CHELSEA — On Thursday morning, the state moved James Perry, a man found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing his daughter, to a non-hospital mental health facility. 

An Orange County Superior Court judge decided at a hearing on Thursday morning that Perry, who had been detained in prison for four years, will now live in a residential setting while remaining under 24-hour care and supervision. He was taken immediately afterwards to a residential program run by the Clara Martin Center and Health Care and Rehabilitation Services of Southeastern Vermont, according to the court order. 

Prosecutors and Perry’s defense discussed the alternatives of putting him in a hospital setting, which would offer more intensive supervision, or releasing him with no direct oversight. Both sides agreed that it was appropriate to place Perry in a non-hospitalization level of care, an in-between to those possibilities. 

In the hearing, Judge Daniel Richardson grappled with where to place the 74-year-old man who shot and killed his daughter, Karina Rheaume, when she came to bring him cookies and check on him in May 2021. 

Perry was charged with second degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and reckless endangerment. But in April of this year, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. 

At that point, with that finding, Perry couldn’t be sentenced to prison, so the case became a matter of managing Perry’s health. Thursday’s proceeding was a hospitalization hearing only, Richardson reminded members of the public, who filled over half the court room. 

“The court doesn’t have a free hand. The court is obligated to follow the law,” Richardson said. Because Perry is no longer considered a criminal, the court has to weigh his personal liberties against concerns that he could pose a risk to himself and others, he added. 

The violence of the crime leaves some to worry that Perry needs a more secure level of oversight. Calista Diane, a close friend of Rheaume’s daughter, stood outside the old courthouse and hugged the family after the hearing. 

“I’ve seen way too many people fall through the cracks,” Diane said as tears welled in her eyes. The court ruling devastated her. She thinks Perry belongs locked up in prison, she said. 

“His daughter brought him cookies and he slaughtered her,” Diane said. 

Rheaume’s family declined to comment after Thursday’s hearing. 

After the mental health treatment he got in prison, Perry appeared to be a changed man, Richardson said. But the judge still had a message for him. 

“I want to address you directly,” Richardson said, pausing to look at Perry from his bench. 

“You have to participate,” Richardson said — emphasizing Perry’s responsibility to keep himself and the public safe. 

Rheaume’s family asked the court earlier this month to keep him under more intensive supervision, citing concerns for their safety, according to reporting from Valley News. 

Diane said that she understands the family’s pain. “They’re terrified,” she said. 

Richardson explained that the court is charged with operating within the law no matter the pressures of public opinion. He asked people in the courtroom to remain respectful, reminding them it was not a town meeting. 

While everyone was silent, benches creaked as onlookers shifted their weight. Some took notes as the hearing went on. 

Crystal Barry, a mental health professional with Burlington’s Therapeutic Works Incorporated, testified before the court. Barry had personally spoken with Perry over a dozen times to discuss his mental state and placement options, she said. 

Barry considers the move to supervised residential care a “good step down for future observation,” she said. 

In the facility, Perry will live among six other patients, be monitored by staff around the clock and be accompanied by staff if he leaves the program’s facilities, Barry said. Perry hasn’t shown signs of delusional thinking for over a year. That’s partly due to the fact that he’s been in a social and regulated environment — something they want to continue, she explained. 

The court order stands for 90 days. After that, it must be revisited in family court, now that the case is no longer criminal. 

“I’m sure we’ll all be here in 90 days,” said Diane, the friend of the victim’s family, gesturing to the small crowd that lingered in front of the courthouse. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Newbury man who killed daughter moved to mental health facility.

This story by John Lippman was first published in the Valley News on August 9.

CHELSEA — The grieving family of a Newbury mother of four who was shot and killed by her father more than four years ago pleaded before a Vermont judge never to let her murderer live free in society again and to ensure the state places him in an appropriate institution.

“I’m not here asking for revenge. I’m asking for safety,” said Mason Rheaume, the eldest of Karina Rheaume’s four sons.

He was 18 years old when his mother was killed by a shotgun blast fired by her father, James Perry Jr., on the porch of Perry’s Newbury home in 2021. She had shown up at his door with a plate of cookies for a welfare check.

Karina Rheaume’s family has been reeling ever since the shooting and is now pressing Vermont officials to address the problem of inadequate state resources to handle people whose mental illness has led them to commit horrific crimes.

“Jim Perry must remain in a facility specifically designed for long-term psychiatric care — not a nursing home, not under the limited supervision,” Mason Rheaume said, stating that what his grandfather requires is “ongoing, lifelong oversight in a secure setting that protects him and those around him in the community.”

Mason Rheaume’s statement, along with others from his brother, their father and Karina’s sister were given in a packed courtroom in Chelsea before Superior Court Judge Daniel Richardson, after family friends and supporters contacted the county prosecutor’s office in recent weeks out of concern over Perry’s looming release from prison.

Perry, 74, was found not guilty by reason of insanity earlier this year in the shooting death of his 38-year-old daughter. A psychiatric evaluation concluded he had been “floridly psychotic with paranoid delusions and hallucinations” when he shot Karina at point-blank range with a 12-gauge shotgun on May 3, 2021, at his home on Deerfield Lane in Newbury.

Since the court’s insanity determination, which leaves Perry with no criminal record and with little agency oversight, the Orange County State’s Attorney’s Office and the state Mental Health Department have come under sharp criticism from Karina Rheaume’s family members and supporters who say the state does not do enough to protect victims and the public from the ongoing risk Perry presents to the community as well as himself.

When Emilie Perry, Karina Rheaume’s sister, learned that the options state officials were weighing for her father after his release from prison included his “uninhabitable” home in Newbury, a nursing home or a “hotel in Barre,” she called upon friends and supporters to write to the state attorney’s office to register their concern.

Within days, more than a hundred emails and letters were sent to Colin Seaman, the state attorney for Orange County.

“The court is well aware that this has become an item of great public interest,” Richardson acknowledged from the bench at the outset of the approximately 32-minute hearing, while also cautioning “misinformation” has also accompanied that concern.

Despite its reputation for progressive policies, critics have long contended that Vermont lacks adequate resources and facilities to handle people whose crimes are attributed to mental illness.

The lack of accommodations, for example, led to a Strafford man convicted of arson for burning down his cabin while suffering from delusions in 2023 spending 240 days in a Springfield prison. His attorney maintained his client needed treatment instead.

On Friday, supporters and family members of Karina Rheaume’s family filled every available spot on the visitors’ benches at the back of the second floor courtroom. A large-screen video monitor displayed phone icons of people watching remotely. Karina’s sons, dressed in suits and ties, and Karina’s sister Emilie, sat on the front bench, stifling tears when a family member went to the podium and addressed the judge.

“I urge you to consider the profound impact (Perry’s) actions have had on our family and the community,” Joshua Rheaume, Karina’s second oldest son, said. The unfathomable murder of his mother “point(s) to a deep-seated mental instability that requires long-term, intensive psychiatric care.”

Perry, shackled and wearing blue prison sweats, sat at the defense table next to his attorney, Mike Shane. With his hair cropped closely and beard trimmed and hooked up to a hearing aid, Perry appeared alert and compliant, a different visage from the gaunt, wide-eyed, straggly hair and thick, overgrown beard image in his booking photo after his arrest.

Perry’s criminal case ended with the insanity determination, Judge Richardson explained, and he is now in a “civil” phase meant to assess his mental health needs and treatment program. But those issues will be addressed at a future hearing, the judge said.

Family members said there can be no guarantee Perry will not relapse into psychosis.

“While his mental state may appear stable now, (Perry) is in a structured environment of incarceration,” Joshua Rheaume said. “What happens when he is released and faces the stresses and triggers of the outside world? The risk is too great. Our family, community and any potential future victims deserve the assurance of a more permanent solution.”

Emilie Perry grasping a tissue and fighting back tears, recounted the disbelief of learning that it was possible her father could be essentially left on his own following the expiration of a 90-day “non-hospitalization order.”

“The shock of this email was so unbelievable that it didn’t seem like it could be real,” Emilie Perry said. “I wrote back saying that was insane and spent the following days calling the state’s attorney, the defense, the mental health department, and anyone I could think of to make sense of what was a horribly terrifying proposal by the courts.”

“To act like the court is working to protect (Perry’s) rights is not true if he’s not given placement in a safe (…) environment. It is cruel to set him up to be unable to take care of himself and put himself and others at risk,” she said.

Both Seaman, the Orange County state’s attorney, and Shane, Perry’s defense attorney, said state officials are working together at multiple agencies and levels to address the public’s concern.

Shane, before Friday’s hearing, said that the Department of Mental Health will extend that order of non-hospitalization “indefinitely” and “if there are issues” then the non-hospitalization order will convert to an “involuntary hospitalization order.”

“There is a really good plan coming together,” Shane said, noting that the Department of Mental Health, the State’s Attorney’s Office, the Judiciary’s Guardian ad Litem Program that advocates on behalf of children who are victims of crime “and our own experts” are “working collaboratively to find the best fit for (Perry’s) needs and the needs of the community. I think when the plan is presented everyone will feel better.”

After Friday’s hearing, on the green outside the courthouse in Chelsea, Joe Rheaume, the father of Karina’s children and her former husband, and Karen Tronsgard-Scott, executive director of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, both said there are “holes” in the way Vermont handles cases like Perry’s. Once it shifts to a civil matter victims have been excluded from the civil process phase of determining the offender’s fate.

“Victims should really have a seat at the table,” Tronsgard-Scott said. “They should be a part of every process in the courtroom.”

Joe Rheaume said the current system and civil phase needs to change.

“When you have a defendant who’s adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity and the next step is to just release them into society, I mean, everybody can logically think there’s something wrong with that,” Joe Rheaume said.

“There needs to be some kind of ramp or step-down program where this offender gets put into something secure, something semi-secure, anything,” he said.

Friday’s hearing, during which his family got to go on record with their victim impact statements, only happened as the result of the family’s persistence, Joe Rheaume noted.

“We’ve had to advocate for this. We’ve been pushing,” he said.

When it was pointed out that what he seeks requires the Vermont State Legislature to take up the matter and make law where none currently exists, Joe Rheaume acknowledged the challenge.

“That’s where this is going. That’s where we’re headed,” he replied.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont judge hears plea from family of murdered mother.

ORANGE — On a mid-June afternoon, the Waits River in Groton State Forest gurgled under a bridge just off Route 302 and into a picturesque scene. The water used multiple channels to make its way across the riverbed — faster or slower, deeper or shallower — rippling as it rushed over gravel and stone and lapping lazily at the sandy shore that led into a floodplain forest.

Every 100 feet or so, the river traversed a pile of logs and brush. While the jumble mimicked what could exist naturally, nature was not the architect behind this particular tangle of woody material. Instead, contractors working for the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department had carefully cut and installed each tree in order to eventually create this exact scene. Their goal? Creating a perfect home for Vermont’s state fish, the brook trout.

Jud Kratzer, fisheries biologist with the department and the driving force behind the wood structures, looked out at the river. He pointed to places where brook trout were likely hiding: under the cover of roots near the shore in the slow water, where fast water nearby serves as a “conveyor belt of food,” and in a deep plunge pool carved out under the structure by last summer’s deluge of floodwater.

“We put a camera down there, and there’s ‘brooks’ under there,” Kratzer said. “But, I mean, I didn’t need a camera to tell me that.”

In 2024, Kratzer oversaw the assembly of numerous wood piles on the Waits River, a technique known as strategic wood addition. The practice has been shown to improve habitat for brook trout, anglers’ most popular target and an important indicator of ecosystem health. The results also provide numerous additional benefits for wildlife and people.

Over the past 13 years, Vermont Fish & Wildlife has worked together with the nonprofit Trout Unlimited to implement strategic wood addition on 68 miles of northeastern Vermont headwater streams, which join together to form larger rivers, Kratzer said. According to the department’s conservative estimates, those “fairly low-cost” efforts have increased the number of brook trout in that area by 83,000.

The “calendar-picture streams” people are used to are “wide, flat and shallow” from a fish’s perspective, said Erin Rodgers, the Vermont and Massachusetts program manager for Trout Unlimited, in an email. They lack places to hide from predators, don’t have much draw for the insects fish eat and easily heat up during summer — “death for coldwater fish that can’t tolerate prolonged heat.”

“Putting large wood back into a stream changes all that,” Rodgers wrote.

The wood pile is designed to collect sticks and leaves that insects — which fish eat — can feed on, she said. The structure causes water to flow at different speeds, allowing sediment to gather in slow-moving areas while faster-moving water creates deeper channels. This “creates diverse in-stream habitat for lots of different species, creates protected spaces so adult fish can hide from predators, and the pool formations (make) deeper coldwater refuge,” Rodgers said.

Kratzer has studied, developed and led the state’s strategic wood addition efforts since 2012, and has presented about the technique across the eastern United States and Canada. Last year, he received an award from the American Fisheries Society recognizing that work as an outstanding project in sport fishery development and management.

However, back when Kratzer began exploring “strategic wood addition” (a term he came up with), the scientific literature on the process was divided and, he said, members of his department were somewhat resistant to the idea: Vermont rivers look fairly undeveloped and pristine to the untrained eye.

But the pristine-seeming rivers of the Northeast looked much different when Europeans first arrived, Kratzer explained. Those settlers saw vast forests filled with huge trees that fell into the rivers when they died — what strategic wood addition emulates. Then, during the 18th and 19th centuries, those rivers were cleared and even straightened to transport logs and boats.

“We are several generations removed from seeing our rivers like they were originally,” Kratzer said, adding that when the project began, he thought the state “could do better.”

In a 2013 study, Kratzer researched the factors limiting brook trout abundance in northeastern Vermont. While the study showed that the most important factor was water temperature (the fish like it cool), the second most important was, in fact, how much wood was in the stream (more is better).

Armed with that data, strategic wood addition began. Within three years after the structures were constructed on the East Branch of the Nulhegan River deep in the Northeast Kingdom, electrofishing data showed that brook trout biomass — both the number of fish and their size — approximately tripled.

In addition to its benefits for fish, Kratzer points out that the practice can help people too: “strategic wood addition slows water down and pushes it out into the forest, so it doesn’t just come rushing downstream to where we all live.” 

He and Rodgers are both quick to note that a lot of precaution is taken to secure the wood piles into the bank so that they stay locked down during flood events. Also, most of the work has been done in the headwaters, where there is very little human infrastructure. 

Even after major flooding in both 2023 and 2024, Kratzer’s team found that 82% of its sites (over 1,000 are tagged) are in the same place and still performing at least one function of a successful strategic wood addition structure. The others, he said, are usually just lodged slightly downstream.

Along with the water, the wood additions also retain sediment and nutrients, storing them in the headwaters for the benefit of the ecosystem, “instead of transporting them downstream where they clog culverts and degrade water quality,” Shayne Jaquith, watershed restoration manager for The Nature Conservancy in Vermont, said in an email.

The Nature Conservancy has implemented strategic wood addition on some of the land it owns in Vermont, Jaquith said. The nonprofit organization is working to train others in the practice, increase awareness among landowners and connect people to available funding sources “so that the use of strategic wood addition as a river restoration technique increases dramatically,” he said.

Kratzer has similar plans: his team is close to completing their work on the publicly owned land in the Northeast Kingdom where the practice can be beneficial, and soon expects to shift his role to facilitating the same work on private lands throughout the state. Currently, he said, only one contractor is trained in the practice.

The technique is slowly spreading to other states. Kratzer wrote a handbook on the practice in 2020, and said that strategic wood addition is now in use in other parts of New England, West Virginia and as far south as Tennessee. In Vermont, Trout Unlimited has also implemented the practice on several watersheds in central and southern parts of the state.

In the Western United States, Kratzer said, similar practices adapted for the distinct landscape are in use.

Last summer, Kratzer was invited to Prince Edward Island to present his work to all of its province’s watershed groups, which had been pulling wood out of rivers for a long time and thought it was the best thing to do, he said. Kratzer called the experience “the most rewarding thing” he’s done in his entire career, being able to completely flip their perspective on wood in streams just by presenting his research.

“I’ve come to believe that the single greatest benefit of this work isn’t just the increase in brook trout or the increase in stream function,” he said. “It’s the message that wood in streams is beneficial.”

Not in all places, though, Kratzer was clear: Wood that is endangering a bridge or culvert has reason to be removed. But in the many places where it doesn’t pose a threat, it should be left and even enhanced, he said.

On the same mid-June afternoon — 40 miles away from the picturesque scene in Groton State Forest — two members of Kratzer’s team carried a chainsaw, axe and orange hard hats along a brook at the base of Wheeler Mountain in Willoughby State Forest. About every 80 feet, they stopped to strategically cut, drag and position trees and brush across Big Valley Brook, wedging the structure into the bank for years to come, covering about a quarter mile a day.

Rodgers admits that, when strategic wood additions are first installed, “it is pretty ugly.” There are limbs and leaves everywhere, and you can barely see the stream under trees, she said. But the structure naturalizes quickly and makes the river ecologically healthier.
According to Kratzer, the department likes to say that “fish grow on trees,” — the living forest provides benefits that continue when trees die and fall into the water, whether the process be natural or human-assisted.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Shayne Jaquith’s last name.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brook trout populations spike after state program adds wood to streams.

On a chilly afternoon in early March, two pigs escaped from their pen at Heidi’s Haven, an animal rescue in Williamstown.

Veterinarian Sarah Spencer said animal control called her after they loaded the pigs into a trailer and took them to a local farm for holding. The officer told Spencer she had pigs that were “desperately emaciated” and needed an exam. 

In fact, she had been scheduled to visit them at the Williamstown rescue the next day to follow up on a neighbor’s complaint that the two pigs had grown far too thin. 

When Spencer saw them the following morning, one of them “was not that far away from the point of actually dying,” she said. 

“Pigs this size, normally you go in a pen with them, and you have to be careful because they’ll mow you down if they’re not friendly,” she said. “And they were just literally huddled in the corner, shaking the entire time, and just you could tell they were totally exhausted, cold. They were not even eating because they were just like, ‘Oh my god, we have a comfortable, warm, dry place to lie down.’”

The pigs have since been moved to Merrymac Farm Sanctuary in Charlotte, where founder Era MacDonald said they have begun to gain weight and confidence in their surroundings.

The owner of Heidi’s Haven, Sheila McGregor, has been charged with animal cruelty, which could lead to fines or prison time. However, local advocates and community members are wondering what will happen to the other animals in McGregor’s care — somewhere between 40 and 80 dogs and an unclear number of cats and other animals, according to court documents.

A private Facebook group called Shut Down Heidi’s Haven has amassed 700 members, who claim to have been tracking reports of abuse at the rescue for years. 

The case also highlights the continuing challenges of Vermont’s animal welfare system. Advocates like MacDonald believe there’s not enough training, staffing or enforcement tools available for game wardens and animal control officers to act on allegations of animal abuse. 

Recent high-profile investigations, like the repeated seizure of horses from a Townshend farm, have revealed gaps in the system. What makes Heidi’s Haven unusual is its status as an animal rescue, which some advocates say illustrates the need for more regulation of rescues and shelters statewide. 

In an email, McGregor declined to be interviewed about the allegations of neglect on the advice of her lawyers. She wrote that game wardens have responded to every complaint for more than two years and have been granted access to any building or animal they wanted to see. 

“The vet who examined every animal on the property found no significant concerns,” she wrote. “I have implemented every suggestion made by veterinarians, animal health specialists or law enforcement.”

‘You have fresh water here’

At the Merrymac Farm Sanctuary in Charlotte, every animal has a backstory.

Walking through the barn on a hot July day, MacDonald points to each of its residents in turn. A pig named Buster escaped from a slaughterhouse in Connecticut. Another swine resident, Bernadette, was displaced by a barn fire in the Northeast Kingdom.

When MacDonald reaches the outdoor pen where former Heidi’s Haven residents Gladys and Olivia spent their morning, the pigs run up to her, snorting with excitement as they’re taken into the shade indoors. At first glance, they appear to have recovered from their time in Williamstown, but MacDonald said she’s noticed signs they are still struggling with the memories of their experience. 

They still have to be fed separately so they don’t fight over food. It took months for them to stop drinking each other’s urine, which MacDonald believes is the result of them not having access to clean and regular water at their previous home. 

“Pigs are considered almost at the intelligence of humans,” she said. “So they knew their survival mechanism was to drink each other’s urine. But it took them about three weeks to realize, like, you don’t need to do this. You have fresh water here.”

The roughly 7-year-old pigs appear to be a farm breed, as opposed to popular pet breeds like pot-bellied pigs. In other words, they’re very large. Spencer said a healthy farm pig could be roughly 500 pounds and could eat up to 10 pounds of food per day.

“If you know anything about pigs, I mean, a pig’s whole existence is eating,” MacDonald said. 

When Spencer first evaluated the pigs after they were caught, she said they were closer to 350 pounds each. She also inspected their pen at Heidi’s Haven and found there did not seem to be enough feed on hand to provide for pigs of their size — and found the pen to be far too bare, dry and exposed to the cold winter wind. 

The posts on the Heidi’s Haven Facebook page indicate that McGregor intended to keep her animals thin. The page has reposted photos of thin dogs from agility competitions and animal fitness pages, along with photos from her own rescue demonstrating her dogs’ fitness. 

“It is truly disturbing that the general population thinks that fat pets are healthy pets,” she wrote in a September 2024 Heidi’s Haven Facebook post. “My pigs can potentially live to be 12+ yrs old ***IF I KEEP THEM THIN***. Fat pets live shorter, more uncomfortable lives. My girls will never be fat.”

Laurie Lawless, co-moderator of the Shut Down Heidi’s Haven Facebook group, is a behavior consultant for local animal shelters. She’s skeptical of McGregor’s assertion that her dogs are simply conditioned for agility, she said, since the work that goes into feeding and providing exercise regimens for agility dogs is far too much for a home-based rescue to handle.

“There is absolutely no way that the animals on her property are conditioned. They’re underfed, and they’re skinny and not being cared for adequately,” Lawless said. 

Concerns about Heidi’s Haven date back to its previous location in Ferrisburgh. In 2018, WCAX reported that neighbors complained about the rescue’s smell, noise levels and rodent problems spreading onto their properties. 

The town selectboard rezoned the property and demanded McGregor handle the rat problem, leading her to announce she was shutting it down. The rescue reopened in Williamstown shortly after. 

“As animal control of the town, I have received multiple complaints from volunteers, adopters, and visitors to this rescue,” Williamstown Animal Control Officer Sam Puncher wrote in court documents. “Most complaints focus on overcrowding with over 60 dogs, 30 cats, multiple chickens and other small animals. The indoor areas are dirty and smell of ammonia and feces. People have noted that dogs have hair loss, are thin, and are ‘feral’. Dogs are left in crates for over 20 hours a day and water is only offered a few times.”

Game wardens from the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department visited the property 10 times in the past three years in response to complaints from neighbors, volunteers and potential adopters, court records show. 

In five of those visits, wardens could not substantiate the complaints, finding the animals in good health or the condition of the dogs’ living space to be in good shape. But in four instances, the wardens observed thin or underweight dogs. On two visits, they noted an overwhelming odor of ammonia, according to court records.

Lawless and MacDonald said that game wardens, who often enforce fishing, hunting and wildlife management laws, might not have had enough training about domestic animals to recognize signs of abuse. 

It’s also difficult to prove a certain animal’s health issues are the result of abuse, Lawless said. Often a veterinarian’s evaluation must prove the animal’s needs are not being met, and someone could claim the animal came to the rescue already in poor health. 

“It makes it really hard for (officials) to do their jobs, and it makes it really easy for people to get away with doing bad jobs at taking care of the animals and tracking their medical care,” she said. 

MacDonald said she feels compelled to “make sure that the pigs have a voice.” She’s concerned that the state will settle rather than prosecute McGregor to the fullest extent of the law.

She was frustrated when McGregor filed a motion requesting the right to visit the pigs in April, citing her “emotional attachment” to the pigs in court documents. MacDonald fought back in a filed motion, although she was ultimately overruled.

How does Vermont plan to fix the system?

MacDonald is not the first person to raise concerns about how the animal welfare investigation system allows potential abuse to slip through the cracks. Those complaints reached the halls of the Statehouse in 2024, when legislators passed a bill that created a new Division of Animal Welfare at the Department of Public Safety. 

Lisa Milot, appointed by Gov. Phil Scott, assumed her role as director of the division in May. Her first task is to study the state’s existing animal welfare system over an eight-month period. She is then expected to produce a report and issue a set of recommendations for its reform.

Milot plans to draw on her previous experience as a lawyer and academic in Athens, Georgia, to help guide her work in Vermont. In Athens, she helped bring the region’s first state-level animal cruelty prosecutions, a step up from local code enforcement. She also worked on ways to prevent animal abuse, like spay-neuter programs and animal welfare classes. 

“We were looking at it in terms of, how do we prevent these problems from getting worse? As well as, once we are down to the offenders who need to actually be prosecuted, how can we effectively do that, as well as come up with remedies that might fix the situation instead of just punishing people,” she said. 

She said she was not familiar enough with the Heidi’s Haven situation to discuss it specifically. But when asked about some of her top priorities for her upcoming report, the lack of regulation of animal rescues was one of the top things that came to mind. 

“There’s been no oversight of how rescues and shelters operate,” she said. 

The lack of regulation in Vermont is not unusual, but many other states have higher operating standards than Vermont does, she said. She cited Maine and Massachusetts as examples of places that have specific health and welfare rules for rescue agencies. 

“It’s a growing trend to have this sort of regulation, both on the in-state domestic entities as well as on the animals being brought in from out of state, being imported from other states for adoption,” Milot said. 

In the 20 years she has worked in the field, she’s seen an increasing number of animals coming through national networks that transport pets for adoption, mostly from southern states to northern states like Vermont. That can give animals better opportunities for adoption, but it can put pressure on the receiving jurisdictions to keep up with the inflow of animals. 

“The amount of stress rescuers feel, legitimately, when they see the number of animals that are being euthanized simply because there aren’t homes for them, is incredibly high,” Milot said. 

She said a lot of rescuers get overwhelmed as a result.

“They are either panicked and getting over their heads, or they step back, and they do less, but maybe do better when they set boundaries better,” she said. 

Many southern shelters and rescue organizations are “flooded with animals, and they are simply trying to bail out their sinking ship,” Milot said. That means rescues in Vermont might receive animals with little to no information about their health status or likelihood of adoption. 

Lawless said she believes that there should be minimum standards on things like kennel size, noise levels and regular vet care. Rescues should also have better documentation on the animals in their care, she said. She’s seen prospective adopters get taken advantage of by rescue staff who downplayed a dog’s bite history. 

For Vermonters who are looking to assess the quality of a rescue, Lawless advised taking a hard look at the location’s “capacity of care,” essentially how many staff members and volunteers it has compared with its volume of animals.

“This is something that ethical shelters will do, is make sure that, yes, if they’re taking animals, they are able to adequately provide for them, with the theory that if they can’t provide for those animals in the shelter, it’s no better than them not being in the shelter,” she said. 

People in animal rescue are tired of cases like McGregor’s that keep happening in Vermont, Lawless said.

“It’s really a bunch of people who are just doing their best to tie the strings together and not able, at the end, to get anybody actually really prosecuted,” she said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated which department oversees the Division of Animal Welfare.

Read the story on VTDigger here: How 2 emaciated pigs in Williamstown shed light on the lack of animal rescue regulations in Vermont.

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 Darren Marcy was first published in The White River Valley Herald on July 10.

A judge ruled Tuesday that towns in Vermont have the right to maintain their public trails on private land in the long-running lawsuit brought by a landowner against the town of Tunbridge, but the landowner in the case has promised an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Though Superior Court Judge H. Dickson Corbett ruled against John Echeverria and Carin Pratt in the lawsuit they filed against the Town of Tunbridge, Echeverria, in an email Tuesday evening, promised a swift reply.

“We will be filing a prompt appeal to the Supreme Court,” Echeverria wrote.

The Tunbridge Selectboard got the good news at its regular meeting when a town resident announced the decision.

Board Chair Gary Mullen said the board was happy to hear the news and it was exactly what the board had expected all along.

Mullen said he wished the lawsuit and legal battle had never happened, but believed it was money well spent to protect trail access not only in Tunbridge but across Vermont.

“It was the right thing to do,” Mullen said. “It’s a win for the people of Tunbridge and the whole state. We plan to continue this battle however [Echeverria] decides to do it.”

Selectboard member Michael McPhetres praised the decision.

“I am very pleased with the court order,” McPhetres said. “We (the town of Tunbridge) have spent a lot of time and treasure on what is a common sense issue.”

The two sides have been haggling over who has the right to maintain legal trails on private land for years.

Tuesday’s 15-page order settled a few things including granting the town’s motion for summary judgment and denying the landowners’ motion for summary judgment.

In a final order issued separately, Corbett wrote, “Based upon the separate written ruling of the court, final judgment is hereby entered for defendant as follows: the Town of Tunbridge has the authority to maintain and repair its legal trails.”

But, if the decision is appealed to the Supreme Court, the case will go on for at least a little bit longer.

The case took a little bit of a back seat for a few months as the Vermont Legislature took up the issue.

A bill introduced in the Senate by Alison Clarkson, D-Woodstock, aiming to clarify that municipalities have the authority to maintain a legal trail stalled in committee, but the language was eventually added into the Transportation Bill, S.123, which had broad support from legislators and trails groups around Vermont, as well as the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.

The bill made its way through the Conference Committee process and was signed by Gov. Phil Scott in early June, despite a letter from Echeverria urging him to veto the measure.

In the Conference Committee, the bill’s effective date was delayed until April 1, 2026.

Meanwhile, the legal case has been going on for more than two and a half years, which is only the latest of a more than four-year controversy.

Echeverria and Pratt, who live in Strafford, filed a suit against Tunbridge to prevent it from conducting maintenance on the Orchard Trail, one of two legal trails that cross the 325-acre Dodge Farm, which Echeverria and Pratt own.

Twice the suit filed by the landowners was ruled by Orange County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Mann not to be “ripe,” or ready for the court to decide. But the second decision was overturned by the state Supreme Court.

Mann then recused herself and the case was assigned to Corbett.

Corbett’s ruling addresses a variety of arguments made by the landowners for reasons why the town should not be allowed to maintain the trails on their lands, but says, “the court determined that the arguments were either not persuasive or not relevant to its analysis and determinations.”

“The court’s final observation is that real-life experience has been that Vermont towns are maintaining their trails,” he continued. “More than 150 towns have at least one trail, and there are more than 540 miles of public trails in the state. And while at least some private landowners are helping maintain public trails, many towns are maintaining their trails to keep them open for public use. In other words, widespread contemporaneous interpretation has been that towns have the authority to maintain and repair their public trails … A reading of the statutes that authorizes towns to maintain and repair their public trails would be consistent with more than a century of both legal precedent and practical experience.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Judge sides with town in Tunbridge trails case.

Parts of Vermont experienced minor flooding on Saturday as thunderstorms traveled through the state.

The National Weather Service’s Burlington office had heard reports of flooding in Irasville as well as washed out roads in Waitsfield and Warren.

A flash flood warning was in effect until 8:30 p.m. Saturday for parts of Addison, Orange and Washington counties, according to the weather service.  

As of 7:08 p.m., the state had seen 1 to 2 inches of rainfall. By 8:23 p.m., the weather service reported that the heavy rain had ended and no additional flooding was expected.

There were 2,663 customers without power as of 8:35 p.m., with Woodstock and Hartford being the hardest-hit areas, according to VTOutages. 

The weather service urged people to observe road closures and “turn around, don’t drown” if people come across high water or flooded roads since more than half of all flood-related drownings occur in vehicles.

Although rain is forecast for much of the state over the next week, the weather service does not expect hazardous weather Sunday through Friday.

A representative from the weather service’s Burlington office was not immediately available to comment. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Flash flood warnings expire for central Vermont as thunderstorms hit the state.

This story by John Lippman was first published in the Valley News on April 20.

CHELSEA — A 74-year-old Newbury man who shot and killed his 38-year-old daughter when she came to his home for a welfare check has been found insane and will not stand trial.

James Perry is “not guilty by reason of insanity” following a psychiatric evaluation, according to a court order by Judge Daniel Richardson in Orange County Superior Court. Doctors concluded that Perry was “floridly psychotic with paranoid delusions and hallucinations” when he shot his daughter at point-blank range with a shotgun four years ago.

Upon review of Perry’s psychiatric evaluation, the judge on April 4 said the conclusions met the defendant’s burden to show that at the time of shooting he “lacked the capacity” to understand the criminality of act and that Perry was suffering from a “paranoid and psychotic state.”

Perry was charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and reckless endangerment for shooting his daughter, Karina Rheaume, on May 3, 2021, at his home on Deerfield Lane in Newbury.

She had come to visit with cookies to check on his well-being.

Rheaume’s boyfriend later called police to report that when he went to Perry’s home after she did not return from the visit that Perry had pointed a rifle at him and told him Rheaume was dead. He told the boyfriend “if he took one step closer, he’d be dead, too,” according to a police affidavit.

Following his arrest, Perry was diagnosed with mental delusions lasting longer than a month but he nonetheless was deemed competent to stand trial, with a court-appointed psychiatrist concluding that he had the “capacity to assist … in the preparation of a defense.”

Perry’s attorneys retained the right to hire their own forensic examiner to assess his mental health under an insanity defense. It was that second evaluation — with which both defense attorneys and prosecutors stipulated they agreed — that the judge relied upon in his ruling earlier this month.

A self-employed carpenter, Perry’s family is well-known in the Newbury and Bradford area, including owning the Perry’s Oil Fuel and propane business.

Perry never denied shooting his daughter, according to police and psychologists who evaluated him afterward.

“In the months leading up to the shooting, (Perry) had become disconnected from reality and was occupying a paranoid and delusional space marked by hallucinations and disordered thinking,” Richardson wrote in his order.

Although Perry’s psychiatric evaluation remains under seal, Richardson referenced eight “contributory factors” cited in the evaluation that led to his psychosis, including a long period of self-isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, depression, malnutrition, hearing loss, a prior psychotic event, cognitive decline and “information reverberations” created by watching TV news of political turmoil, including the U.S. Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.

“The facts show that (Perry) acted out of a belief that he was being pursued for assassination by Seal Team 6 and his daughter was working in collusion to poison him and expose him to the assassins,” Richardson wrote.

Perry’s documented state of mind at the time of the shooting met the burden of proof under Vermont law that he lacked “adequate capacity” to understand the criminality of his conduct or conform to the law, Richardson said.

Perry has been held without bail at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield.

The judge’s order notes that the forensic psychologist reported that Perry continued to exhibit psychotic “symptoms and issues” while in prison. Only recently, due to “several years of regular nutrition, the socialization that resulted from being lodged with other inmates and a regime of pain management have these mental illnesses begun to recede and (allow Perry) to connect with reality again.”

Perry is next scheduled for a hospitalization hearing on Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court.

The purpose of the hearing, which will be attended the county prosecutor, a representative from the state’s Department of Health, Vermont Legal Aid and the victim’s advocate, is to assess Perry’s current mental condition, treatment program and the appropriate place for him to reside.

Depending on the outcome of that hearing — which typically comes in a follow-up order by the judge — Perry could face anything ranging from confinement to a mental health facility to release back into the community.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Judge rules Newbury man who killed daughter ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’.

This story by John Lipmann was first published in the Valley News on March 21.

CHELSEA — A 64-year-old Vershire woman has been criminally charged in connection with the death of an 82-year-old pedestrian who was struck by a vehicle in Chelsea four months ago and subsequently died from his injuries, according to police.

Donna Kendall, of Chamberlain Hill Road, was charged with leaving the scene of an accident with death resulting, gross negligent operation with death resulting and providing false information to police.

She allegedly was driving the car that struck Robert “Bobby” Hutchinson in Chelsea on the evening of Nov. 7, 2024, according a news release from Windsor County Sheriff’s Department. Kendall is cited to appear in Orange County Superior Court on April 23.

Hutchinson, a handyman who was frequently observed walking with the assistance of a walker around Chelsea, succumbed to his injuries at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center 10 days after he was hit.

Deputies from the Windsor County Sheriff’s Department, which provides police coverage in Chelsea, were dispatched to Route 113 near Court Street at around 6 p.m. on Nov. 7 to a report of a pedestrian being struck by a motor vehicle.

“The operator of the motor vehicle departed the scene before police arrived” but “she was later positively identified by a bystander at the scene,” according to Friday’s news release.

Hutchinson, suffering from severe injuries, was transported to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon and about four days later went into hospice at the Jack Byrne Center, where he died on Nov. 17.

A four-month investigation led to the “identification and arrest” of Kendall, the news release said.

In January, Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer said authorities knew who struck Hutchinson but were not releasing the driver’s name because the investigation with the Orange County State’s Attorney’s Office was ongoing.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Woman charged in hit-and-run death of older Chelsea man.

This story by Tim Calabro was first published in The Herald on Feb. 13

When Tropical Storm Irene tore through Vermont in 2011, Stephen Farrington found himself stranded. The floodwaters had transformed his Stockbridge neighborhood into an island, washing out roads, destroying homes and isolating entire communities.

Fourteen years later, Farrington and his Bethel-based company, Transcend Engineering, have launched RiverAware, a mobile app designed to provide real-time river monitoring and flood alerts. By simplifying complex government data and making it accessible to everyday users, the app aims to help people prepare for rising waters — before it’s too late.

RiverAware, now available on the Apple App Store, allows users to track water levels from U.S. Geological Survey stream gauges, receive personalized flood alerts, and share real-time data with others. The app’s development was driven by a belief that existing flood monitoring tools are difficult to use and that climate change is increasing the need for reliable, accessible water data.

“We built RiverAware because, in an emergency, people shouldn’t have to spend time deciphering complicated government websites,” said Emily Ellert, Transcend Engineering’s digital strategies manager. “They need clear, immediate information.”

Farrington founded Transcend Engineering in 2010, just a year before Irene, focusing initially on soil moisture sensors and hydrology research. Over time, the company expanded into environmental data analysis, collaborating with institutions like the University of Arizona and the U.S. Department of Energy, and has been working on finding novel ways to incorporate machine learning into sensor data analysis.

With RiverAware, Farrington hopes to empower people with better flood awareness, whether they’re in Vermont or anywhere else in the U.S. “Our business is built around two problems: too much water or too little water,” he said. “With RiverAware, we’re tackling the first one.”

The RiverAware app aggregates data from more than 13,000 USGS stream gauges across the country. Nearby, such gauges are found in the Ayers Brook in Randolph and in the White River at West Hartford.

Unlike existing flood monitoring services, which often require users to search government websites and interpret difficult-to-read graphs, RiverAware presents data in a clean, color-coded interface that indicates current water levels and gives context for that data, since water levels are unique at each location.

The app features an interactive map showing all of the nation’s stream gauges and the current conditions at those gauges. It also translates the raw data into flood risk indicators so users see whether a river is at a normal, minor, moderate, or major flood stage.

It also allows users to set alerts when water levels reach a dangerous height and also allows sharing of data with others. During Tropical Storm Irene, Farrington recalled, with just 15 minutes’ warning, people were able to move cars to higher ground or remove their most important possessions from danger. “With four or six hours, you have time to take even more precautions.”

One major challenge RiverAware aims to solve is the uneven availability of flood prediction services. While the National Weather Service (NWS) runs 13 regional flood prediction centers, it only provides forecasts for select locations, prioritizing high-population areas or critical infrastructure. That means thousands of smaller towns and rural communities — including in Vermont — lack real flood predictions.

“We looked at the data and saw that two-thirds of USGS stream gauges don’t have NWS flood levels assigned to them,” said Ellert. “That leaves a massive gap in public awareness.” To address this, Transcend Engineering is developing an AI-powered flood prediction system that would generate short-term forecasts for these underserved areas. The company recently applied for a $190,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to support this initiative.

“This isn’t about predicting floods a week in advance — that’s what the big government models are for,” Farrington said. “Our goal is to provide localized, short-term warnings — two to 24 hours out — especially in places that don’t currently have predictions.” If funded, the project could bring AI-powered flood alerts to thousands of communities that currently lack them, with the feature integrated into RiverAware within a year.

Building the system

Developing a real-time flood monitoring app wasn’t without its obstacles.

Initially, RiverAware pulled data directly from USGS’s public interfaces, but the unpredictable reliability of these services forced Transcend Engineering to switch to a more stable third-party provider — Synoptic Data, a company that aggregates and quality-checks hydrology data. “We ran into situations where USGS would update their APIs with no warning, or the system would go down unexpectedly,” Farrington explained. “That’s not acceptable for an app people depend on in emergencies.”

Now, by partnering with Synoptic Data, RiverAware ensures continuous access to real-time river conditions, even when government databases experience outages. Since its quiet launch on the iOS App Store, RiverAware has already attracted over 100 users, despite no formal marketing.

The app follows a freemium model — free to download, with optional paid features on the horizon, like unlimited watchlist stations and alerts. “Our goal is to get this in as many hands as possible,” Ellert said. “Flooding is getting worse, and we want to give people the tools to be prepared.”

Though currently iPhone only, an Android version is planned for the future if there is demand for it. Looking ahead, Transcend Engineering hopes to expand RiverAware’s capabilities internationally, integrating data from Canada, Mexico, and the UK. “There’s a real opportunity to make river monitoring global,” Farrington said. “But for now, our focus is making sure people here in the U.S. have better tools to stay safe.”

For Farrington, RiverAware is more than just an app — it’s a culmination of years of expertise and a response to a deeply personal experience. “I’ve been fascinated by river flow data for years,” he said. “But when you see flooding firsthand, when you see how quickly things can change, you realize how much a few extra hours of warning can mean.” With RiverAware, he hopes to give others something he didn’t have during Irene: better tools, more time, and the ability to act before disaster strikes.

Read the story on VTDigger here: New app provides real-time flood alerts.

Authorities now believe the disappearance of a Bradford man last month was “suspicious” and could be related to a crime, Vermont State Police said in a press release Tuesday night. 

Corey Crooker, 43, was last seen by family members on January 9 and last heard from five days later, state police said. 

The agency initially deemed Crooker’s disappearance “not suspicious,” but has since obtained evidence that the circumstances of the case are “potentially criminal in nature,” according to the release. 

State police conducted a “court-ordered search” of a Bradford property on Tuesday and planned to return Wednesday to continue its investigation. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: State police call early January disappearance of Bradford man ‘suspicious’.

This story by Marion Umpleby was first published in Valley News on Feb. 3

SOUTH STRAFFORD — Ever since husband-and-wife owners Melvin and Sue Coburn announced their plans to retire in 2022, the fate of Coburns’ General Store has hung in the balance. In addition to selling groceries (and a modest assortment of Noah Kahan T-shirts), Coburns’ also houses a small laundromat, bank and branch of the Postal Service, all resources that would dissolve should the store close.

However, residents who depended on the store — located in the center of the village off Route 132 — for groceries or a casual chat with neighbors need no longer fear.

The Strafford Community Trust, a nonprofit comprising Strafford and Upper Valley residents, has recently reached its $1.8 million fundraising goal, allowing it to purchase the store and keep the doors open, the trust said in an email to supporters on Jan. 31.  More than 125 families from Strafford and neighboring communities contributed to the cause, said the trust’s email.

The money raised will help cover the purchase of the building, support a proprietor to manage the store, and finance minor renovations including structural work and repairs to cracks in the foundation, but “nothing that would impact the running of the store,” said Trudi Brock, the trust’s president, in a phone interview.

The search for a proprietor for Coburns’ is ongoing, although the trust is close to finalizing an agreement with a leading candidate who, according to the recent email, “has extensive experience running a small grocery business and is as excited as we are to move forward.”

Sue Coburn said she is glad that the property can remain a general store in service to the community. “That was what we wanted from the beginning,” she said in a phone interview from behind the counter at the store.

The fundraising project has been in the works for several years. When no offers came in after the Coburns put the property on the market in 2022, the trust formed with the goal of purchasing the building and the business. On Oct. 16, the trust finalized an option-agreement with the Coburns.

A community-backed model has been a viable method for keeping rural stores like Coburns’ open. General stores in the Vermont towns of Barnard, Putney, Craftsbury and Albany have adopted the model, the Valley News reported in October.

Brock is pleased to add Strafford to the list. “I hope it’s a positive message for other towns,” Brock said.  While there’s still a lot more to be done, Sue Coburn predicts the change in ownership will take place in June. Until then, she plans to keep running the store with business as usual.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Trust reaches goal to purchase Coburns’ store in Strafford.

This story by Clare Shanahan was first published in The Valley News on on Jan. 14

NEWBURY — The town Development Review Board has approved the first phase of construction at a sustainable teaching farm proposed by a Puerto-Rico-based nonprofit.

The board’s December decision requires that the nonprofit, Plenitud PR, meet more than a dozen conditions, including addressing parking issues, before it can move forward with construction.

Some of the conditions focus on logistical issues and small discrepancies in paperwork, while others address concerns raised by residents and board members at a November hearing.

The group plans to build a regenerative farm on a 101-acre property off of North Road in Newbury with lodging for staff, interns and guests, a renovated barn event space and food processing facility, and agricultural infrastructure. The nonprofit plans to host events and overnight workshops at the farm that focus on teaching techniques to increase food, water and housing security and climate resilience.

Plenitud’s hope is that this farm project “enriches our community by sharing these practices and techniques through hands-on learning” and “can support and complement what is already happening in Newbury,” Jessica Jones Hughes, Plenitud’s associate director and “point person” for the Vermont project, wrote in a letter to the board.

The decision means Plenitud will have to make some design adjustments and do “a lot of research” before it gets the final green light on the first phase of the project, Jones Hughes said Monday. Still, the organization is “very encouraged and excited to take it step by step as we keep moving forward,” she said.

In its initial project proposal, Plenitud outlined three phases of construction over 20 years. The first phase, which spans seven years, includes renovating the existing house and part of the barn on the property, building cabins and an artist studio and getting started on some agricultural projects such as building greenhouses and new livestock barns.

In later phases, the team hopes to continue to renovate the barn, build another house for staff and interns and make ongoing improvements, according to application materials submitted for the November meeting.

Before the project can move forward though, the nonprofit needs to seek further approval from the Development Review Board about its parking plan and identify what is required at the state level, specifically around storm and wastewater permits, fire safety and Act 250 — the land use regulation that governs large developments in Vermont — according to the board’s written decision.

Residents and board members scrutinized the nonprofit’s parking plan when it came up at the November meeting. Originally, the group allocated six to eight parking spaces on the farm and planned to encourage attendees to park in nearby public lots and carpool. The board ruled that this plan is “neither enforceable nor workable,” according to the written decision.

Now, Plenitud has to submit a revised parking plan that includes up to 20 spaces, which aligns with the expected event attendance of 12 to 15 people.

For Plenitud, this ruling is “not too dramatic” because of the overall size of the property, Jones-Hughes said. She is currently working on identifying new potential parking areas and expects that the spots will be dispersed around the property.

After the new parking plan is finalized, it has to be approved by the review board. The board will also need to approve any other changes to the accepted project plans and do another complete review of planned development before the nonprofit moves onto “phase two” of its three-phase construction plan.

While there are a number of conditions to meet, overall Jones Hughes said the ruling is a positive one.

“It’s nice to know what we are able to do and not able to do as we start to vision this next phase,” she said.

Despite the number of conditions, the timeline of the project remains unchanged. The group still plans to host a “pilot” event this upcoming summer and fully launch in 2026 with the first few groups of students, Jones Hughes said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Development board OKs first phase of construction at Newbury teaching farm.

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

NEWBURY — Eager to start a farm and spread their values, a local couple searched long and hard for inspiration. They finally found it by growing the most expensive spice in the world: saffron.

Used in a wide variety of cuisines, saffron is known for its vibrant red-gold color and distinct flavor. It takes a lot of time and effort to grow, which makes it perfect for a small farm.

Tucked away in the woods near Wells River lies a quaint house filled with light, plants and art. It backs up to a two-acre field: Calabash Gardens.

That is where couple Claudel “Zaka” Chery and Jette Mandl-Abramson have been cultivating saffron since 2018.

The farm takes its name from a tree that Chery said has a history of promoting sharing and exchange.

“It’s where troubadours sat to tell stories in the village to bring people together around culture and stories and food,” Chery said. “That’s part of the idea behind the name.”

Chery is known by his childhood nickname, Zaka, the name of the patron spirit of farming in Haitian religion.

He’s originally from Haiti, where he descended from a long line of farmers. Chery moved to Newbury in 2011 shortly after devastating earthquakes shook his home nation.

A filmmaker, writer and the first in his family to attend college, Chery has always felt a responsibility to represent farmers in an intellectual and artistic sense.

“I was always really proud to represent peasants and farmers, people that work with their hands and the dirt,” he said.

In 2016, he met Mandl-Abramson, his future wife, who lived across the border in New Hampshire.

Mandl-Abramson has a background in small-farm growing and herbalism. She felt strongly about pursuing agriculture in a traditional way.

Then, the couple saw an article describing saffron cultivation in Vermont by University of Vermont researchers Margaret Skinner and Arash Ghalehgolabbehbahani.

They knew they had found their future — one that combined Mandl-Abramson’s dream of farming with Chery’s intellectual drive.

“I wanted something that was going to keep me on my toes, that would keep me engaged intellectually,” Chery said, “where I have to research, and I have to explore a field.”

They decided to buy their property and invest in 2,000 saffron plants, starting with a test plot in the summer of 2018.

The first two years of their experiment were extremely successful, and they decided to officially open Calabash Gardens in 2020. With this move to production, they now had around 120,000 plants growing.

Flash-forward to November 2024: Chery and Mandl-Abramson had just finished up their season and are continuing to learn saffron’s growing processes.

Saffron farming in Vermont is experimental, in part because its life cycle is the opposite of most plants.

Saffron is surprisingly resistant to cold and prefers a thick snow cover during the winter. The crop begins its reproductive process in late February before going dormant for the summer.

In the beginning of October, the plants begin to sprout and then flower. They continue to produce more sparsely into November.

Throughout the fall, when the flowers are blooming, Chery and Mandl-Abramson said they collect thousands of blossoms for processing. The picking and processing of the crop is long and laborious, which is why the spice is so expensive.

Three thin, red tendrils are embedded in each flower — stigmas, as they’re called in botany, where the usable spice is found.

Once the stigmas are harvested from the flowers, they get dehydrated and put into a large jar to cure. The curing process deepens the flavor and scent of the spice and prepares it to be cooked and sold.

Every stage of the process includes regenerative agriculture methods, Mandl-Abramson said, such as sequestering carbon and building biodiversity on the property and in the soil.

Mandl-Abramson hopes to implement a full cycle of cover cropping that would reseed itself, filled with herbs to use in apothecary work. With its life cycle, saffron could be the perfect crop to do this.

There is one major issue standing in the way: weeds. Because of the rich and biodiverse natural soils in Vermont, the weeds on the couple’s farm grow fast and spread quickly.

For now, the couple mitigates that with landscape fabric during off-season. Once they are able to reduce the weeds enough, Mandl-Abramson said she will be able to implement her goal of a self-sustaining cover crop cycle.

Business outside of the growing season is just as exciting: The couple sells products such as saffron- infused honey, tinctures and maple syrup.

They also host “Calabash Experiences,” farm-to-table dinner parties that take place on their farm. In the past, they have invited guest chefs to prepare elaborate saffron-forward meals at a flat rate per person.

In the next season of events, which typically run from August to October, they hope to expand and make them more accessible by including hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar in lieu of a set, all-inclusive price.

Chery and Mandl-Abramson’s work extends beyond the fields. They want to establish a space for what they call radical love and hospitality.

“We try to be a very inclusive and welcoming space for people who can come and need respite or want to just be on the land and get their hands dirty,” Mandl-Abramson said.

About half of the shares of the farm are owned by family and friends who assist them, and 39% are owned by people of color.

“This is not just us trying to grow gold in the mountains of Vermont, but it’s also trying to build pathways where it could be shared around,” Chery said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Newbury saffron farm sustains vision of experimentation.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark has cleared a Vermont State Police trooper of criminal wrongdoing after he shot and killed a man in Orange earlier this year in a reported struggle with the man over a sawed-off shotgun.

Trooper Adam Roaldi fatally shot Jason Lowery, 41, who authorities said lived in various locations in central Vermont, on June 12 in Orange, according to police.

“Based on the facts and circumstances and consistent with Vermont law, Attorney General Clark concluded that the use of force by Trooper Roaldi was objectively reasonable and justified,” the attorney general’s office said in a press release Wednesday.

“Under the totality of the circumstances,” the release said, “trooper Roaldi reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily harm at the hands of Mr. Lowery, and he used necessary and appropriate force to defend himself.”

Orange County State’s Attorney Colin Seaman, whose office conducted its own independent review of the fatal shooting, also determined the use of deadly force was justified, according to the attorney general’s office press release. 

The incident took place as Roaldi responded to a residence on Spencer Road in Orange to conduct a welfare check on a young child and the child’s father, as requested by their case manager, the release stated. 

At the property Roaldi saw an unconscious man, later identified as Lowery, inside a vehicle with a sawed-off shotgun next to him, according to the release. 

Roaldi called for medical assistance, believing that Lowery, who had a needle in his arm, was overdosing on drugs, the release stated. 

Lowery soon after woke up, spoke to the trooper and was ordered out of the vehicle, according to the release. 

“After initially refusing, Mr. Lowery eventually exited his vehicle. As Trooper Roaldi attempted to secure the sawed-off shotgun located inside the vehicle, a struggle ensued,” the release stated.

“During the struggle, Mr. Lowery gained control of the sawed-off shotgun and pointed it at Trooper Roaldi, who then used his service weapon to fire three rounds at Mr. Lowery,” the release added. “Mr. Lowery fell to the ground and continued to manipulate the sawed-off shotgun, prompting Trooper Lowery to fire an additional three rounds at Mr. Lowery.”

Lowery was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police, and an autopsy determined that his cause of death was gunshot wounds to the neck and torso.

Police had said at the time of the shooting that Lowery had been subject to an active warrant on a charge relating to fentanyl trafficking. 

The attorney general’s office said in its release Wednesday that in reaching its decision to not bring any charges in the case it reviewed all materials provided by Vermont State Police.

State police investigate fatal shootings by police officers in Vermont, including those that involve state police.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Attorney General Charity Clark rules trooper was justified in use of deadly force in Orange fatal shooting.

The parent company of Vermont Castings, a well-known manufacturer of stoves and fireplace inserts, plans to furlough most of the workers at its facilities in Randolph and Bethel around the start of next week, a company spokesperson told VTDigger.

Hearth & Home Technologies, the parent company, plans to furlough 78 employees in Vermont starting on Nov. 25, said Sarah Wellcome, the firm’s vice president for member and community relations, in an email this week. Wellcome noted that 11 employees across both locations will continue working during the furlough — expected to last “a couple of months” — in order to maintain manufacturing equipment.

But the employees who assemble the company’s stoves, and other accessories, will be out of work, Wellcome said. That’s because the company has decided to temporarily stop manufacturing new products — it has too much inventory on hand as “orders for our products have been lower than anticipated,” according to Wellcome. 

“We will continue to monitor market trends and, should orders outpace our forecast, we will increase new production accordingly,” she said, adding, “because of the high levels of inventory, no major disruptions are expected to our dealers or consumers.” 

Wellcome said that employees who are set to be furloughed will retain access to benefits during the time they aren’t working. When the company decides to restart production, “all employees are expected to return to work,” she said.

Hearth & Home Technologies is based in Lakeville, Minnesota. The company is itself a subsidiary of the Iowa-based HNI Corp., which acquired Vermont Castings in 2014. 

At the time, Vermont Castings had passed through three different owners in six years.

HNI is among the world’s largest office and residential furnishing companies. In its latest earnings report, the company said that its residential division — which includes Vermont Castings, among about a dozen other brands — saw a slight uptick in orders in the third quarter of 2024, which runs from July to September, compared to the same time period in 2023. But it noted that projections for the fourth quarter of 2024, which started in October, show an expected drop in sales compared to that period a year prior.

“Incoming orders have been negatively impacted by record-low housing turnover, elevated interest rates, ongoing affordability issues, and economic uncertainty,” the corporation said in the report, which it released on Oct. 29.

The company’s 89 total employees in Vermont marks a decrease from years past. In 2018 — following a sweeping modernization of its plants in Randolph and Bethel — it had 100 employees across both facilities, the Valley News reported at the time.

A spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Labor said the state had been notified of the planned furlough and was in contact with the company’s leadership to offer services to employees who are set to be affected.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Most Vermont Castings employees set to be furloughed next week.

For years, the Vermont GOP has been trying to win the Orange County seat held by Sen. Mark MacDonald. 

But MacDonald, a Williamstown farmer and former social studies teacher who spent 11 years in the House and 23 in the Senate, has bested a succession of Republican challengers. In the past decade, MacDonald has not won less than 52% of the vote in a general election contest — that is, not until Tuesday. 

This year, Republican Larry Hart, a building supply salesman and former Topsham selectboard member, finally succeeded in dislodging MacDonald — a decisive victory that came as voters, frustrated over taxes and the state’s high cost of living, flipped legislative seats across Vermont for the GOP.

In an interview Wednesday, Hart attributed his victory to “empathy” for Orange County residents: “Being compassionate to the voters, and asking them ‘What are their biggest concerns?’ and listening to them,” he said. 

On Tuesday, backed by endorsements by Gov. Phil Scott and thousands in campaign donations from a handful of wealthy families, Republicans flipped six seats in the Senate, including Orange County’s. The district is composed of 13 towns, including Randolph, Williamstown and Bradford.

Hart said he’d heard many concerns from residents, particularly those on fixed incomes, about scraping by: “Can they afford to pay for their fuel oil, electricity, food or medicine, or do they have to make a choice which one of those they can pay for?”

According to unofficial figures from the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office, Hart won 54% of the vote to MacDonald’s 41%. Another 3.5% of voters had left the choice blank. 

“Oh, I’m depressed,” MacDonald said in an interview Wednesday morning. But having watched unfavorable results trickle in from the polls Tuesday night, he said, his loss did not come as a surprise.

MacDonald expressed frustration that, in his perspective, Republicans had managed to pin the blame on Democrats for high costs and taxes even though Gov. Scott had not offered solutions to the problems facing the state.

“It takes two sides to get together, and the two sides failed to get together, and then it worked to the advantage of one side and not the other,” he said. 

Will MacDonald run again in two years? “Only in my wildest fantasies,” he said, pointing out that he will turn 82 in December. 

For Orange County, the vote signifies the end of an era. MacDonald is the second-oldest sitting senator, according to John Bloomer, the secretary of the Senate. He is one day younger than retiring Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Orleans.

MacDonald was first appointed to the House in 1983 to fill the seat vacated by his late mother, Barbara MacDonald. He served there until 1995. 

In 1996, MacDonald was elected to the Senate, where he served until being unseated in 2000 — one of a slew of Democratic losses after the Legislature took a historic vote to legalize civil unions. MacDonald had supported the measure, saying that he would not have been able to explain a “no” vote to his students.  

MacDonald won back the seat two years later and has held onto it until now, despite repeated efforts from the Vermont GOP to topple him.

“This is a seat that we’ve been focused on for a while,” Paul Dame, the chair of the Vermont Republican Party, said last month.  

Hart said Thursday that his victory after years of Republican attempts was due in part to his low-key persona.

“I’m a moderate, not ultra-conservative, and I wasn’t (an) in-your-face type of politician,” Hart said Thursday. Some past Republican challengers were, he said, “and I think that pushed too many people away.”

Hart did not name any names. But in 2022, MacDonald handily repelled a challenge from John Klar, a farmer and firebrand writer who has been vocal about hot-button issues like race and gender. 

MacDonald’s longevity in the relatively conservative district is also thanks to the fact that “he’s a heck of a campaigner,” said Don Hooper, a longtime Orange County resident and a former secretary of state and state representative. “Nobody’s knocked on more doors in Vermont than Mark McDonald.”

In his tenure in the Statehouse, MacDonald served for many years as the vice chair of the Senate Committee on Finance and on the Natural Resources and Energy Committee. According to Hooper, he developed a reputation as a dependable policy wonk who was capable of distilling complex issues into digestible pieces.

“Mark was the guy that we entrusted to report the hardest bills (to the floor),” Hooper said: controversial legislation on recycling, underground fuel tanks and the legislation that would become Act 60, a landmark law that equalized school funding across the state, allowing high-income and low-income areas to spend similar amounts on education. 

Asked for his proudest accomplishment in the Statehouse, MacDonald pointed to that legislation, which has provided the framework for Vermont’s school funding for nearly 30 years.

“By any measure, it’s been a remarkable success,” MacDonald said, although “it’s ready for some work, that’s for sure.”

Tim Ashe, the former Senate president pro tempore, who chaired the Senate finance committee for four years while MacDonald was vice chair, praised MacDonald’s grasp of complex issues, his principles and his talent as a sharp-penned cartoonist.

“Mark has been an unapologetic supporter and champion of issues like environmental protection, clean energy, preserving rural public education (and) many other issues,” he said. “Orange County disproportionately benefits from these things.”

Ashe said he has not met Hart, the senator-elect, “but he does have massive shoes to fill.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: GOP finally unseats Sen. Mark MacDonald, 34-year veteran of the Statehouse.

This story by Christina Dolan was first published in The Valley News on Oct. 30.

SOUTH STRAFFORD — When Melvin and Sue Coburn announced in the summer of 2022 that they planned to retire and sell their general store after nearly 50 years of operation, many Strafford residents feared the town would lose not just its grocery store, but an important community hub. 

Coburns’ General Store, located on Route 132 in South Strafford, sells groceries, fresh meats, gas and hardware, and also houses a laundromat, a bank and a branch of the U.S. Postal Service. Melvin Coburn and his brother Philip purchased the store in 1977.

The nearest grocery alternatives for Strafford residents are between 25 and 40 minutes away in Royalton, West Lebanon or Hanover. 

Strafford would be a “food desert” without the store, said resident Trudi Brock, the board president of the nonprofit Strafford Community Trust. 

A plan to save the store is now in the works. On Oct. 16, the all-volunteer community trust formalized an option agreement with the Coburns for the potential purchase of the building and the business.

The  trust, which was incorporated by the state in January, has six months to raise the nearly $2 million needed to buy and renovate the building, and to hire a proprietor to run the business. 

The trust grew out of earlier, informal discussions among residents about the future of the store.

When Brock reached out to the Preservation Trust of Vermont in 2022 with concerns about Strafford losing its store, she learned about the “community supported enterprise” model of business ownership, where a nonprofit entity raises funds to purchase the building and then leases it to a proprietor at below-market rent.

The arrangement “lowers the bar for an operator” who might be interested in running a country store, Brock said, eliminating a mortgage and overhead costs. 

The community trust then serves as a kind of steward of the general store.

“The model is a work-around,” Preservation Trust of Vermont President Ben Doyle said by phone. “The truth is that in rural communities there’s no other way to get a general store to be viable.”

The community supported model has been an effective mechanism for preserving general stores in many Vermont towns, including Barnard, Putney, Craftsbury and Albany, Doyle said. 

Other towns, including South Woodstock, Pomfret and Brownsville, have seen their stores remain viable through the interventions of wealthy backers rather than nonprofit trusts. 

General stores are important “third places” in the lives of rural Vermonters, Doyle said. Outside of home and work, they are where you meet people with whom you might have little in common other than a love of the store. 

When general stores close, “it’s really devastating for a lot of communities,” Doyle said. 

With the fundraising portion of the Coburns project now public, so is the process of finding someone who wants to operate a general store in South Strafford.

The trust is looking for a proprietor with a “passion for the collaborative, community-centered nature of the project,” according to its call for proposals.

Sue Coburn said she worries about a new operator having the same commitment to the community that has made the store such an important center of life in town. Because it supports local fundraising efforts, Coburns’ hosts raffles, pie sales and other fundraisers along with selling local products.

“That’s what I’m afraid we may lose,” Coburn said Monday.

The idea, on the part of the Coburns and the trust, is to transition ownership of the store so smoothly that business is never interrupted. 

“We’re hoping it will fall into place comfortably,” Sue said.

The Strafford Community Trust plans to hold a public forum on Sunday, Nov. 17 to formally launch the fundraising effort and answer questions about the project. The forum’s location and time have yet to be announced. Details about project may be found at: straffordcommunitytrust.org.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Community members hatch plan to save Coburns’.

This story by Christina Dolan was first published in The Valley News on Oct. 24.

SOUTH STRAFFORD — The practice of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is on hold at The Newton School while teachers, staff and community members discuss a more inclusive alternative that might better reflect the school’s values.

Newton’s new principal, Barrett Williams, wanted to revive some old traditions this year when he brought back a first-day-of-school ceremony at the flagpole that included students, staff and family members saying the pledge together.

The first issue to arise was that not all the students knew the words.

“They had never done it before. They didn’t know what was going on,” Sonya Schumacher said of her children, who are second and fourth grade students at Newton. Schumacher spoke during the public comment section of the board’s October meeting, according to a video recording of the meeting.

The Newton School serves roughly 126 students in grades K-8 in South Strafford.

While some members of the school community were glad to see a return to tradition, others, including board member Nelle Donaldson, worried about the pledge’s religious implications.

If one of the goals of saying the pledge is to foster unity, it has “some real political and religious undertones to it that I’m not sure achieve that,” Donaldson said at the September board meeting. The phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge by Congress in 1954. Donaldson said that the phrase had “roots in the Cold War and assimilation.”

Williams did not return a request for comment by deadline.

Newton parent Dana Riddell said that she enjoyed the ceremony and was glad to see the pledge reintroduced to the school routine.

“I think it’s super important that the kids know the Pledge of Allegiance and it was wonderful on the first day of school to hear it again,” she said at the September board meeting.

By October, the discussion about the pledge seemed to have shifted from removing its religious elements to replacing it altogether with a “Newton pledge” developed in collaboration with students.

“We certainly want student voices included in developing a statement,” reflecting what “the Newton School all about,” White River Valley superintendent Jaime Kinnarney said at the October board meeting.

Kinnarney said that it may take “several months” for that process to produce a statement that school leaders are ready to bring to the board.

In the meantime, the Pledge of Allegiance is in limbo “until we have a full understanding of how the pledge could create harm for members of our school community,” Kinnarney said.

Kinnarney was not available for comment by deadline.

Vermont is one of just four states that do not require schools to make time in the school day for recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

“It’s not a practice that many teachers are doing,” Woodstock Elementary School principal Maggie Mills said by phone Thursday, adding that the school doesn’t have a policy about it.

In the Granite State, a law called the New Hampshire School Patriot Act passed in 2001 requires schools to create time in the day for students to say the pledge. The Supreme Court has long held that Americans cannot be compelled to say the Pledge of Allegiance, so students may sit quietly if they don’t wish to participate.

The Strafford School Board has asked school officials “to involve the school community in this process so that all stakeholders are involved,” board chair Sarah Root said by email Wednesday. “I’m not sure where they are in the process,” she added. “My assumption is that this will take time.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: South Strafford school works to create its own pledge.

ORANGE COUNTY — Prominently displayed on the campaign website for Larry Hart, an Orange County Republican candidate for Vermont Senate, is an endorsement from an unnamed community member: “nice guy, reasonable and calm.”

It’s a distillation of the image that Hart, a salesman at a building supply store and former Topsham selectboard member, is seeking to project to voters in his bid to unseat the longtime incumbent Democratic Senator, Mark MacDonald.

“I don’t get angry. I like to help other people,” Hart, 60, said when asked about that slogan in an interview. “You try to find the good in everybody, even if somebody might be treating you bad at that moment.”

Meanwhile, MacDonald, 81, who has served in the Legislature for a combined total of roughly 35 years, is counting on his constituents’ familiarity with him and a rigorous door-knocking regimen to return him to office.

“I was in Corinth again yesterday — 86 doors,” MacDonald said in a phone interview Tuesday. It’s not an all-time best, he admitted: “I don’t get in and out of the car as fast as I used to.”

MacDonald has represented the Senate district for a total of 23 years, from 1996 to 1998 and then again from 2003 through today. 

But Republicans have long eyed the seat, which represents about 22,000 people in 13 towns, including Randolph, Williamstown, Bradford and Tunbridge. It’s one of five Senate districts that the Vermont GOP is targeting in an effort to topple the Democratic supermajority in the statehouse.

Now, buoyed by an endorsement from Gov. Phil Scott and a surge of campaign contributions — largely from Chittenden County donors — Hart hopes that voter frustration over tax and cost-of-living increases will be enough to finally flip the seat. 

Achieving affordability

The two candidates agree on the primary issue animating the campaign and others around the state: Vermont’s high cost of living, particularly the dearth of affordable housing in the state. 

MacDonald has floated the idea of raising taxes on second and third homes owned by part-time residents to fund affordable housing. 

“A lot of people go to Florida,” he said. “They go, you know, six months and a day, and they come back and don’t pay any income taxes in (Vermont).” 

Hart, meanwhile, declined to provide specific legislative proposals to address affordability, saying only that policies would need to be hashed out through collaboration with other lawmakers and the executive branch. 

“We need the Governor’s team involved in it,” he said. “We need us involved in it. We need some people in the House that have common sense.”

Republicans have pointed to legislation supported by MacDonald that they argue is making Vermont less affordable, like this year’s yield bill, which set out an average 13.8% increase in property taxes to fund school budgets for the next fiscal year, and the clean heat standard, which, if implemented, would require fossil fuel importers to offset their products’ emissions. 

Hart has also said he would like to see tougher penalties for petty crimes and to bolster Vermont’s substance use recovery system — a goal motivated by his daughter’s death of a fentanyl overdose. He’s also expressed opposition to an overdose prevention center, also known as a safe injection site, in the state, something MacDonald voted for in the most recent legislative session.

And although his campaign has taken some jabs at MacDonald, Hart has professed a commitment to running a polite race. 

“I’m not going to slam Mark. I’m not going to do that. That’s not who I am,” he said. 

‘Longtime ties’

“This is a seat that we’ve been focused on for a while,” Paul Dame, the chair of the Vermont Republican Party, said in an interview. “We think this is going to be a pretty competitive race this year.”

Hart is a departure from the last Republican to challenge MacDonald: John Klar, a firebrand writer and farmer who leaned into culture war issues in his 2022 campaign. MacDonald won that race with a ten-point margin of victory, even after he was sidelined by a stroke just weeks before the election. 

Dame said that Hart, who owned auto parts stores in Randolph and Bradford and spent nine years on the Topsham selectboard, was recruited in large part because of his longtime ties to the area. 

“In the past, sometimes we’ve had people who tend to be more ideological,” Dame said. “They get involved, and they have a very narrow sample of what quote-unquote Vermonters think. And then they go out and campaign and realize that they don’t really know the district that well.”

Asked if he was referring to Klar, Dame said, “Nobody specifically.”

MacDonald, meanwhile, charged that Hart, despite his moderate image, “holds pretty much the same views as my opponent a few years ago, but he doesn’t go around and broadcast it.”

MacDonald’s pitch is that, effectively, his outreach to and familiarity with constituents gives him an intimate understanding of their concerns. 

“Folks who I interrupted (their) dinner, or when they’re picking potatoes, or combing out the dog hair on the front porch, or having a beer in the door yard, leaning against the back of the truck on a Saturday afternoon,” MacDonald said. “That’s how you see people where they are, and hear what they’re thinking.”

Until Election Day, of course, it’s also impossible to say how much frustration over property taxes will translate into votes in the district.

But homestead tax rates in the Senate District are not going up as quickly as in other parts of the state — or at all, according to preliminary data compiled by Vermont Public in August. 

Between the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, Tunbridge and Strafford are projected to see homestead tax hikes of 11.2% and 9.7% respectively, the largest in the district. But in other towns — Topsham, Vershire, Corinth, Fairlee and West Fairlee — tax rates are actually dropping. Fairlee and West Fairlee will see the district’s largest decreases, of roughly 20%, among the largest drops in the state, according to the data. 

That’s in part due to recent reforms intended to direct more school funding money towards districts that need it more — such as rural and low-income parts of the state.

‘Good discussions’

MacDonald, in an interview, pointed out that Hart’s campaign has been funded almost entirely by donors outside Orange County. 

According to an October campaign finance filing, Hart has raised roughly $25,000, the vast majority of which has come in increments of $1,000 or $960 from addresses in Chittenden County: Burlington, Shelburne, South Burlington. Most of that money has gone into postcards and advertisements online, in newspapers and on the radio.

Hart attributed those donations to frustrations over liberal Chittenden County representatives in the Statehouse and what donors see as the impact of their policies on Burlington: drug use, violence, homelessness. 

“They’re like, this isn’t the Burlington we knew,” Hart said. “And so they’re frustrated with that.”

According to his most recent report, MacDonald has raised a fraction of that haul, with only about $3,300 in contributions. 

But Jim Dandeneau, the executive of the Vermont Democratic Party, said that the party is optimistic that MacDonald’s “tireless” campaigning and years representing the district will pay dividends on election day.

“Mark has deep relationships in the community,” Dandeneau said in a brief interview. “Mark has people who are very loyal to him because he’s done a lot to help them.”

On Tuesday, MacDonald estimated that he has so far visited around 2,300 houses during the campaign. 

“I got to go and pay for a radio ad today,” he said in an early morning interview. “And at 10 o’clock I’ll be knocking on doors.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In Orange County Senate race, Vermont GOP tries again to unseat Mark MacDonald .

This story by Emma Roth-Wells was first published in The Valley News on Oct. 21.

BRADFORD — Two members of the Bradford Selectboard resigned earlier this month, citing the board’s resistance to change and alleging prejudice in the municipal government.

Selectboard chairman Ryan Lockwood, 44, and board member Nikki Stevens, 42, both submitted separate letters of resignation shortly before a board meeting on Oct. 11.

In their letters of resignation, the two board members described their frustrations with the board, including a reluctance to change and an atmosphere they described as disrespectful. The remaining board members, however, said those characterizations are inaccurate. 

Lockwood, who grew up in Bradford, was elected to the board in 2019 and became chairman in March. He has worked as Fairlee’s town administrator for about a year.

“I originally joined the Selectboard to get a feel for how the town functions,” Lockwood said in a phone interview. “The longer I was on it, the more I realized that the people who are in charge of making sure the town thrives and prospers are very stuck in traditional ways and not accepting of change.”

In his letter, Lockwood faulted the board for only completing “minor tasks,” such as “signing training requests and liquor permits” instead of “economic development, housing and the betterment of the community as a whole.”

Stevens, who moved to Bradford in the summer of 2022, unseated incumbent Carole Taylor at Town Meeting in 2023.

“Serving on the Selectboard has been an enriching experience, and I am grateful for the opportunity to work alongside individuals who are passionate about Bradford,” Stevens wrote in their resignation letter. “However, I must express my concerns about the current dynamics within the board. The atmosphere has been challenging, to put it mildly, and I have found it increasingly difficult to contribute effectively.”

As the first openly transgender person on the Bradford Selectboard, Stevens said in a phone interview that they “received a large amount of pushback” from the town and fellow officials.

“It looked like pretty regular misgendering and jokes,” said Stevens.

The remaining members of the Selectboard bristled at the departing members’ claims. 

“Its mind-boggling the reasons (Lockwood and Stevens) gave,” said current Selectboard member Michael Wright in a phone interview. “To say that we’re not doing anything is very inaccurate.”

Wright, 45, grew up in Bradford and joined the board in February of 2023. He listed many projects the Selectboard had a hand in moving along since he joined, such as installing electric vehicle chargers downtown this spring, making the director of parks and recreation a full-time position starting last September and the renovation of Elizabeth Park.

A plan for a skate park is in the works.

“I could go on for an hour talking about things this board has done over the past year alone,” said Wright.

“It takes a long time to get things done,” said Selectboard vice chairman Dan Perry III, 66, who has been on the board for about 18 years. “Change doesn’t happen overnight, and not all people want change in the small towns in this valley.”

Allegations of misgendering

Stevens alleges Selectboard member Meroa Benjamin and Selectboard administrative assistant Danielle Kingsbury misgendered Stevens during meetings for nine months. Stevens sent both of them emails reiterating that they use they/them pronouns and included links to resources on the importance of using one’s correct pronouns.

When neither Benjamin nor Kingsbury replied, Stevens sent a follow-up email to which neither replied again. After a third email to just Kingsbury, Kingsbury replied to the entire Selectboard stating she does not purposely misgender Stevens. 

“Your personal life is none of my business as I hope you feel the same way about me,” wrote Kingsbury. “If I accidentally say ‘she’ I am not purposefully trying to offend you, I am simply using the language I was taught and have been using for 36 years.”

Kingsbury did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails requesting an interview.

Benjamin, 67, who began her second term on the board this spring, said in a phone interview that she is “not a fan of email communication,” and that she does not hold prejudice against Stevens for being trans.

In May, Stevens filed a formal complaint to the Vermont Human Rights Commission about the workplace climate in the Bradford government. 

Along with outlining Stevens’ personal experience with being misgendered, the complaint alleges “the majority of members of the Selectboard tolerate (and in some cases encourage) an environment in which men make jokes about women and other marginalized or disenfranchised people, talk over them, and denigrate them.”

Stevens cites examples such as a male member of one of the town’s commissions joking that women cannot be firefighters because they are not strong enough; a male commissioner making jokes about who might have gotten a woman pregnant; and some male selectboard members referring to grown women as “girls” and using phrases such as “she’s a good girl.”

“If this continues, I do not know how much longer I’ll be able to stay on the board. My vote matters, but the persistent sexism, hostility, and mistreatment is having its intended effect of silencing and tiring me,” wrote Stevens.

In July, Stevens met with a member of the state’s Human Right’s Comission staff, but on Oct. 14, executive director and general counsel Big Hartman declined to investigate the complaint, stating “the claims (Stevens) assert do not appear within our jurisdiction and/or otherwise does not meet our current criteria for accepting new cases.”

Stevens said they will not be seeking further action at this time.

Lockwood supports Stevens’ accounts of events. He said that he witnessed the misgendering, these events and a pattern of sexist behavior.

“Male department heads, committee and commission members generally were prone to less interruption and scrutiny than their female counterparts,” wrote Lockwood in an email. He alleges men were “generally taken at their word”, while women were required to provide more proof of their projects’ value for approval by the Selectboard.

For his part, Wright said he could see how Stevens could feel unwelcome by the board because of the regular misgendering, but that he didn’t “think anyone was holding the fact that Nikki is transgender against them.” Wright also said he does not see any favoritism toward male commissioners.

“At one time last year our board was majority female so I think the public and the town has really embraced everyone and everything,” said Benjamin, who argued there is not an issue of sexism in the Bradford government.

Workplace concerns

The Vermont League of Cities and Towns partnered with Abundant Sun — a company that helps workplaces investigate, and when necessary, improve their culture to increase employee satisfaction — to conduct a Welcoming and Engaging Community Survey.

Out of the 12 municipalities that participated in the 2023-2024 survey, Bradford ranked last in every single category.

“If nothing else I think the data shows how bad the working conditions are,” said Stevens.

The survey asked employees to indicate whether they “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” were “not sure/neutral,” “agree,” or “strongly agree” to whether they have a good relationship with their supervisors and coworkers, they feel like they are treated with respect, they are satisfied with the work culture, the workplace is committed to diversity and inclusion and the workplace is engaged in advocacy.

“At this point I really believe that Bradford could use some outside skill support,” said Stevens “I think people can’t gender me correctly because they’re scared and something about me being queer and trans is threatening and I don’t want anyone to live in fear. I want people to have the resources and education to respect their neighbors.”

Next steps

There is already interest from community members in filling the vacant Selectboard positions.

Sean Flemming, 53, said if appointed to the board, he hopes to make it “feel welcoming and connect with the public.” 

Patrick Harrigan, 64, has lived in Bradford a little over two years and said he’s not worried about the board’s alleged resistance to change.

“Real change I think is incremental,” said Harrigan. “It’s hard for people that don’t want to change at all, and it’s hard for people who want a lot of change. We have to figure out how to work together.”

The board plans to appoint new members to serve until elections are held at Town Meeting in March. The remaining three members hope to discuss their next steps in the meeting on Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Bradford Academy building, Perry said. A Zoom link for the meeting will available in the agenda that is expected to be posted on the town’s website on Tuesday.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Bradford Selectboard members cite prejudice among reasons for resigning.

The body of a man was recovered Monday morning from Rood Pond in Williamstown, after what Vermont State Police described as a presumed drowning. The incident does not appear suspicious, police said. 

Steven Jones, a 30-year-old Brookfield resident, had been duck-hunting on the pond Sunday afternoon when his kayak capsized, according to police. Witnesses “heard yelling from the pond” and saw the overturned kayak, police said. 

Authorities were notified of the incident just after 5:30 p.m. Sunday, but it took until Monday morning for a state police team to locate and recover Jones’ body. He had been dressed warmly but was not wearing a life jacket, according to the report. 

The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington was expected to perform an autopsy. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brookfield man dies in presumed drowning at Williamstown pond .

This story by Emma Roth-Wells was first published in the Valley News on Oct. 8

THETFORD — Two long-term infrastructure projects in Orange and Grafton counties are set to wrap up next month, to the relief of area residents and business owners.

After more than 18 months and $9.4 million in construction costs, the bridge over the Connecticut River connecting East Thetford and Lyme on Route 113 is scheduled to fully reopen on Nov. 15, about a month later than originally planned.

North along the river, a six-mile stretch of southbound Interstate 91 between exits 16 and 15 in Fairlee, which has been closed since April of this year, is expected to reopen at the beginning of November. The project has cost approximately $4 million so far.

The hardest part of any project is the detour, Joseph Flynn, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Transportation, or VTrans, said in a phone interview with the Valley News.

“That’s always the challenge, the disruption to travel,” he said.

To cross the Connecticut River, drivers have detoured either about 12 miles North to Bridge Street, the crossing between Orford and Fairlee, or about 18 miles south to the Ledyard Bridge between Norwich and Hanover.

Detouring motorists from the I-91 southbound closure must go through downtown Fairlee on Route 5. The change in traffic flow means delays, longer commutes and a decrease in customers for some local businesses.

Both projects have faced delays.

Construction on I-91 southbound was set to end by mid-to-late August. However, the scope of the project expanded when workers “found several locations that would be expected to fail and could overwhelm the southbound lanes with rock material,” Bruce Martin, a Vermont Agency of Transportation project manager, wrote in a July email to the Valley News.

The Thetford-Lyme bridge was originally supposed to open this month, but last winter the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, or NHDOT, granted the contractor, New England Infrastructure Inc., of Hudson, Mass., a time extension because additional structural steel repairs were uncovered in the cleaning and painting process.

The bridge, built in 1937, had deteriorating steel and concrete, was on New Hampshire’s Red List, a list of bridges that require inspection due to poor condition. Before the bridge closed in April 2023, it had a reduced weight limit of 15 tons.

The bridge is scheduled to completely open Nov. 15 with some construction clean-up wrapping up by Thanksgiving, according to Jennifer Lane, spokesperson for the NHDOT.

As the detours in East Thetford, Lyme and Fairlee are set to end next month, residents reflected on the impact.

“I couldn’t believe one bridge like that would take so many customers away,” said Bonnie Huggett, owner of Huggett’s Mart, a gas station and convenience store along Route 5 in East Thetford. “Closing the bridge was very devastating for small businesses like mine, my sales were hit really hard.”

Huggett, who has owned the store since 1991, said her sales declined over $1 million between April and December of last year.

“These people who decided to close the bridge, I don’t know what their thought process was,” she said. “This on top of the pandemic, which wasn’t too long ago, makes small businesses have a hard time surviving.”

The decision to rehabilitate the bridge instead of demolish it and build a new one came down to a variety of factors including the bridge’s eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places, a list by the National Park Service of structures and places worthy of preservation.

Sam Ranger, retail manager of the farmstand at Cedar Circle Farm on Pavillion Road in East Thetford, said although the stand has had a reduction in sales, the workers have done “a good job reaching across the river.”

Cedar Circle Farm, which operates a farmstand, cafe, commercial kitchen and educational center, started a pre-order and delivery service last summer at the Lyme Country Store on Wednesdays and Fridays for its New Hampshire customers. It also began a pop-up farmstand on Wednesdays in the Lyme Country Store parking lot.

Eric Tadlock, executive director of the nonprofit farm, said he is “very thankful” for the partnership with the Lyme Country Store.

Although it did face revenue losses of about 30 percent in 2023 and 20 percent in 2024, the farm’s “feelings of success come from being able to maintain connections with the Lyme community, not finances and figures,” Tadlock said.

Tadlock, who himself lives in Lyme, has canoed across the river a few times to commute to work during the bridge closure, a quicker journey than taking one of the detours, he said.

The businesses on the Lyme side of the river reported not much of a difference in revenue.

“Everybody’s been really good about it,” said Tami Dowd, owner of Dowds’ Country Inn and Event Center. “The locals grumble about having to go through Hanover but that’s about it.”

The construction on the stretch of I-91 began following a rockfall event in February of this year. Primary contractor J.A. McDonald Inc., based in Lyndon, Vt., has worked to stabilize the cliff side by clearing trees, removing existing mesh, hand scaling loose rock material and vegetation along the faces of the ledge, and installing dowels to hold the rocks in place.

A rolling roadblock has been implemented periodically on the Northbound side of I-91 during scaling activities to prevent cars from driving through areas with potential falling rocks.

Theo Damaskos, the manager at Chapman’s General Store in Fairlee located on Route 5, said she’s seen an “uptick in customers who would normally be going down the highway.”

Along with travelers detoured off of I-91 south, the bridge closure is also directing new patrons to the store especially from Hanover, according to Damaskos.

“I’m hoping they will continue to come to us once the bridge reopens,” she said.

Nearby, Janice Neil, owner of the Jan’s Fairlee Diner on Route 5, said “people have stopped in who didn’t know the diner existed or even the town of Fairlee existed.” Neil is not worried about losing business once the interstate reopens but she appreciates the support the diner has gotten.

However, the detour and rolling roadblock still disrupt daily life for many.

Danielle Allen, owner of Root 5 Farm, located on Route 5 in Fairlee, said the construction poses significant logistical challenges and added costs to delivering nearly 400 farm-share boxes each week.

Since Root 5 Farm does not have a storefront, Allen said, the business is “not taking advantage of the increased traffic.”

Samuel Morey Elementary School, situated off Route 5 in Fairlee, has experienced “minor delays” from the rolling roadblocks and increased traffic volume since sometimes staff and families cannot get to school on time, Principal Tom Buzzell said.

The school community is looking forward to the road “being back to normal,” Buzzell said.

He does, however, recognize the importance of the construction.

“It’s tough, dangerous work that’s essential for us to have safe infrastructure,” he said. “I’m happy the crew’s here getting that work done.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Bridge over Connecticut River, section of I-91 to reopen soon.

This story by John Lippman was first published in the Valley News on Oct. 3

BRADFORD — Since Marilyn Rainville took over running the Bliss Village Store and Deli in the summer of 2022, she’s watched as four other small businesses along Bradford’s Main Street have, one by one, closed up shop.

The cheese store, a boutique, a coffee shop and a thrift store, Rainville ticked off as she worked the cash register at the counter of her store on Tuesday afternoon, as customers came in to buy snacks, cigarettes and lottery tickets.

“We’re number five and there’s a six and a seven that are talking about it,” Rainville said.

This past Sunday, Rainville posted on social media that 27 months after she and her son acquired the Bliss Village Store and Deli from longtime owner Mark Johnson, the market and sandwich shop will close on Oct. 15, the latest in a roll call of general stores to close in the Upper Valley over the past decade.

The store — a quick stop to grab breakfast, lunch and dinner for generations — has been a favorite among staff at Colatina Exit, a restaurant next door. They often pop in for an energy drink or something quick after work, as do kids from The Hub youth center a couple doors down. But that’s not enough.

“We tried, but couldn’t make it work any longer,” said Rainville, who has lived in one of the apartments in the Bliss Hotel building above the store and now plans to return back West from where she joined her son, Chris Petrossian-Rainville, when he bought the Bliss Village Store. He had first seen the 218-year-old historic Greek Revival building listed for sale on a business broker’s website.

Rainville said her son, who had made some money investing, wanted to venture the profits in another business. But two months after they closed on buying the store and property, her son, who is in the military, was deployed overseas.

So Rainville has been single-handedly running the store ever since, logging 60-plus hours a week. (The days are long, 6:00 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 7:00 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends).

Once as ubiquitous a feature of small town New England life as white clapboard churches and village greens, scores of independent general stores — the exact tally is difficult to gauge but before the onset of the pandemic in 2020 the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association pegged the number of “traditional” village stores at between 70 and 75 — have been steamrolled by gas station convenience store chains and dollar stores.

In August, Erin’s General Store, the former B & B Cash Market in West Fairlee, closed after reopening in 2020 under a new owner. Upper Valley towns that have lost general stores in recent years include Thetford Center, Cornish, Grafton, Canaan Village, Brownsville, Taftsville and Quechee, among others.

Rainville, a former manager with the Pilot/Flying J Truck Stop chain of highway fuel stations and convenience stores, said that in the first six months of running Bliss Village Store “business was good.” She inherited the staff who worked under previous owners, three of whom had decades of experience in the store and could handle a variety of tasks.

But the three veteran employees all retired over the next 18 months and Rainville said finding and retaining reliable employees has become difficult, meaning she has barely been able to take more than a spare day off in more than two years.

A staff that was 22 mostly part-time workers when she arrived is now down to 14.

Meanwhile, she said, “insurance doubled and the my utility bills are 25 percent more and foot traffic is 35 percent less,” she said. Electricity costs have gone up so much that in the summer of 2023, Rainville said, she had to unplug the soft-serve machine and scoop only hard ice cream.

Then the store had a run of bad luck. A frozen pipe burst in February, 2023, flooding the store and causing it to close for repairs. The entire winter of 2023 was a disappointment, as the unseasonably warm weather reduced the influx of skiers, usually a reliable source of business.

“Nobody was coming in that winter,” she said.

But even apart from the odd offseason, the fundamentals of the small store business no longer add up, according to Rainville.

“Village stores are really not sustainable any longer,” Rainville said.

Although Bliss Village Store’s primary business is the deli counter, refrigerated beverages and beer, its location on Bradford’s Main Street has made it a convenient place to pop in and grab a quick bite and coffee.

Vin Wendell, who owns the Colatina Exit restaurant and who grew up in Bradford, has been going to the store since he was young. His father owned the five and dime store in town and would send him up the street to Bliss Village Store “mostly for cigarettes.”

“I was just a little kid but back then everyone knew everyone and they knew who it was for,” Wendell remembered, laughing at how ridiculous that would be today.

Because the restaurant is located next door to the village store, Wendell said people picking up take-out orders from Colatina would also duck into Bliss Village Store to purchase wine or beer to go with their meal.

“We complimented each other,” Wendell said.

On Tuesday, Quinn Treadgold came into Bliss Village Store toting his 13-month-old daughter Eloise in a baby carrier after learning on social media the store would be closing. “I thought I’d help them clear out the shelves,” he said.

Treadgold, who works from home in Fairlee several days a week as a building envelope testing manager, said he usually would head for Bliss Village Store “about three times a month” for lunch and always ordered his favorite, the Main Street Sub — ham, turkey, bacon, Swiss cheese, Thousand Island dressing and cole slaw — which, at $9.25 for a small and $11.75 for a large, Treadgold called “very fairly priced.”

Most important, he added, “I’m never hungry afterwards.”

Also in the store for a final visit on Tuesday was Scott Fitts, of North Haverhill, a retired steamfitter at Dartmouth College who said he made a habit of stopping at Bliss Village Store “every morning for 20 years” to get a coffee and a doughnut on his drive into work in Hanover.

“I had to check it out one more time,” Fitts said, waiting in line with a container of cole slaw.

Rainville said her son plans to continue owning the building, and they are talking with people who are interested in leasing the space, possibly as a general store, cafe or a Mexican restaurant. One person wanted to renovate the vacant apartments upstairs and turn them into short-term rentals.

Rainville doesn’t know which possibility will pan out, although she said she is telling prospective lessees what is important to her.

“I got my Colatina people and I got my Hub kids. Those are the big ones that come in here all day long,” she said. “I just hope that no matter who comes in here can take care of them.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Bradford village store to close.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department no longer guards the doors of the Orange County Courthouse in Chelsea. That responsibility now belongs to the Windsor County Sheriff’s Department.

And while state judicial officials have been mum on why, emails obtained through a public records request reveal part of the backstory, showing courthouse staff grew frustrated with a deputy sheriff’s early departures and alleged conduct toward two people who did not speak English.

In a July 24 email, Samantha Spinella, Orange County’s court operations manager, wrote to Vermont Judiciary staff and Orange County Sheriff’s Department Captain Lenny Zenonos that two men who did not speak English had come into the courthouse after 4 p.m. asking about a hearing they missed.

“(The deputy), who was at the front door said he had to leave due to family emergency and left me here with the two men,” she wrote. “These guys seemed very nice, but I don’t know them, they are from Connecticut and there was no one else in the building or around outside even. (The deputy) only had to wait a few more minutes and they would have been gone. I was honestly shocked, and I’m pretty upset.”

Spinella mentioned a previous instance in which the same deputy sought to leave less than an hour early, but she stopped him from doing so, noting he was the “only officer with a gun.”

The next day, Spinella wrote again. “I wanted to check in because (the same deputy) is the front door officer again today and my staff and I are all in agreement that the confidence in his ability to protect any of us or take our protection seriously is completely non- existent at this point.”

Spinella also claimed that the deputy had “asked … two gentlemen what their immigration status is” and left the courthouse, leaving herself alone with the two men she mentioned the day prior. 

“Staff is at the point where they don’t feel like they are safe and they are demanding results,” she wrote. 

With limited exceptions, asking a person’s immigration status violates Vermont’s fair and impartial policing policy. 

The deputy sheriff’s first name is found in the records. Neither the Orange County Sheriff’s Department nor the Vermont Criminal Justice Council would confirm the full name of the deputy, though the council did note that two people by the same first name work at the sheriff’s department. VTDigger was not able to confirm the deputy’s identity. 

Asked about the events precipitating the contract change, Teri Corsones, the state court administrator, declined to comment, noting that the court’s contract with the Orange County sheriff had expired before the Windsor County Sheriff’s Department took over this summer. 

Spinella did not directly respond to interview requests, and through Corsones, she declined to comment. 

In recent years, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has undergone substantial upheaval. Two years ago, Sheriff George Contois was elected to replace the former sheriff, Bill Bohnyak. That change in leadership proved messy and sparked a mass exodus of staff.

After taking office, Contois publicly bemoaned the woeful finances he inherited, and a company mandated to audit the department’s books later bowed out after discovering fiscal disarray. 

On the topic of the court contract, Contois, in an interview last week, called the loss “collateral damage.”

While he refused to name the deputy, he said the deputy “denies … adamantly” that he asked anyone their immigration status. Contois also said that the officer received a call about a “family emergency” but still stayed at the courthouse “long after he was supposed to leave.”

According to Contois, there is an active “Act 56 investigation” into the officer, referencing the law that governs mandatory investigations into alleged police misconduct. The deputy remains employed, Contois said, and has his “complete confidence.”

Contois did agree to pass on a message to the deputy in question requesting comment, which was not returned. 

His department would have had the contract renewed, Contois argued, but the judiciary decided otherwise at the last minute.

“After this fracas, (the judiciary) removed my name from the (security) contract,” he said. “They simply took one side of the story … I don’t think it was fair.” 

Financially, though, the sheriff said the loss wasn’t much of a hit. The contract paid two full-time deputies, according to the White River Valley Herald, totaling $221,540. 

The Orange County department maintains patrol contracts in Orange, Washington, Williamstown and Strafford, Contois said, and continues to fulfill civil service obligations and fingerprinting. 

Correction: Due to incorrect information provided by Sheriff George Contois, a previous version of this story misstated the contracts currently held by his department.

Read the story on VTDigger here: After dustup, Orange County sheriff lost the county courthouse security contract.

This story by Emma Roth-Wells was first published by Valley News on Sept. 11.

TUNBRIDGE — A heavy dew covered the grass on Wednesday morning as 22 veterinary technician students from Vermont State University in Randolph deployed at the Tunbridge World’s Fair grounds.

The students, outfitted in coveralls and rubber boots, along with several faculty and staff members of the university, assisted the fair veterinarian in checking in sheep, goats and cattle who will live in close confines at the fair through Sunday.

“It’s definitely one of the more fun days,” said 19-year-old Des Pouliot, a second-year student at Vermont State University. “You get to get off campus and do actual work.”

The Tunbridge World’s Fair will showcase about 630 animals in total, according to Exhibitor Registration Superintendent Tracy Amell. Numbers are just starting to return up to where they were before 2020, she said. The animals will be the center of attention in events ranging from goat milking demonstrations, swine obstacle courses, poultry and rabbit shows, horse pulling and sheep shearing, just to name a few.

The first trailer hauling cattle pulled up around 8:30 a.m. and off came 3-year-old Alpine and her baby Amaryllis, who was born in December. These light brown Guernseys came from Rockbottom Farm in Strafford and will be shown by 14-year-old Eben Zoerheide.

As the cows came off the trailer, 18-year-old student Blakelee Hoffman used a radio frequency identification tag reader — a handheld, remote-sized device — to ensure the tag numbers in the cows’ ears matched the paperwork.

While other students checked to see if the animals had their vaccine records, Hoffman circled the cows looking for any physical signs of contagious illness, such as a runny nose, skin legion or diarrhea.

“Scrape on the back but I’m guessing it’s from the trailer,” she said, while examining Alpine.

Hoffman grew up on a farm and has shown cows at fairs herself. She said she’d always known she wanted to be a vet.

After about three minutes, the cows were all set and Zoerheide led them to their stalls, their home for the duration of the fair.

The relationship between the school and the fair began two years ago when Amanda Angell, a Vermont State University program technician, realized it could be a win-win opportunity.

Angell grew up on a dairy farm in Randolph and had visited the fair for years. She noticed there was not much of a veterinary presence, plus the students were not getting a lot of experience with large animals. That’s when she thought to herself: ‘Man, we could do cow exams pretty fast’.

“There’s a lot of paperwork with these animals and it can overwhelm the staff,” said Craig Stalnaker, a Vermont State University veterinary technology professor and program coordinator.

Having the students there quickens the pace, according to fair veterinarian Taylor Hull, of South Royalton.

“The students do a significant amount of legwork,” she said, “and it’s a really good opportunity for them to see what’s normal for a cow.”

After training for two years under the previous vet, Hull took over as fair vet in 2021, and incorporated the students into the check-in process. She said it’s rare for anyone not to pass check-in. Over the last two years only one calf had to be sent home — not for health reasons, but because it was too young.

Rachel MacAdams, of East Randolph, hosed down her 2-year-old cow Disco.

“We try to keep them clean for the judges,” she said.

The 34-year-old has been showing cows since she was 4, and has shown at the Tunbridge Fair for 29 years. She said she likes that the students have an opportunity to get experience.

By 10:30 a.m. there was a line of trailers and lots of mooing.

“It’s nice to see this side of the fair with everyone who cares about the animals,” said Vermont State University student Owen Hartman.

Hartman was born and raised in Woodstock and grew up going to the fair. He decided to go to school to be a veterinary technician after seeing some “depressing things” while working at a zoo in Pennsylvania that did not have a good veterinary team. The Vermont State University program is two years long and graduates receive an Associate of Applied Science degree.

“They’re eager, it’s good to see the students excited,” said Kristen Sayers, a program technician.

Not only did the students get valuable large animal experience, but Mark Whitney, the superintendent of oxen, also gave each of them a free day pass to the fair.

The fair kicks off Thursday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and will be open Friday and Saturday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Animals arrive for annual Tunbridge World’s Fair.

FAIRLEE — As Airon Shaw glanced around Fairlee’s newest small business — catching light reflect off shiny vinyl records, glossy ’70s magazine clippings and a bright teal Volkswagen bus — she said she’s embracing the future just as much as she’s honoring the past. 

On one hand, the Ninny Goat & Co. owner is building a dream career for herself and a home for her family in Vermont.

“With a business like this, you’re really taking a risk on yourself, and you just pray it works out,” she said. “And it did.”

The cannabis dispensary opened Aug. 8, bringing “new life” to a gas station that had sat empty in downtown Fairlee for about 10 years, said Katie Rader, Ninny Goat & Co.’s assistant manager. Since then, it’s received steady business, and is only expected to grow, she added.

But on the other hand, Shaw, 30, is staying rooted in the past by preserving the legacy of her grandmother, known as Ninny, who inspired the dispensary’s name and ’70s theme. 

When Ninny died suddenly from cancer two years ago, Shaw said she knew “something of hers needed to live on forever” — and decided that was her timeless taste. Now, Ninny’s black and white portrait, displayed proudly at Ninny Goat & Co.’s front counter, is just as prominent as the store’s neon retro decor. 

Shaw said she wants the shop to be a time machine to her grandmother’s favorite years, complete with Nat King Cole vinyls that Shaw salvaged from a nearby record store and vintage magazines and newspapers she collected from community members. 

Shaw said she also seeks to model her grandmother’s kindness as she takes on her new role as a business owner.

“My nana helped everyone. She had a lot of love to give,” Shaw said. “And that’s something I want to do, too, for this community.” 

But one of the biggest lessons Shaw said she learned over the two and a half years it took to get her business off the ground was to show that same kindness to herself. 

“The path hasn’t been easy,” she said, as she works three full time jobs — running Ninny Goat & Co., working for the Vermont Professionals of Color Network and raising her 10-year-old son, Aidan, as a single mom. 

It felt like a fourth full time job to obtain a cannabis retail license, she said.

“The whole process costs a lot, and you need a lot of connections to be able to do it,” she said. “And there’s a chance you could go through the whole process and not end up with a business at the end of it.”

License applicants must build their retail space, install security systems, enroll in business insurance, write a full business plan, complete a background check and more before moving forward with an application, Shaw said. That comes with countless costs that often felt like daunting barriers to opening the store, Shaw said. For example, she said she had to start paying rent for her space in February, six months before her store opened. 

The costs don’t stop there. A cannabis retail license — which must be renewed annually — costs $10,000 for retailers and up to $100,000 for other growing and processing roles, according to the Vermont cannabis information portal. 

Shaw received some financial aid through the Cannabis Control Board’s social equity program, which waives a percentage of application and license fees. But the program “only takes you so far,” she said, especially considering the high up-front costs of opening a retail space. 

The program is open to people who are from a community that has been disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibitions, who have been convicted of cannabis-related offenses, or who are Hispanic or Black, according to Vermont’s Cannabis Control Board. Of the 78 licensed cannabis retailers in Vermont, 14 are listed as members of the social equity program, according to a report from the board. 

Shaw said she’s proud to see her sacrifices finally pay off at Ninny Goat & Co.

“You just don’t give up on yourself,” she said. “Because it is really hard, and there’s going to be times you’re not going to want to do it anymore. So you just have to be patient with yourself and the process.”

That commitment connects with Fairlee’s broader goal to revive its downtown area, according to Travis Noyes, who retrofitted the gas station into Shaw’s dream space. Noyes and his family — which has owned Chapman’s General Store in Fairlee for 150 years — have been working since 2019 to save the downtown area from a “downward spiral” of losing businesses, Noyes said.

With a combination of grants, state support, crowdfunding and personal investment, Noyes has repurposed local buildings to create apartment units, a cafe and Shaw’s dispensary. He also renovated the town’s general store to include more space for fresh, local groceries — filling what he calls a “grocery desert” in the rural town.  

“With every project, we ask ourselves, ‘how can we make the biggest impact on our small town?’” he said.

For the dispensary project in particular, he said, he wanted to “keep the character, the architectural bones” of the gas station, which had been a staple of the town center for decades. He did, however, replace the roof, floors, insulation and other essential features to ensure the building stands strong for decades to come.

Shaw said she hopes to give back to the community in her own ways, too. She’s already selling local artists’ work at her shop and plans to partner with local farmers to fight hunger in the area once she settles in more.

She moved to the Green Mountain State from her home in Alabama in 2021 to attend Vermont Law School. Although it seems cliche, she said, she “did actually fall in love with Vermont” during her time in school and decided to move here permanently. 

Although she misses her hometown family and friends — and the homemade cornbread, rice grits and roast beef made from Ninny’s recipes — she said the move was worth it for the life she has been able to build for her and her son. 

“We’re enjoying the perks of living in a bubble that most of the world, this country really, doesn’t know exists,” she said. “There’s better education. There’s clean air. And I’m able to own this business, of course.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Fairlee dispensary brings new life to a defunct gas station.

This story by Christina Dolan was first published in the Valley News on August 11. 

TUNBRIDGE — The Vermont Supreme Court is leaving it up to a lower court judge to decide whether the town of Tunbridge has the “right to maintain and repair legal trails within its borders.”

The 5-0 decision released Aug. 2 paves the way for a resolution to a long and costly dispute between the town of Tunbridge and the owners of a former dairy farm who have objected to bicyclists using a town trail that runs through their property.

John Echeverria and Carin Pratt, who have owned the 325-acre Dodge Farm at the top of Strafford Road since 2015, have argued in court that the Tunbridge Selectboard lacks the authority to maintain or designate appropriate use of legal trails in town.

The couple lives in nearby Strafford and rents the property to a Tunbridge resident.

“We are grateful that the Vermont Supreme Court is giving us the opportunity to resolve our dispute with the town,” Echeverria, a professor of property law at Vermont Law and Graduate School in South Royalton, said last week. “We are confident that we will prevail.”

“Our contention is that under the Vermont statutes, the authority to maintain and repair legal trails rests exclusively with the landowners,” Echeverria added.

Tunbridge officials argue that legal trails are akin to roadways and can be maintained as such.

“According to (Vermont) statute, we can allow anything we want” on town trails, Selectboard Chairman Gary Mullen said in an interview on Friday.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court referred to a town policy that “permits use of the public trails for walking only. In 2020 or 2021, bicycling advocates launched a campaign to persuade the town to expand the public uses of legal trails to include bicycling.”

Echeverria and Pratt opposed “opening the legal trails to bicycle use,” the court wrote. It’s led to more than two years of legal wrangling.

Echeverria and Pratt have twice brought their case to Vermont Superior Court, which dismissed their complaints as “unripe” for adjudication. In legal terms, that means the matter is premature, because there wasn’t a specific dispute for the court to intervene in.

Since the town hadn’t expressed any intent to perform maintenance work on the trail that crosses the couple’s property, the complaint was hypothetical, Judge Elizabeth Mann ruled.

In August 2022, however, the Selecboard adopted a new trails policy while the initial lawsuit was pending. The policy asserted the town’s right to repair and maintain trails. The Supreme Court found the policy to mean the town intended to “enter onto plaintiff’s property for the purpose of improving trails.”

As a result, the case is sufficiently “ripe” to be decided, the justices said, and both parties will “benefit” from having the question resolved.

The couple wants public use of the three-quarter-mile Orchard Trail — a former Class 4 road —to be limited to walkers and runners.

The Selectboard would prefer to allow “mostly foot traffic and possibly bicycles and horse riding,” Mullen said.

The town discontinued the Class 4 road on the couple’s property more than 50 years ago, rendering it a public right-of-way accessible for recreational use.

A town is not obligated to maintain a legal trail, according to Vermont statute.

Even on Class 4 roads that are typically not maintained, the town may have an interest in doing culvert work or ditching to prevent erosion, and “we would do the same thing on a legal trail,” if necessary, Mullen said.

For his part, Echeverria would like trees that naturally fall across the trail over time to remain in place, naturally restricting the use of the trail by bicycles and other wheeled vehicles.

The couple is concerned that allowing bicycles on the trail would be disruptive since the trail passes close to their house, Echeverria said.

“These are narrow, simple, primitive trails that cross our land and we want to preserve them,” he said. “We don’t want to see them expanded into recreational superhighways.”

Echeverria said that he would be willing to allow an alternate trail on his property for use by bicyclists that does not pass as close to the house.

Mullen dismissed that idea by asserting that “we already have a trail,” that belongs to the town and is open to public use.

“A public right of way is a public asset and the public is served by keeping it open,” he said.

The town has spent $35,000 in legal fees so far, Mullen said.

“We lost the Supreme Court decision, but that might be a good thing in the end,” he said, if it results in a resolution to the dispute.

Read the story on VTDigger here: End may be in sight for longstanding Tunbridge trails dispute.

In Williamstown, Town Clerk Barbara Graham said Thursday that the heavy rains late Wednesday afternoon into the night flooded roads, particularly in the village. For several hours Wednesday night, she added, access to the village was cut off due to the road conditions.

A tree that crashed down onto a utility line also cut power to the village area Wednesday night, Graham said, further adding to the difficulties of the rising waters of the Stevens Branch.

The Orange County town, with a population of about 2,000, appeared to escape the harsher flooding that inundated nearby Barre City and Barre Town.

Williamstown town officials opened a shelter at the Williamstown Middle/High School Graham said, but it was closed several hours later having had little use. There were some people, she said, who arrived at the site in vehicles who opted to stay outside in the parking lot.

“People were just looking for higher ground,” she said.

The rains that flooded the roads came in bursts, according to Graham. “There would be a heavy downpour, then stop, a heavy downpour and then stop,” she said.

Route 14 through the village, Graham said, was closed from about 8 p.m. Wednesday to around 11 p.m. Wednesday as crews worked to clear the roadway. By late Thursday morning most of the roads in town had opened back up, including Route 14 which runs through the village. The paved roadways in the town were wet and in some areas still had gravel on them that had washed over from the night before.

Robar Road, located outside of the village, appeared to sustain the most damage, remaining closed Thursday as crews worked to make repairs.

Graham said the storm Wednesday night, while severe, didn’t have anywhere near the impact of the one exactly one year ago. “That was a mud bath,” she said of last year’s storm.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Storm cut off road access and power to Williamstown village, now largely restored.

Updated at 8:38 p.m.

Vermont State Police said the trooper who shot and killed a man in Orange on Wednesday afternoon was in a struggle with the man to secure a sawed-off shotgun.

Police on Thursday identified the victim of the shooting as Jason Lowery, 41, who lived in various locations in central Vermont. An autopsy completed that day determined that Lowery died from gunshot wounds to the neck and torso, according to a state police press release, and the death was ruled a homicide. 

An initial investigation by state police found that Adam Roaldi, a state trooper based at the Berlin barracks, had been called on to conduct a welfare check on “a matter related to a juvenile” at a residence on Spencer Road in Orange. When Roaldi arrived, he spoke with people at the residence. “After dealing with the primary call,” Roaldi saw an unconscious man who was later identified as Lowery in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, the release stated. 

Roaldi alerted dispatch to the situation and called for medical professionals to respond to a possible overdose. The trooper then tried to speak to Lowery, who had regained consciousness, the release said, and “noticed a sawed-off shotgun near (Lowery) and repeatedly ordered him to exit the vehicle.”

“The struggle over possession of the shotgun and the subsequent shooting by Trooper Roaldi were captured on his body-worn camera,” the release said.

Roaldi has been placed on paid leave, police said, per standard procedure following such a shooting.

Police said that Lowery had been subject to an active warrant on a charge relating to fentanyl trafficking. 

When the state police investigation into the shooting is complete, the case will be turned over to the Vermont Attorney General’s Office and the Orange County State’s Attorney’s Office for independent reviews of the use of lethal force, according to the release.

Correction: Due to inaccurate information provided by Vermont State Police, an earlier version of this story misspelled Jason Lowery’s name.

Read the story on VTDigger here: State police say struggle over shotgun preceded fatal police shooting in Orange.