Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
A proposal to establish fees per unit on landlords, authored by Trustee Deb Wright and put before the Board of Trustees, drew a large number of landlord and tenants who told the board it was an “insulting” and “embarrassing” document and “should be scrapped.”
The board voted to do just that to Wright's proposal, which called, in part, for “a rental housing impact fee” of one month's rent per apartment per year and excluded owner-occupied residencies.
Wright voted against her own proposal, saying that it had “gotten people's attention,” which was her intent.
About a dozen landlords showed up to the board meeting on Jan. 8, in response to the proposal. No one who spoke supported it.
Sheriff Keith Clark is finally starting to see movement on a process he started some two years ago to replace the aging radio tower at the Windham County Sheriff's Department Newfane headquarters, through accessing grant monies for broadband communications. By partnering with VTel, a Springfield-based firm, the tower would...
Two proposed towers - one a cell tower for AT&T and the other a VTel broadband tower that would replace the existing radio tower belonging to the Windham Sheriff's Department (see related story, this issue) - have kept the Selectboard busy listening to concerns from residents and deciding how...
The state Public Service Board (PSB) has issued a Certificate of Public Good for three meteorological test towers (METs) on 5,000 acres straddling a hilltop between Grafton and Windham. The board handed down this decision despite opposition from the town of Windham and other organizations, paving the way for the towers to be built by the end of January. The Dec. 20 ruling approved a “246 permit” - named for the section of state law that governs meteorological towers and...
A board governing the regulatory process for large-scale wind power installations has been meeting in Montpelier for the past six weeks in a process that has drawn criticism for either its caution or its haste, depending on one's view of large-scale wind-power installations. A fifth and final information meeting of the five-member Vermont Energy Generation Policy Siting Commission (VEGPSC) will take place in Montpelier on Dec. 19. An executive order by Gov. Peter Shumlin on Oct. 2 established the VEGPSC...
Voters on Dec. 4 overwhelmingly rejected proposed revisions to the Village Charter, the product of more than a year's work by the Bellows Falls Village Corporation Charter Review Committee, in a turnout of 12 percent of the village's 1,821 registered voters. The tally was 212-69. Amid accusations that suggestions for amendments were ignored during the hearing process, and that private agendas were being played out, the committee did not seem to have gained the confidence of village residents. Supporters of...
An exchange on parking permit revenues during the Nov. 13 Trustees meeting, between Municipal Manager Tim Cullenen and village resident James Mitchell, has drawn public criticism. Members of the village Board of Trustees and the town Selectboard on Nov. 20 followed up with an executive session that resulted in a letter in Cullenen's personnel file. A comment Mitchell made on parking permits revenue apparently provoked Cullenen. “Would you explain to Mr. Mitchell - use really small words and talk really...
The Town Office, located in one of three buildings that constitute the town center, used to be the schoolhouse. Behind the listers' desk, two large and rare slate blackboards still hang on the wall as vestiges of the building's previous use. No one seems to know exactly the age of the building, which is in serious disrepair. But photographs from the early 1800s show schoolchildren in front of a neat, white-clapboarded building with freshly painted shutters. Sandi Capponcelli, a member...
