s associated Women’s Center, which hosts gynecological and obstetric care, is slated to remain open, regardless of the hospital’s decision on the birthing center, according to hospital spokesperson Barbara Walls.

Still, the threat of losing such a beloved center has left the community incensed.

Supporters of the birthing center quickly created an online petition, which has garnered more than 2,500 signatures. Advocates hosted a Mother’s Day rally in support of the center, peppered their yards with lawn signs, and wrote countless letters to the hospital and public in hopes of underscoring just how great a loss the closure of the Copley Hospital Birthing Center would be for Lamoille County. 

The public outcry reached such a boiling point that Copley decided to postpone its annual Stowe Art Wine & Food Fundraiser over concerns about a planned protest at the event.

The midwife model

Advocates argue the closure of the birthing center would not only leave the community without a local place for delivery, but it would also jeopardize what patients and providers consider to be a model for midwife-driven care.

When a pregnant patient comes to the center, a midwife leads their prenatal visits and development of the birthing plan. The clinic’s two OB-GYNs are part of that broader care team but only become hands-on with a patient’s care if there is a need — like gestational diabetes or hemorrhaging in birth, Kopas said. 

“It’s a different approach that puts the pregnant person at the center of decision making,” said Mary Lou Kopas, one of Copley’s three full-time nurse midwives. “(The model) looks at pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding as normal physiologic processes and not medical emergencies waiting to happen.”

She said the approach also centers “shared decision making,” where the provider takes time to listen to the patient’s specific needs, lifestyle and circumstances in forming a birthing plan. “It’s not a one size fits all,” she said.

Patients believe that this approach is what’s made their experiences so positive.

“It’s such a special place. It’s the only time that I’ve had an interaction with the medical system where I left that interaction feeling like I was treated with dignity and respect,” said Eva Zaret, a public health specialist who had both her children — a 3-year-old and a 9-month-old — at Copley.

Zaret said she had a history of managing an eating disorder and had intense anxiety about gaining weight during pregnancy.

When Zaret began explaining her worries, the midwife walked her through the possible alternatives, and “then the midwife just put down everything,” Zaret said. “And she just looked at me, and said, ‘What do you need?’” 

Zaret told her she didn’t want to be weighed at her appointments, to which the midwife simply said “OK.” That was it. 

The birthing center also scores highly on one important marker of high-quality birthing care: Copley often cites that it has one of the lowest rates of C-section births in the state. 

At Copley 1 in about every 10 births is a C-section delivery, Kopas said, while nationally, that rate is closer to 1 in every 3. Part of that low rate, however, may be due to the fact that Copley is only able to accept low-risk pregnancies. 

Midwifery care has been associated with fewer preterm births, reduced labor interventions, and lower maternal and infant death and illness, as various control trials and observational studies have shown. 

“I think that Copley should be held up as a model — beyond just ‘you should have (this) many midwives on for this many hours.’ People should go shadow and see ‘how do I talk to a patient? What does it really mean to be trauma informed? Or, what does it really mean to be patient centered?’” Zaret said.

Paying for pregnancy 

When the consulting firm Oliver Wyman issued its report in September 2024, outlining ways to improve Vermont’s health care system, it recommended developing more regional “centers of excellence” for specialized care. 

For Copley, the report suggested scaling up to become a regional center of excellence for orthopedics. The report did not identify Copley as one of the four hospitals where major restructuring would be needed to stay afloat. 

The report, and thus Copley’s review, is part of a bigger push to scale back ballooning healthcare costs in the state.

“Our health system is experiencing an intense cost crisis, and also an access crisis,” said Brendan Krause, the director of health care reform at the state’s Agency of Human Services. “We’re seeing the cost crisis not just in hospitals, but also with our state regulated insurance market — which doesn’t just mean more, higher premiums for individuals and businesses. It also means it is more expensive to create jobs; property taxes go up.” 

“I would say this (review) is very much aligned with what a state has asked them to do. And, I would trust the hospital and the board to review the data and listen to their community and make the decision, according to the best information they have,” Krause added. 

Delivery nurses and midwives expressed frustration that there was little communication with their department about how to make the center more profitable. In late May, the board met with some of the midwives and providers to collect their input on how to close or expand, something providers had long been asking for. They and other stakeholder groups have been given an hour of time to share these ideas, observations and questions with the consultant.

Copley says the birthing center operates at a loss of $3 million to $5 million annually. Because commercial insurance rate increases are approved annually by the Green Mountain Care Board, a statewide health care regulator, Copley has been limited in what it can charge and how quickly it can increase those charges. As a result, currently, the hospital bills private insurers around $7,000 for a low-intervention, vaginal birth, while other large hospitals charge more than twice that number.

“Our costs are fixed. We do not have the ability to change those costs,” said Barbara Walls, the hospital’s spokesperson. 

When the Green Mountain Care Board set commercial insurance price increase rates in September, Copley pushed for an 11.8% increase in costs, Walls said. The board trimmed that request significantly to 3.4%, a rate increase that all hospitals were required to stay at or below. 

The board allowed Copley a total of 15% increase in commercial rates the previous fiscal year — 8% in September 2023 and an emergency additional 7% in April 2024.

Kopas and her colleagues see room for the program to draw in more money without raising costs: “I do think there is capacity to grow this program — could easily do 10% more births without increasing staffing,” Kopas added. 

One way of doing that, she and others suggested, would be to put a satellite prenatal clinic in Waterbury, where the hospital has recently expanded its orthopedic services. It would allow them to catch a larger array of patients right off Route 89, Kopas said.

Still, Walls said that an expansion and upgrade to the birthing facilities may not directly correlate with an increase in patients and revenue. Walls said 42% of the births in Lamoille County occur at the hospital.

“That’s 58% (of births) that are not happening at Copley,” she said. 

Part of that may be due to the fact that Copley can only accept low-risk pregnancies. Anyone who might need a Newborn Intensive Care Unit gets referred elsewhere, usually, to University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.

The hospital often cites low birth rates, which the Wyman report highlighted, as a reason to close the facility. The report identified a low volume of deliveries as a reason for the hospital either to “grow or shift birthing to other organizations.”

The report set a threshold of 240 births a year, as sufficient to offset the costs of running birthing operations. Copley has been well under that number since 2010, with birthing center deliveries landing between 160 to 200 a year. Since 2018, those levels have plateaued around 160 births a year. 

North Country Hospital in Newport and Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury, both of which draw from regions that overlap with Copley’s service area, also had birth volumes beneath the Wyman report threshold. 

Kopas interpreted the data differently, saying birth rates have remained steady and that this year’s due-dates are on track to keep the hospital in the same ballpark. Plus, Lamoille County is growing, she said.

Walls questioned whether that growth would make a difference.

“Yes, Lamoille County is growing, but is it growing with people who are planning on having additional children?” she said. “And would they be planning on having those children here?”

When Kim Horne and her husband were looking to buy a house in Morrisville in early 2020, their real estate agent highlighted the house’s proximity to Copley and its birthing center. 

“Like a lot of our friends who have also recently moved to the area, we were looking to start a family,” she said. In January 2024, she had her first child at Copley and is planning on giving birth to her second child there next month. 

Community care 

Many stress the importance of the fact that Copley is a community hospital as one of its great selling points — both because of the proximity it gives patients and the staff’s connection to the county. 

“It’s a community, and there’s even a family feel to it,” Chouinard said. “You realize you start taking care of generations of people – of babies’ babies.” 

Chouinard grew up in North Wolcott, went to Stowe High School and then the University of Vermont. She started her career at Copley before becoming a travel nurse, and in 2011 she returned to Copley and has stayed there ever since. 

“I was so excited to really take my skills and experience and do something here at home,” she said.

To patients, that community investment shows. 

“I think you could take any OB unit at a hospital, and you could staff it up with a 24/7 midwifery model, and you wouldn’t get what Copley has,” Zaret said. “They have worked very intentionally for a long time to create a culture there that really values their patients.” 

Moreover, many worry about what the absence of a local place to give birth will mean for patients. 

“That’s going to be a mess,” Chouinard said. “Ambulances don’t want to deliver babies, ERs don’t want to deliver babies. There are a lot of ‘what-ifs’ (to risks associated with birth) but we’re supposed to be here for the ‘what ifs.’”

Others worry that closing the birthing center would decrease prenatal visits — though Walls stressed that its Women’s Center will remain unaffected. Patients will still be able to access their pre and post natal care at Copley. 

Horne, who is eight months pregnant with her second child, worries about what any additional travel might mean for patients before they give birth. Her first baby was head down, but flipped, before she went into labor. 

“It was excruciating,” she said. “I couldn’t put any pressure on my pelvis or my lower back whatsoever. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sit, and when a contraction would happen, and I was seated in the car, even just for the tiniest commute, I was like lifting myself up in my seat,” she said, adding that having to make a longer drive “would have been dire.”

But to her, a community hospital represents more than just drivetimes. It’s about the investment a hospital has in its patients’ care, beyond profits.

“I’m not trying to be harsh or anything, but (if you close your birthing center), you can’t really call yourself a community hospital anymore because that’s such a vital pillar of a community,” she said. 

Walls said that the hospital knows that and is taking this to heart. 

“We understand that this is very emotional. It’s a deeply human process of birthing and creating new families, and we understand and respect that,” she said. “That being said, the temperature has gone up higher and higher, the more we have been forthcoming and transparent and acting from a place of integrity, the more we have received suspicion.”

For now, the hospital and its community members are in a holding pattern until the consultant’s report returns with recommended paths of action. 

Still, Kopas sees the low monetary value placed on midwifery care and birthing in general as part of a deeper systemic issue. 

“Why is care that is essential to people with a womb an expendable portion of care?” she asked. “I mean, this is primary care for women and other childbearing people. This is essential care. So why is it expendable? That just angers me. I see it in a bigger picture of misogyny in our culture. Why is this care not reimbursed at the value?” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Copley Hospital weighs closing its birthing center amid statewide effort to curb health care costs.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in the News & Citizen on May 29.

For nearly two years, there was no way to consistently purchase fresh produce in Johnson. The newly opened Johnson General Store changed that.

Since the Sterling Market closed following the flood of July 2023 and the grocer that operated it decided not to reopen the location, which had been repeatedly inundated over the years at its vulnerable position at the confluence of the Lamoille and Gihon rivers, the town had been without a grocery store.

The restaurants, gas stations, the dollar store and the Foote Brook farm stand in the summer months have helped fill the void, but fresh vegetables could only be acquired during the long winter months by taking a trip to Morrisville, which is seven miles away if you live in the village and even farther if you live outside of it, and only an option for those who have a car to drive.

With a grocery store’s return to the former Sterling Market location looking increasingly doubtful, longtime resident Mike Mignone and his wife Haley Newman stepped in to fill the gap by opening the Johnson General Store on Lower Main Street.

During the noon hour last Friday, a steady flow of customers signaled that the store, which opened May 9, is already settling in as part of the community. From behind the register, Newman said monitoring what sells fast and soliciting feedback from customers is helping the store owners learn what works and what doesn’t.

“We keep selling out of things that we didn’t necessarily expect would go so quickly,” Newman said. “There are certain things, like fresh produce, that we don’t want to order in large quantities and have them go bad, but then we’re selling them immediately and running out of different things.”

Mignone, who previously ran Hangry Mike’s food truck and has a background in the restaurant industry, had planned to open something similar, but after participating in the Reimagine Johnson initiative organized by Vermont Council for Community Development, where increasing food access had emerged as a vital goal for the community in the wake of the 2023 flood, he and Newman decided to prioritize a general store instead.

Supported by community members and the emerging food access task force, Mignone and Newman have put their own capital and equity on the line to open the store in the building they’re leasing from the former operators of the Get Yours head shop.

They’ve taken out loans from both the town and the village revolving loan funds — which are meant to encourage just such a community-oriented operation — filling the gap with their own savings and ensuring all the requirements for the licenses they needed were met, all while managing a family that includes two elementary school-age kids and a fifteen-month-old.

In February, a few months after Mignone announced his intent to open the general store, the Sterling Market property owners announced they would pursue a property buyout, ending speculation that a grocer might return to that location and making the need for the general store ever more urgent. Associated Grocers of New England, the former operator of the Sterling Market, is now the general store’s supplier.

The response Newman and Mignone have gotten from the community so far has primarily been gratitude.

“So much gratitude, so many smiles, so much excitement,” Newman said. “It’s really made all of the headaches and stresses of the past six months trying to get open worth it.”

A variety of fruit, vegetables, pantry staples and dry goods line evenly spaced shelves in the closely kept but clean, well-lit space. There are plenty of locally and regionally produced goods, and Newman said there’s more on the way. Occasional empty space on the shelves marks where customers have been particularly enthusiastic, and Mignone has already rolled out some ready-made options in a warming case at the back of the store.

At the community forums held as part of the Reimagine Johnson process, many remarked that it wasn’t the food they missed most about the Sterling Market, but its role as a place where shoppers ran into their neighbors.

The Johnson General Store is cozier than the old grocery store, and options more limited, but neighbors are already showing up. It’s the first general store in Johnson since Facey’s General Store, which last advertised in the News & Citizen in 1976, though DJ’s Corner Store and Deli had served a similar role in the same location well into the 2000s before its deli case was swapped out for glass pipes.

Johnson newcomer Joy Novakowski, who stopped by on Friday for a cup of coffee and a muffin to go, said food access had been important to her and her partner, and they had joined the food access task force when they came to town.

As with the recent monumental move of the Johnson Public Library from its longtime, flood-prone home on Railroad Street to higher ground at Legion Field, Novakowski sees the general store as part of Johnson’s changing narrative.

“It’s not only an essential hub, but socially, this is where we meet our neighbors,” she said. “With a community that’s trying to rebuild itself in so many ways and has the capacity to retain and grow, what does that story look like for Johnson when we’re actually nourishing the residents and people who are coming through to visit, too?”

The Johnson General Store’s story is just beginning, but just getting its doors open has felt like a monumental accomplishment to Mignone.

“We’ve got a long road ahead of us, but it’s been nice to be actually running the store,” he said.

“We’re just relieved that we made it,” Newman said. “There were so many moments of like, ‘Are we ever going to open the doors?’ Because it was just roadblock after roadblock after roadblock, and then waiting on different permits and licenses, and then that final week, everything came together.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Johnson General Store gets warm welcome.

Vermont State University President David Bergh announced Thursday that he plans to retire after the 2025-26 academic year when his current contract ends.

Bergh was tapped in November 2023 to be the university’s second interim president while the Vermont State Colleges board of trustees sought a permanent replacement for former president Parwinder Grewal, who resigned in April of the same year.

Bergh became the full-time president of the five consolidated state college campuses after the board of trustees extended his contract through 2026. His retirement coincides with the conclusion of the university’s multiyear effort to stabilize the institution during its transition from five distinct colleges to one unified system.

“It has been an incredible honor to serve as president of VTSU, which has in many ways been a full circle professional opportunity,” Bergh said in a Thursday press release from the university system.

Trustees Chair Lynn Dickinson previously told VTDigger the board extended his contract because of his calm, steady leadership amid the changes the university faced during its launching phase.

Faculty members expressed appreciation for Bergh’s leadership, which came at a tumultuous time. Meghan Meacham, a professor and the state university’s program coordinator, said in the release that she credited Bergh with alleviating some of “the growing pains of unification.”

Under Bergh’s leadership, the university enrolled more than 1,700 new students in the 2024-25 academic year –– a 14% increase from the year prior. Out-of-state enrollment also rose by 13%, with steady growth projected for the upcoming academic year, according to the release. 

The Vermont State Colleges System plans to conduct a national search for Bergh’s successor in the coming months, according to a university spokesperson. 

“Looking ahead, VTSU remains focused on expanding access to public higher education in Vermont and preparing students to lead in a rapidly changing world,” Greta Hasler, the university’s communications director, wrote in an email. “We are committed to building on the strong foundation Dr. Bergh has helped establish.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont State University’s president to retire in 2026.

Camila Van Order González is a reporter for Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

Since the emerald ash borer was first detected in Vermont in 2018, Plainfield has been unlucky in its relationship with the invasive beetle. The town was a hotspot for infestations in late April, leaving dry, rotted-out ash trees ready to crash.

But Hardwick, just a few towns north, has never seen any confirmed case of emerald ash borer, according to the state.

“It’s a good lesson in how the insect spreads,” said Noah Hoffman, the invasive species coordinator for the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. “Most of the emerald ash borer in the state –– we put it there.”

The emerald ash borer chews its way through forests with little regularity; it often spreads as a result of human activity, being carried on infested firewood or logging timber. They are most likely to use ash trees, which make up 6% of Vermont’s trees by volume, as hosts for larvae. The bugs have been spotted in 96 out of Vermont’s 247 municipal areas, Hoffman said.

That there are no emerald ash borers in Hardwick could be attributed to the work that foresters, educators and town management have done to slow the spread. 

“The state has done a great job with their educational outreach,” said Rose Paul of Plainfield’s conservation commission, “and we’ve tried to do our part in town.”

Hoffman said the state Agency of Natural Resources’ educational programs have been a big success in slowing the insect’s spread, teaching the public how to identify infected trees or wood and how to treat it.

“There are landowners who might have ash in their forest. If we can slow the spread, it gives people more time to think about what they want to do, do some research, create a plan for their trees,” Hoffman said. “Maybe they want to do some logging and cut their healthy ash trees.”

Trees with emerald ash borer larvae living in their bark can resemble partially peeled carrots — chunks of bark are stripped off. Those marks come from woodpeckers flecking away in search of grub. Other indications of infestation include splitting bark, thinning crowns and D-shaped exit holes on the trunk.

If left untreated, the infestation dries out the wood and turns it brittle, useless for logging, liable to fall and ultimately dead.

In Calais, townspeople’s understanding of the hazards of sick trees has made it possible to plan tree removal on a broad scale. 

“One of the things that strikes me about Calais is there’s a lot of interest in conservation and protection of natural resources,” said Kari Bradley, town administrator.

The town’s selectboard applied for an ash tree removal grant from the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program, a collaboration between the state and the University of Vermont Extension. Bradley said there was no opposition from the public on the board’s unanimous decision. 

“Calais has close to 80 miles of road, and there are somewhere (around) 3,000 ash trees along the right of way on those roads,” Bradley said.

Grant funding for the Urban and Community Forestry Program has changed due to “the shifting priorities of the current administration,” said Hoffman with a dry chuckle. “Is that a nice way of saying it?”

The Trump administration’s mass campaign to cut federal awards is a cause of “angst and concern,” Hoffman said, because although the program is state funded, “a lot of the work we actually do and the service we provide to Vermonters is through federally awarded grants.”

Other methods of managing the bug include injecting trees with a systemic insecticide, a process that can cost several hundred dollars every three years. It may seem pricey, but Hoffman argues that a tree could end up costing much more to take down than to vaccinate, especially if it caused damage on its way down.

For several years, the state has also been releasing natural predators to the emerald ash borer: few species of wasp-like insects that lay eggs inside the borer’s larvae or eggs. It’s a biocontrol measure aimed “to try to reduce its density and to try to give the trees more of a chance,” Hoffman said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: How Vermont towns are handling the emerald ash borer.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published by the News & Citizen on May 8.

The shelves on the second floor of Vermont State University Johnson’s Willey library are looking empty these days as the campus makes room for its growing nursing program.

The materials that once sat on the shelves have been moved to the library’s first and third floors as the university works “to create a more accessible and versatile area for learning and collaboration,” signs posted on the shelves read. The reorganization will make room for labs and simulation space for the nursing program, according to university Provost Nolan Atkins.

“Expanding nursing through the creation of labs and simulation space will really allow us to expand our nursing capacity here at Johnson and within the Lamoille County area,” Atkins said. “It would be a huge and positive byproduct in terms of just creating more nurses and contributing to the health care workforce in this part of the state.”

The Johnson campus is building out a unique tiered nursing program, where students can work toward the most basic levels of nursing qualifications, beginning with practical nursing certifications and laddering through a registered nursing degree and eventually to some master’s degrees.

Now, five years out since a warning by former Vermont State Colleges Chancellor Jeb Spaulding proposed the closure of several campuses, including the one in Johnson, amid financial distress, the state has invested millions in turning the beleaguered university system around.

Part of the former state college system’s reorganization has included a reshuffling of its academic offerings. In 2023, the university announced consolidations and shifts in focus at its campuses, including the expansion of in-demand nursing programs at its Johnson and Williston campuses, while some fine arts programs at Johnson were either terminated or consolidated.

The university recently announced a 15% increase in new students, with the nursing program among those receiving the most interest, even as the program is being built.

The university has also been assessing the unused buildings on its campuses and attempting to work with local communities to find new uses for them. For example, McClelland Hall on the Johnson campus is in the process of being transformed into affordable senior housing through previously apportioned federal funding.

The second floor of the library was identified as the area best suited for this component of the nursing program.

“It’s the one space that really would work well to build out the lab and simulation space,” Atkins said. “It would work really well for the students and for the program and would work in terms of just making the infrastructural changes that we would make we would need to make within the budgetary constraints that we have.”

The university’s libraries were the subject of contentious public debate in winter 2023, when then-President Parwinder Grewal attempted to enact a cost-reduction plan that would have closed libraries at campuses across Vermont, including the one in Johnson.

That decision was rescinded and Grewal resigned following intense backlash from students and the public. According to Alejandra Nann, library director for the Vermont State Colleges System, the decision to give up the second floor of the Johnson library to the nursing program was out of her scope but would benefit the Johnson campus in general.

“It’s about enriching the campus with another program, and essentially everyone benefits,” Nann said. “In terms of the library space, it’s being reorganized to make room for it.”

The university libraries are still playing catch-up after the pandemic closures prevented them from enacting the regular weeding of their collections, the process through which materials that are out of date or see little use are removed from the collection. Catching up on weeding has allowed the Johnson campus to free up space on the library’s second floor, and Nann said the process was standard and evidence based.

According to Nann, these changes will ultimately benefit the library.

“Nurses are huge library advocates and library users, so if anything, it might bring more vibrancy to the library, which we’re really excited about,” she said.

A previous version misspelled Alejandra Nann’s name, mischaracterized Parwinder Grewal’s role and misidentified Nolan Atkins’ last name.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont State University-Johnson swaps library space for nursing labs.

In April 2022, the stabbing death of Hinesburg transgender woman Fern Feather shocked and saddened the state of Vermont. 

In the days after the killing, as the investigation progressed, it emerged that Feather had had an altercation with another man a year prior — a man who, Vermont State Police said, was the son of then-suspect Seth Brunell.

That connection could have added key context to the murder case. But, in fact, the man had no relation to Brunell, and state police retracted the claim a day later. 

The misstep was just one of several mistakes that occurred during one of Vermont’s highest-profile murder cases in the past few years. Earlier this month, after a particularly grave error, that case culminated with a surprise plea deal and a sheriff’s deputy on administrative leave. 

Brunell pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and will serve a decade of probation with no additional prison time — a far lighter sentence than a murder conviction would entail.  

“It’s devastating. I can say that,” said Aliena Gerhard, the Lamoille County state’s attorney. “I was pretty angry.”

Even before it reached a trial, the case was a tangled one. Last fall, the case became embroiled in a controversy over evidence, after it emerged in late September that prosecutors had failed to turn over a 3D rendering of the crime scene to Brunell’s defense attorney. 

The state had mistakenly given the defense a model from a separate case, an error that Gerhard apologized for. 

Jessica Burke, Brunell’s attorney, asked the court to throw out the case based on that mistake. Presiding Judge Mary Morrissey, however, allowed the trial to go forward, with a postponement to allow the defense to prepare. Still, she wrote, “the court neither minimizes nor excuses the failure of the State” to turn over the 3D model. 

Morrissey levied a stronger penalty against prosecutors over the handling of another piece of evidence: a 20-page letter, allegedly written by Brunell while he was in prison in 2023. That letter allegedly laid out a plan to have sex with his defense attorney, then accuse her of sexual assault, with the goal of getting his case dismissed, according to court filings. 

In a court filing at the time, Assistant Attorney General Sophie Stratton sought to admit the letter as evidence in the case. Stratton wrote that prosecutors had only recently learned about the document, even though Vermont State Police had been aware of it for months.

But Morrissey ruled that the state had violated time limits for introducing evidence and that the letter could not be admitted. She wrote that “the late disclosure prevented Defendant from conducting depositions, gathering information on the chain of custody, or litigating whether this evidence was properly obtained.” 

Defense attorney Jessica Burke said last fall that the case was the most disorganized she had ever experienced. 

Gerhard, the Lamoille County state’s attorney, declined to comment on that letter. Burke declined to comment last week. 

‘Beyond belief’ 

The trial finally began in mid-April, three years after the killing of Feather. In her opening statement, Burke, Brunell’s attorney, laid out the defense’s argument that Brunell had acted in self-defense. 

The case, she argued, was botched from the start. Law enforcement charged Brunell with murder even before they completed processing all the evidence, Burke said. She argued that law enforcement had failed to thoroughly collect evidence, and that officers had allowed Feather’s dogs to roam freely around the crime scene for roughly an hour after the killing, potentially contaminating the scene. 

But the jury never got a chance to make a decision on those arguments. On May 15, the second full day of the trial, the attorneys learned that Brunell had an unauthorized conversation with a Lamoille County Sheriff’s deputy one day earlier while being driven from the courtroom to Southern State Correctional Facility after jury selection.

In testimony, it emerged that Vermont State Police Detective Sergeant Isaac Merriam had asked the sheriff’s department to use a body camera to create a recording during the drive.  

“I wanted to make sure that that transport was recorded in case Mr. Brunell made statements about this case,” Merriam told the court. 

Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department Detective Kevin Lehoe testified that he had passed along Merriam’s request to Sheriff’s Deputy Christopher Turner, who had been assigned to the transport.

Although he instructed Turner to record the trip on his body camera, Lehoe said, he had not told him to ask specific questions about the case. The recording was just intended to capture any “excited utterance” that Brunell might make, Lehoe told the court.  

Had Lehoe explicitly warned Turner against asking questions? Burke, the defense attorney, asked.

“I didn’t at the time, no, and I didn’t expect that I would have to,” Lehoe replied.  

But, according to a transcript reviewed by VTDigger, at least one law enforcement officer in the car during the transport did, in fact, ask Brunell questions. 

Two sheriff’s deputies, Turner and a Rutland County deputy whose identity was not clear, were assigned to the transport. Although the transcript of the conversation is not exact, the document clearly shows that Brunell was questioned about Feather’s car, the knife used in the killing and his relationship with his attorney.

Jared Carter, a constitutional law professor with Vermont Law and Graduate School, said that questioning a defendant outside of the presence of their lawyer is a clear violation of the constitutional right to an attorney.

“Once a person has been read their Miranda rights, they have the right to an attorney,” Carter said. “And certainly, once that happens, law enforcement is not allowed to continue to question a suspect or a defendant or somebody who’s been arrested.”

For the questioning to happen on the eve of a trial is “quite frankly, beyond belief,” he said.

Turner, the sheriff’s deputy who conducted the transport of Brunell, was placed on administrative leave while an outside law enforcement agency conducts an investigation, Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux said earlier this month. 

‘Gross negligence’

On the second night of the trial, Burke filed a motion for a mistrial. In court the next morning, describing the transcript from the body camera, both Burke and Gerhard described the incident as “egregious.”

By the end of the next day, with the specter of a mistrial looming, the attorneys had hashed out a plea deal. Prosecutors said that day that they were concerned that, in the case of a mistrial, they would not be able to refile charges against Brunell and that he would ultimately walk completely free.

But the 10 years of probation was a far cry from the possibility of the decades in prison Brunell faced if convicted of second-degree murder. And the sentence elicited anger and dismay from Feather’s family and friends. 

“The only reason you’re getting out now is because of the gross negligence of the Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department,” Lisa Barbeau, Feather’s mother, told Brunell in an emotional statement at the conclusion of the trial. “Because you are a murderer.”

In his own remarks, Jean-Francois Barbeau, Feather’s father, condemned the “slap on the wrist” Brunell received.

“This isn’t justice. It’s a pitiful parody of justice,” he said. “Fuck you all.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: How a high-profile Vermont murder case fell apart.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the town of Johnson plans to roll their public library a half-mile through town and across the river to its new home. That’s right: The over-a-century-old brick building is going to roll.

The move is designed to take the library out of the floodplain, where it has been damaged by high waters again and again since its construction in 1909. According to Library Director Jeanne Engel, the building has been hit with around 15 floods, large and small, during her 25-plus-year career. Despite previous mitigation efforts, the July 2023 flood hit the town and its library particularly hard.

“We are not just jacking up and rolling the physical building down the street … we are creating a new heart of Johnson that is free from the risk of flooding,” Town Administrator Thomas Galinat wrote in a press release about the move. “This is a message for Johnson, and all of Vermont, it is time to do something different.”

The town is employing 28 bucket trucks, 60 to 70 construction workers, around a dozen utility workers, four police cruisers, two ambulances and a fire truck to move the library to its new home, a spot right between Johnson’s Elementary School and Legion Field. The process is expected to take all night.

On Friday evening, utility workers plan to turn power off and bring lines down to make a clear path for the building. At midnight, the building will begin its journey down to Route 15 and across the Pearl Street Bridge, where streetlights will have been removed: The library is wide enough to hang out over the guardrails. 

The downtown section of Route 15, a two-lane state highway, is set to be closed at 3 a.m. to make way for the move. 

Around 9 a.m. on Saturday, Galinat estimated, the library will have just about reached its new home, which was formerly an alumni house for Vermont State University, Galinat said on Thursday. After that building was taken down two decades ago, the vacant lot has been used as an overflow parking lot.

Town leaders are asking the greater community to gather in celebration on Legion Field at 11:30 a.m., where the main event is in store: Elementary school children will be pulling the building into place with ropes around noon.

‘Rewriting our story’

Moving the 40-by-45-foot building out of the floodplain’s reach had always been a pipe dream for library staff and trustees. Following the 2023 flood, however, things were desperate enough that the pipe dream became the solution, Galinat said Thursday.

“In the face of increasing weather events and all we’ve lost, we are Rewriting Our Story,” he wrote in the release. “It was the rivers that brought us together to build the mill town of Johnson, (and) it is now time to accept that it is the rivers that are putting our town at risk.”

Following Saturday’s move, library trustees plan to proceed with further renovation and construction efforts, with a tentative target date of being in the building by Dec. 31.

The project is funded by a $1.68 million grant from the Vermont Department of Libraries. In addition to the move and restoration work, library trustees plan to make new space for community meeting rooms, a computer lab and private areas for telehealth services. According to a community donation site, part of the library will remain open after regular hours for community events, meetings and programs.

Engel, the library director, learned of the grant opportunity less than a month before it was due, she said, and a group of community volunteers put together the application in two weeks.

Galinat recalled the moment when the volunteers sat down and divided up pieces of the 10-page grant application to work on — including the backstory, potential future programming, contacting engineers and the Agency of Transportation. It was “probably the most beautiful moment” in his municipal career, he said.

“Really anything is truly possible in a time of need —” Galinat said.

“— when you have a community,” Engel added.

Even now, it’s the community that’s coordinating the move, as the renovation project does not have a general contractor and is not yet out to bid.

“This is literally a community effort moving a building across town,” Galinat said.

The 2023 flood devastated more than just the library, however. The town’s wastewater treatment plant filled with eight feet of water along with the post office, the first floor of the municipal office building and Johnson’s sole grocery store.

The village trustees have voted to restore the sewage plant in its current location, Galinat said Thursday. However, the town is still working to move more of Johnson’s downtown out of the floodplain. There have been preliminary conversations about moving the municipal building, he said.

‘Restored and reimagined’

Meanwhile, in Montpelier, the same July 2023 flood destroyed 5,000 donated books, the library’s main control systems and caused leaking from oil tanks at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. Renovations have been ongoing, and a grand opening of the library’s basement is planned for May 3.

According to a press release, the “restored and reimagined” lower level will hold the library’s year-round book sale, new meeting rooms and a dedicated break room for staff. In addition, it will be the new home for Elevate Youth Services’ basement teen center.

According to Sarah Wisner, operations and communications coordinator for the library, the flood recovery work cost $2 million and was funded through insurance, donors and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster funding. The work was done with an eye toward flood resiliency, the press release said.

Both public libraries are looking forward to their future — one hopefully free of flooding

“We are thrilled to welcome everyone back into our restored space,” Kellogg-Hubbard Library Executive Director Dan Groberg said in the press release. “It’s a chance to come together, reflect on how far we’ve come, and look forward to an exciting future for our Library community.”

Read the story on VTDigger here:  ‘Time to do something different’: Johnson’s library to roll across town, out of the floodplain, on Saturday.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News & Citizen on April 24.

Lamoille Health Partners took quick action to avoid the eviction of its dental offices in Morrisville Plaza earlier this month, catching up on payments in arrears just as its landlord filed documents accusing the health care nonprofit of breaching its lease contract.

Savoy-Texas, LLC, the Delaware-incorporated group that owns the building occupied by Lamoille Family Dentistry, alleged in court filings that Lamoille Health Partners owed $50,000 in lease payments.

Peter Anderson, chair of the Lamoille Health board of directors, said the organization had caught up on lease payments just prior to the legal filing and that it was being withdrawn.

Lamoille Health Partners is also facing a lawsuit filed by its former Stowe landlords after it withdrew its primary care clinic earlier this year. The legal claim filed by Grandview Farms alleges it is owed $240,000 in back rent and an unpaid share of common-area maintenance of the building.

Susan Bartlett, Lamoille Health board member and interim CEO, said the organization’s failure to make its lease payments on the Morrisville dentistry was due to a lack of cash on hand, but the situation was stabilizing.

Bartlett said the goal now is to make more efficient use of the space at the dentistry office and consolidate some of its services there. Lamoille Health Partners, a federally qualified health center that provides primary care, pediatric care, mental health care, substance abuse treatment and dental care to around 19,000 people, is currently undergoing an organization-wide, $2 million cost-cutting effort and exploring a merger with Copley Hospital.

The dentistry, one of the few in the Lamoille County area that accepts adult patients with Medicaid insurance, has a months-long waitlist for new patient appointments.

Lamoille Health’s federally qualified status allows it to be reimbursed by Medicaid at a higher rate than other health care providers and allows patients to pay for services on a sliding scale, but its already dire financial situation is further challenged by massive cuts to Medicaid being considered at the federal level by the Republican-controlled Congress.

Lt. Gov. John Rodgers, R-Glover, raised the alarm regarding the potentially devastating health care cuts being considered at a recent Lamoille County legislative breakfast and again at a forum hosted by Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., in Stowe earlier this month, calling out specifically the threat posed to the state’s 11 federally qualified health centers.

Bartlett, who served as Lamoille County’s state senator for decades, said she didn’t envy current lawmakers and called the threatened cuts “truly terrifying.”

“It’s the chaos of not knowing,” she said. “Once you know, you can start to make some concrete plans and start to make what will be difficult choices, but it’s so hard to do any of that when you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Morristown dental clinic avoids eviction.

Two trails run east-west across Vermont: the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, which runs from Swanton to St. Johnsbury entirely on a former rail bed, and the perhaps lesser-known, Cross Vermont Trail, which runs from Burlington through Montpelier to Wells River with just under half of the trail on off-road walking and biking paths.

Michael Thomas of Wells River, a village in Newbury, is a founding member of the Cross Vermont Trail Association and chair of its board. He has been thinking for many years about how the two trails almost parallel each other and wondered, why not connect them?

This year, Thomas and other volunteers plan to publish a map and put up signs along a route that does just that. Running from Danville to Wells River, the 19.7-mile Bayley Hazen Connector will mainly follow town roads with great views of farmland and forests as well as the White Mountains and Connecticut River, he said.

The select boards of the towns the connector passes through — Newbury, Ryegate, Peacham, Barnet and Danville — were all thrilled with the idea, Thomas said. Danville’s chamber of commerce is even supplying funds for the signs in its town. However, an official in one of the towns did note that some already bike those roads.

It’s true, Thomas said, though adding signs will make drivers more aware and the route safer and, in addition, will support more people traveling the formalized route. But there is a broader goal for the Bayley Hazen Connector, one the Cross Vermont Trail Association has taken on almost since its inception: not just physically crossing the state, but also reaching out into and serving the communities nearby.

“Eventually, the idea is that we’re all connected — and not just by car,” Thomas said Monday.

Thirty-three years ago, Thomas answered a newspaper ad that marked the very beginnings of the Cross Vermont Trail. “Is anyone interested in creating a trail across Vermont, from East to West?” Thomas paraphrased.

The trail was stitched together using various roads and paths — including parts of the former Montpelier-Wells River railroad — and signs were first placed from end to end in the mid-2000s, Thomas said. Since then, the trail association has focused on steadily moving more and more of its trail off the road — a little over 40 of its 90 miles currently are — as well as growing “sideways” into the community.

For example, the Cross Vermont Trail goes by nine schools, Thomas said, and so far three of those schools have connector trails.

Early on, the association connected its trail with Blue Mountain Union School in Newbury and constructed a five-mile network of trails behind the school. Both are used by classes and community members. Almost every day, Thomas said, there’s at least one car in a nearby lot — a community member using the trails.

Although the Cross Vermont Trail runs the width of the state, it’s mainly intended for people to use the parts near their homes to recreate or commute. It’s not a wilderness trail, Thomas emphasized: it’s a community trail.

“People walk out their door and can ride their bikes or walk their dogs,” he said. “Grandparents can take their grandchildren to walk on terrain they both can handle.”

Over the years, the association has also connected the Cross Vermont Trail with two other schools and their nature trails: Twinfield Union School in Plainfield and, most recently, U-32 Middle & High School in Montpelier.

In Montpelier, the association built a 208-foot pedestrian bike bridge across the Winooski River that officially opened in June 2022, getting the route off of high-speed Route 2 and onto a quiet and accessible path — an amazing feat for a non-profit with one full-time employee, Thomas said.

In addition to promoting the Bayley Hazen Connector route, the association’s next project will be getting a two-and-a-half-mile section launched into Wells River off Route 302, Thomas said. Right across the Connecticut River from that village, he pointed out, is another cross-state trail: the 83-mile Cross New Hampshire Adventure Trail, which Thomas said was inspired by and modeled after the Cross Vermont Trail.

One other trail connection is in the forefront of Thomas’ mind: in 2023, the Vermont Agency of Transportation gauged municipal support for a potential bicycle corridor that would run approximately 190 miles from the Massachusetts border to the Canadian border along Route 5.

Thomas said he “jumped right out of (his) socks” when he heard the idea.

According to the Agency of Transportation’s study — submitted to the legislature in January 2024 — all 36 towns and regional planning commissions who responded to the survey were supportive of moving forward with a planning study for the bicycle corridor, and almost all said bicycle conditions were poor in their area and that it was important to improve them.

Amy Tatko, spokesperson for the agency, wrote Thursday in an email that the agency has no further role in the potential project at this point, though a bill introduced in the statehouse this session could create a steering committee to guide the development of such a bicycle route.

No matter the long-term outcome of the idea, the possibility got Thomas scheming about a “nice loop” that could further the goal of connecting the Cross Vermont Trail with the community: the majority of Route 5 from Wells River to St. Johnsbury has a wide shoulder and lacks heavy truck traffic, so one could take that to the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail and then loop back on what’s soon-to-be the Bayley Hazen Connector.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Cross Vermont Trail expands into nearby communities with connector to Lamoille Valley Rail Trail.

A Lamoille County Sheriff’s Deputy has been placed on administrative leave amid an investigation into a conversation he had with a man charged with murder.

Deputy Christopher Turner was assigned to transport duty in the trial this week of Seth Brunell, who has been charged with second-degree murder for the 2022 killing of Fern Feather, a transgender Hinesburg woman. 

On Monday, as Turner and Brunell were driving from the Hyde Park courthouse to Southern State Correctional Facility, where Brunell was being held, the two engaged in a lengthy conversation — something Brunell’s attorney described as inappropriate and in violation of Brunell’s constitutional rights.

Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux said in an interview Thursday evening that Turner has been placed on administrative leave while an outside law enforcement agency conducts an investigation. 

It was not yet clear what outside law enforcement agency will perform the investigation, Marcoux said, nor how long it will take. 

“I’ve been in law enforcement for 45 years, and when these kind of things happen, you feel terrible,” Marcoux said. “This family, Fern’s family, deserved to have justice and closure.”

The conversation prompted Jessica Burke, Brunell’s defense attorney, to ask the judge for a mistrial — and ultimately led to an abrupt plea deal that lets Brunell walk free without serving more prison time. Brunell has been jailed since his arrest in 2022.

Taken together, it marks a swift and remarkable conclusion to a murder trial that was three years in the making. 

According to a transcript of the conversation, which was recorded on a body camera, Turner and another law enforcement officer in the vehicle asked Brunell multiple questions about the day he was alleged to have killed Feather and his relationship with his defense attorney, Jessica Burke. 

The identity of the other law enforcement officer was not immediately clear, but they were a Rutland County Sheriff’s Deputy, according to Marcoux.

Burke wrote that the plan to record the conversation had started with a Vermont State Police investigator, who had communicated a desire to record the transport of Brunell “for the explicit purpose of obtaining evidence to use against the Defendant.”

Adam Silverman, a spokesperson for the state police, referred comment to the Lamoille County State’s Attorney. Aliena Gerhard, the state’s attorney, did not immediately respond to an email Thursday evening. 

The transcript of the conversation, which was filed with Lamoille County Superior Court, does not clarify who exactly said what. But it shows that law enforcement officers in the vehicle asked Brunell multiple questions about the day he killed Feather. Officers asked Brunell about the knife he allegedly used: “Was it pretty heavy?” and “Did it have like a belt loop that you could put it on your belt and stuff?” 

They also asked about Brunell’s interactions with Feather, about what Brunell described as Feather’s sexual advances and the condition of their car. Brunell answered many of the questions at length, describing many of the events prior to Feather’s killing in detail. 

Officers also asked about Brunell’s opinion about Burke — “You happy with your lawyer right now?” — and a previous lawyer, who Brunell said he did not like.

Those inquiries — about Burke’s and Brunell’s relationship — were “repugnant questions to any notion of justice and fair play,” Burke wrote in her motion for dismissal.

“Vermonters should be ashamed of law enforcement’s conduct in this case,” she wrote.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Lamoille County Sheriff’s deputy placed on leave over conversation with defendant in murder trial.

Seth Brunell, who was charged with second-degree murder in the 2022 killing of Hinesburg transgender woman Fern Feather, reached a surprise plea deal Thursday midway through his trial. 

Under the terms of the deal, Brunell will plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter and will serve a decade of probation but no additional prison time. He has been jailed since his arrest in 2022, as his trial has been repeatedly delayed. 

Lamoille County Superior Court Judge Mary Morrissey approved the plea deal Thursday. Under the conditions, Brunell will be prohibited from consuming alcohol or drugs without a prescription, will be barred from possessing firearms and will wear an electronic monitoring device during his probationary period, according to court records. 

A second-degree murder conviction could have resulted in Brunell being incarcerated for life.  

The deal comes partway through the first week of Brunell’s trial in Lamoille Superior Court in Hyde Park, and a day after his attorney, Jessica Burke, made a motion for a mistrial. Burke filed the motion after discovering that a Lamoille County Sheriff’s deputy had allegedly improperly spoken with Brunell about the incident while transporting him from the courthouse to Southern State Correctional Facility on Monday afternoon.

According to Burke’s motion, a state police investigator directed law enforcement officers in a “scheme” to record the conversation during the transport in the hopes of obtaining “evidence of Defendant’s statements to use against him during the pending trial.” 

During that conversation, a Lamoille County Sheriff’s deputy asked Brunell specific questions about the day of Feather’s death and Brunell’s relationship with his attorney, all of which he answered “candidly,” according to the motion for dismissal. 

That resulted in statements from Brunell “obtained in violation of his Miranda rights, to his right to counsel, and in violation of attorney client privilege,” Burke wrote.

Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Aliena Gerhard, the Lamoille County state’s attorney, declined to comment on any connection between the mistrial motion and the plea deal. According to reporting from WCAX, Gerhard criticized the actions of law enforcement during the transport. The scrubbed trial also drew a critique from Feather’s mother, the TV station reported. 

Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux said he was not immediately able to comment on the matter Thursday afternoon. A Vermont State Police spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

Burke, Brunell’s attorney, said the potential mistrial was a major factor in the plea deal.

“My client and I and the state were all prepared to see this trial through,” Burke said in an interview. “That was everyone’s intent, that was everyone’s goal, but unfortunately, due to this unconstitutional behavior on the part of law enforcement, we were suddenly left without a path forward to try the case.”

Brunell was confident about the case, Burke said, but it didn’t make sense to risk further litigation “when you have an outcome that can result in freedom, which is what this offer did.”

The plea deal puts an end to the high-profile criminal proceeding spurred by the April 2022 stabbing of the 29-year-old Feather, whose killing led to an outpouring of grief and condemnations of violence against the Vermont LGBTQ+ community.

Prior to the plea deal, however, Brunell’s attorney had argued that he was acting in self-defense after Feather made increasingly aggressive sexual advances.  

The plea deal also resolves a separate charge related to a 2023 escape attempt from Northeast Correctional Complex. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Seth Brunell reaches plea deal in death of Fern Feather with no additional prison time.

HYDE PARK — Prosecutors and defense attorneys offered competing narratives of the 2022 killing of Fern Feather, a Hinesburg transgender woman, as the trial of suspect Seth Brunell began Tuesday.

Brunell, 46, has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Feather in Morristown three years ago. If convicted, he could face up to life in prison. 

In an opening statement, Sophie Stratton, an assistant attorney general, urged jurors to apply their “good judgment” and “common sense” to the facts of the alleged murder and ask if Feather’s death was warranted. 

“The questions that you have to answer: How did this happen? Why did it happen? And was it justified?” Stratton said. 

But Jessica Burke, the attorney defending Brunell, told the jury that the killing was an act of self-defense. The “rational conclusion” is that Feather attacked Brunell with a pair of scissors, and he stabbed Feather to protect himself, Burke said in her opening statement. 

“SELF-DEFENSE ≠ MURDER,” Burke wrote on a large sheet of paper before the jury. 

On Tuesday, prosecutors called multiple witnesses and presented evidence that provided more details about the incident on the morning of April 12, 2022, that left Feather dead. 

According to testimony from law enforcement witnesses, Brunell had told police he had checked himself into a Berlin hospital several days prior for mental health concerns. After leaving the hospital, he was walking toward I-89 when Feather picked him up along the side of the road.

The two spent several days together, during which Feather and Brunell became close, according to Feather. 

“Seth isn’t gay. He’s just a new awesome friend, life partner,” Feather told a friend, Eliza Curtis, in a text message the morning of their death, according to a text exchange between her and Feather that prosecutors presented in court. 

But just hours later, around 10 a.m., Morristown resident Karen Cleary was driving down Duhamel Road when she spotted Feather’s lifeless body on the ground, with Brunell speaking on a phone nearby, according to her testimony Tuesday. Cleary stopped and, not long after a brief exchange with Brunell, called 911, she told the court.     

According to Lance Lamb, a Morristown patrol officer who responded to the 911 call, Brunell told him that Feather had repeatedly sexually propositioned him while the two were spending time together. Lamb said that Brunell told him he’d turned down Feather’s advances. 

But on the morning of the killing, while the two were in Feather’s car, Feather’s sexual propositions became more and more frequent, according to Lamb’s recollection of Brunell’s account. 

When Feather, who was in the driver’s seat, crossed over the center of the car toward Brunell, who was in the passenger seat, Brunell “grabbed the knife and he pushed it into Fern’s chest at that point,” Lamb said, relating the story Brunell told him. “He continued pushing on the knife as he pushed Fern out of the driver’s side of the car onto the roadway.”

Lamb’s body camera footage, presented to the court, showed Feather’s body lying face up on the ground next to their car, surrounded by blood. Two dogs were also wandering in the road.

Burke, the defense attorney, used her opening statement and cross-examinations to question law enforcement’s handling of the case. Police had been too hasty with their investigation, she said, saying that Brunell had been criminally charged just hours after his arrest. What’s more, she said, law enforcement had allowed the “egregious” contamination of the crime scene.

She questioned multiple aspects of police officers’ procedures: why they had let dogs roam loose across the crime scene, why they had declined to test a substance found on the blade of a pair of scissors in Feather’s car, how they interpreted markings — that officers said were potential signs of a struggle — on the dirt road. 

“The evidence will show that law enforcement rushed this case,” Burke said in her opening statement. “They didn’t slow down and assess the evidence. I submit that, if they had, they would have found that Seth acted in self-defense.”

The trial is expected to continue through this week and into early next week. 

Correction: A prior version of this story misrepresented testimony about Brunell’s hospitalization.

Editor’s note: A paragraph in this story has been removed in line with VTDigger’s style guidelines.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Murder trial of Seth Brunell in death of Fern Feather gets underway.

HYDE PARK — The trial of the man charged with the murder of Fern Feather, a transgender Hinesburg woman, began Monday, nearly three years to the day after Feather’s death. 

Seth Brunell, 46, has pleaded not guilty to a second-degree murder charge for the killing of Feather, 29, on April 12, 2022. If convicted, he could face up to life in prison. 

According to charging documents, Brunell had told law enforcement officers in 2022 that Feather had picked him up while he was hitchhiking. The pair spent several days together before Brunell allegedly stabbed Feather to death, according to Brunell and others. He told police officers at the time that he was acting in self defense, and that Feather had sexually propositioned him and then attacked him when he turned them down. 

The first full day of the case — which has already seen months of delays — was taken up by jury selection, in which the prosecutor and defense attorney asked a pool of potential jurors a series of questions. 

Aliena Gerhard, the Lamoille County state’s attorney, asked possible jurors about their opinions on LGBTQ+ people. Asking for a show of hands, Gerhard asked, “Do any of you have moral or religious beliefs against transsexuality?” No hands went up. 

“Do any of you have moral or religious beliefs against homosexuality?” Gerhard asked, again eliciting no hands. But another question — whether potential jurors were annoyed by questions about their pronouns — drew a few raised hands, as did the question, “Do you think that there should be only two genders?”

Questions from Jessica Burke, the attorney representing Brunell, took a different tack. Burke, a lawyer with Burlington firm Burke Law, asked: Were jurors generally able to change their minds when presented with new evidence? Had possible jurors ever been provoked by anyone, or ever felt trapped? If someone causes the death of someone else, does that necessarily amount to murder?

On Monday, Brunell was dressed in a light blue dress shirt and sported a neatly pulled-back ponytail. For most of the day, he sat quietly with a placid expression, sometimes writing notes or speaking with his attorneys.

Brunell is being charged separately with attempting to escape from St. Johnsbury’s Northeast Correctional Complex in April 2023, when he allegedly tried to scale a fence with the help of sheets knotted together. 

By midafternoon, after much shuffling in the jury box, the court finally selected 16 possible jurors, 12 of whom will be randomly selected to actually serve at the end of the case. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a jury,” Lamoille County Superior Court Judge Mary Morrissey said around 3:10 p.m., to applause. 

Opening statements are scheduled to begin Tuesday morning in the case, which is expected to last roughly a week.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Jury selected for murder trial of Seth Brunell in killing of Fern Feather .

An investigation by Vermont State Police is underway into the deaths of two people found inside a home Wednesday afternoon in Eden.

The bodies of the two deceased are expected to be taken to Vermont Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington for autopsies to determine the cause and manner of death, Vermont State Police stated in a press release Wednesday evening.

The names of the two people were not immediately released by authorities pending notification of their relatives and further investigation, the police statement added. 

Police said they received a call a little after 2 p.m. Wednesday, and responding deputies from the Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department and a warden from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife found two people dead inside the residence on Route 100 in Eden, the state police press release said. 

“Everyone involved in this incident is believed to be accounted for, and there is no identified threat to the community,” the release added. 

State police said their investigation into the deaths was in the “preliminary stages,” involving several state police divisions, including its Major Crime Unit and the Lamoille County State’s Attorney’s Office.

Read the story on VTDigger here: State police probe deaths of 2 people found inside Eden home.

Owen Evans is a reporter with Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

Among his peers, ski patroller Brian Lindner is often described as the unofficial historian of Stowe Mountain Resort, a title he’s earned after 51 years working on the mountains and more than 25 years working to preserve the story of the resort’s past. 

Born in 1952, Lindner spent the first 10 years of his life in housing provided by the job of his father, Erwin Lindner. That job just so happened to be forest ranger for Mt. Mansfield State Forest. And the housing? The state shelter at the bottom of the mountain, known today as Mansfield Base Lodge. In fact, the room that currently houses the ski patrol was built as a bedroom for Lindner and his brother. 

Growing up on the mountain, Lindner witnessed the history of Stowe take place in real time. Charlie Lord, who was in charge of cutting the first trails on the mountains, is someone Lindner considered a friend. Perry Merrill, who was charged with managing the Vermont branch of the Civilian Conservation Corps and widely considered the “the father of Vermont skiing,” was Erwin Lindner’s boss. 

But Brian wasn’t fully aware just how significant those around him really were, including Merrill.

“When he was around I knew we had to be on our best behavior. I did not recognize until decades later the importance that man had to Stowe and skiing in Vermont,” Lindner said.

In 1973, while studying mass communications and history at the University of Vermont, Lindner was hired part time at the resort, starting out as a ski instructor. In 1988, Lindner transitioned to ski patrol, where he’s been every winter since. Outside of Stowe, Lindner spent his career with National Life in Montpelier and is still there part time as the corporate historian.

Lindner, now a Waterbury resident, is a lifelong history buff known for meticulously researching the 1944 crash of a U.S. military training flight on Camel’s Hump as well as other Vermont mountain plane crashes. Lindner didn’t begin his work on the resort’s history until a conversation in 1996 put things into perspective. 

“We had a rookie patroller, and we were sitting around at our top station at the top of the (FourRunner) Quad, just kind of randomly talking Stowe Mountain Resort history. This one rookie, he looked around the table and he said, ‘Other resorts would kill to have a history like this.’ And that statement stuck with me, and I said, ‘He’s right, and I need to start documenting this.”

Since then, Lindner’s collection has grown to include documents, photographs, newsletters, DVDs and pretty much any other materials he can get his hands on having to do with the resort.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s really fun,” he said. 

Some of his work can be seen in Stowe Magazine, which published a story written by Lindner about the history of the Mt. Mansfield Ski Patrol in the Winter/Spring 2024-25 edition. Lindner also wrote an article for the Burlington Free Press titled “The epic history of Stowe Mountain Resort.”

Through his love for resort history, Lindner has developed a strong connection with the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum, located on Main Street in downtown Stowe. 

He’s a “huge ambassador for what we do,” said Abby Blackburn, the museum’s director. “He takes a lot of pride in this place and always has us on the forefront of his mind.”

When the resort replaced the Mountain Triple lift with the Sunrise Six in 2022, Lindner made sure one of the chairs from the triple made its way down to the museum. 

His contributions are many, Blackburn said. “I mean, call him unofficial historian? I would call him the official historian.”

Lindner’s “insatiable curiosity about Vermont’s ski history has served the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum well,” and he’s “a generous sharer of knowledge,” added Poppy Gall, museum board co-chair.

While he’s not necessarily working on any major projects currently, Lindner has documents such as a resort timeline, list of fires on the mountain, the history of each lift and more that he maintains. 

“It’s a very, very, rare week I’m not updating two or three of those with something. It’s not a single project, it’s just, ‘Keep all this stuff updated.’”

Lindner, who’s been skiing at Stowe for more than 71 years, was sidelined by a broken leg earlier in the season. But he has no plans to call it quits, and once he’s healed up, Lindner will be back at the mountain for his 72nd season. 

“I plan to patrol as long as I possibly can,” Lindner said.

As for his archives, Lindner has already decided where he’d like them to wind up. 

“When I kick the bucket, it’ll all go to the ski museum,” he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Brian Lindner’s name in a photo caption.

Read the story on VTDigger here: The unofficial historian of Stowe Mountain Resort.

This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News & Citizen on March 27.

After weathering several severe floods and windstorms in the last half-decade, Vermont Electric Cooperative is turning to new software that will allow them to identify the most vulnerable aspects of their infrastructure.

The Johnson-based utility announced last week it would be partnering with Rhizome, a software that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify potential points within the power grid that are likely to be damaged in future weather events.

Cyril Brunner, the utility’s innovation and technology director, said Rhizome software will help tackle the monumental challenge posed by the increasingly severe storms fueled by a changing climate.

“The example I’ll often use is that we have a $200 million problem and can spend $5 million a year,” Brunner said. “You do the quick math, and you’re like, ‘Cool, maybe in 50 years, we’ll have a better system in place.’ But the reality is, unless we want to have significant rate impacts — and we have a territory that has a lot of low-income folks on fixed incomes — we’re trying to minimize the rate impact. Because we have those limited resources, it’s all about prioritization.”

Enter Rhizome. Brunner was familiar with the company from its work on Vermont Electric Power Company, the state’s transmission operator. The company reached out with a new software it had designed specifically for smaller utilities, with a price-point to match.

Instead of Vermont Electric Cooperative spending far beyond its means to try and protect all its systems and transformers, Rhizome will allow Brunner and the co-op to take a more surgical approach. As Brunner explains it, the software takes publicly available climate models and analyzes them with the kind of powerful machine learning available through recent artificial intelligence breakthroughs, applying massive datasets to three-mile squares, downscaling the analysis to look at how weather events can impact extremely specific pieces of land.

After the massive flooding the county saw in 2023, and the many downed power lines that caused extended outages following Hurricane Debby last summer, utility officials are hoping Rhizome will help them identify the power lines and substations that could be the most easily damaged in a variety of weather scenarios.

“It’s much more about making investments into the system, replacing lines, moving lines, upgrading lines,” Brunner said. “It probably won’t help us if there’s a storm coming next week.”

Using software like Rhizome is just one way the utility is trying to make their severe weather response more efficient. Vermont Electric Cooperative recently hosted a webinar this week with COO Peter Rossi and operations supervisor Shawn Juaire on how the co-op is making use of drones in post-weather event repair and maintenance efforts.

Brunner pointed to several recent state-commissioned climate reports indicating increased precipitation will continue while the winters shorten. And technology powered by artificial intelligence like Rhizome has an outsized impact on the demand for electricity and water, which can contribute to climate change, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Brunner said, while the changing climate will affect everything, the co-op must do something to invest in its own resilience with its limited budget.

“We’re trying to figure out what is the worst problem,” he said. “We know that everything’s going to be impacted in some way, but where is there going to be the most impact to the power system and what can we mitigate the most?”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Electric co-op turning to AI to weatherize grid against future storms.