NewsINK - Spring 2015, Issue 1

Trash in the Kingdom By: Tim Laroche

Sam Sanderson sat back in his chair at the head of the crowded Community Building, still bustling as seats were filling up and rows of extra chairs were being set out. His grey hair and muted red-brown flannel shirt seem to reveal a bit of his age, if not his demeanor, but today, Sanderson seems exhausted by the weight of decisions, and stress has aged him just a bit more.

Residents gather in Burke for their town meeting. One of the items on the agenda, ACT 148.

“We’ve got some decisions to make,” he said.

In his reserved tone, Sanderson addressed residents of Burke about the upcoming changes that will have to be made as Act 148, Vermont’s Universal Recycling Bill, takes effect at the beginning of July.

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“See, things have gone so smoothly in Burke for years,” he said. “People just go ‘eh.’ You know, well, things change.”

At Burke’s annual town meeting, Selectman Sam Sanderson brought some of the upcoming changes to discussion.

“As a commercial hauler, we must offer curbside recycling because we pick up curbside household trash, on the same schedule and at no extra charge,” he said.

Act 148 has a provision for parallel pickup, meaning that any town that offers curbside trash pickup must also offer curbside recycling. So Burke is facing a set of costly challenges over the next few months as they decide how best to accommodate the provisions of the act.

While the town has not decided on any specific options as of yet, Sanderson proposed a few choices at the meeting. Should Burke get rid of its trash collector truck and migrate to a system where residents drop off their trash at a facility? Should Burke keep its current system but only collect trash every other week in order to save money? Or should Burke move to a system where residents must independently find contractors to pick up their trash and recycling?

The matter is made more complex in that the nearest facility that has the option to take in singlestream recycling, as opposed to sorted recycling, is across the state in Williston. So if residents want to pursue an option for single-stream recycling, they will have to factor in the costs of hiring someone or driving the recycling out to Williston themselves.

In 2012, Vermont lawmakers passed the act, which set progressively stricter regulations on the materials that could be thrown away in the state of Vermont. The first provision of the act took effect in 2014, when facilities that accepted trash were forced to also accept recycling at no extra charge.

Ultimately, in July of 2020, all food scraps will be banned from going into landfills in Vermont. The act is sweeping and will put many towns in a similar situation to Burke.

A large swath of 49 towns in the Northeast Kingdom fall under the North East Kingdom Waste Management District. The NEKWMD, which is based out of Lyndon, has also had to make changes to accommodate the provisions of Act 148.

In Lyndon, one of the changes that will have to occur is a movement from their current tax-funded system to a pay-per-bag system for trash pickup. Under the current system, residents of Lyndon share the same cost; a portion of their property tax is set aside to fund trash disposal.

“You know their system. If it’s not broken, fix it ’til it is.”

“It would be similar to education where they come up with a total cost and then the costs are spread evenly among the taxpayers,” NEKWMD Executive Director Paul Tomasi said.

Although Lyndon residents may have to adapt to the new system, Tomasi said that it could end up working in the favor of residents who are willing to recycle more and cut down on their trash output.

The town of Newark recently implemented a pay-as-you-throw system for their trash collection and immediately reported a substantial decrease in their trash output. But Tomasi said that the reason for the decrease was that people from neighboring towns had been putting out their own trash in front of houses in Newark.

-SAM SANDERSON

“Until every other town in the area has a similar system, people will look for those soft spots,” Tomasi said.

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And in a similar way, Tomasi suspects that people from nearby towns are exploiting the tax-funded system in Lyndon too.

“You can look in Lyndonville outside certain households and on trash day multiple bags, and we kind of expect that people outside the area and other towns, they could be friends or relatives, are doing the same thing they did in Newark and piling on the system in Lyndon because it’s quoteunquote free,” Tomasi said.

As it stands, under Lyndon’s current tax-funded system, there isn’t any way to reduce the amount of money that residents pay for their trash disposal, and so there is no significant monetary incentive for residents to reduce the amount of trash they output. With no ability to crack down on people from other towns who are exploiting the system, there is no way to discourage residents of other towns from bringing their trash to Lyndon households, so Tomasi said the act will give towns some teeth in dealing with offenders.

However, not all reception to the bill has been positive. In a small town like Burke that already has an effective infrastructure in place, some residents have expressed concern that the state lawmakers are overlooking their interests.

“Why do those idiots over in Montpelier try to screw up something that’s working good?” a resident at the Burke town meeting asked.

“You know their system,” Sanderson replied, “if it’s not broken, fix it ‘til it is.”

Appropriations for the Fairbanks By: Tim Laroche

Bronze lions guard the entrance, and polar bears and swordfish lurk just behind the heavy wooden doors. A moose silently waits in the corner next to an American buffalo, which dwarfs everything in sight while the neighboring beavers hide in their lodge. But these animals died more than 100 years ago and were stuffed by William Balch.

Exhibits at the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury.

The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium has housed these taxidermy animals since the end of the 19th century, when Franklin Fairbanks constructed the Romanesque halls and towers of the same building that still stands today. The museum is inextricably tied to the history of St. Johnsbury, and many people from around Vermont come to learn about science and natural history. However, operating and maintaining a museum is not a cheap endeavor.

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Appropriations for the museum appeared on ballots around the Northeast Kingdom during the annual town meetings. Some residents, especially those who have never used the services provided by the museum, had questions about how their tax money is used and why the museum needs it.

The museum requests $1 per person in each town according to population as of the 2000 census for its annual appropriations. And in return for the tax, the museum offers unlimited free access for residents living in the appropriation towns.

Adam Kane came into the museum business from a background in archeology. Although the Fairbanks Museum does not feature many exhibits that relate to his field, Kane has taken helm as executive director of the organization, and he is working to bring the museum its first national touring exhibit in more than 20 years.

A sign outside the Fairbanks Museum thanks voters.

Over the summer, Dinosaur Discoveries, which is sponsored by the Museum of National History, will feature recent discoveries in the field of paleontology. Kane said that after booking the exhibit online, the museum had to come up with the $50,000 cost to take in the displays. Phil Soucy, who serves on the board for the museum, and his wife, Peg Soucy, donated the necessary funds for the exhibit.

“It will be an exhibit that is highly valued and people will come especially from those appropriation towns over and over again,” Kane said. “We’ll be on one more compelling piece of information on town meeting when folks are asked ‘yes or no?’ for that museum appropriation.”

“To put it quite Aside from individuals from the community visiting the museum, much of the traffic comes from the 12,000 students simply, the that visit each year with schools groups. The field trips and appropriations classes that the museum organizes gives children a handson experience where they can see science up close.

are core Lyndon Town School is one of the local schools that operating funds” frequently uses the services provided by the Fairbanks Museum, according to LTS Administrative Assistant Rhonda Gilman. The school appropriates $8,400 to the museum annually separate from the town’s appropriation. In return for the funding, LTS utilizes the services of the museum about 70 times per year to help implement the science components of the new common core curriculums.

-ADAM KANE

“We put together these classes, and we develop them based on trying to meet the educational framework provided by the Next Generation Science Standards, which are the standards which Vermont adheres to and most of the rest of the country at this point,” Kane said.

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Kane stressed that the main costs associated with operating the museum go to paying staff members who are knowledgeable in the subjects displayed at the museum. The eight fulltime and 10 part-time staffers give tours, run the gift shop and maintain the displays.

“To put it quite simply, the appropriations are core operating funds for the museum,” he said. “So they help keep the doors open, they help pay the light bill and the heating bill and make sure that there’s staff there to open up the place and shovel the snow and do all the things that it takes to keep a big and pretty complicated museum open.”

As it stands, all of the towns from which the museum requested appropriations have approved the measures. In Peacham, where Kane lives, the town unanimously voted in support of the appropriation.

“It’s a great validation to have those ‘yes’ votes come in from the town,” Kane said, “and for me, it’s kind of empowering when I was getting texts on town meeting day. You know, ‘Danville appropriation went through unanimous.’”

St. Johnsbury Water War By: Michael Raimondi

The Town of Saint Johnsbury will be spending the next few months fixing water issues that could have a negative impact on residents.

On Town Meeting Day, the town passed a budget of 2.1 million dollars to replace water pumps at the wastewater treatment facility, and burry the dislodged Moose River water main.

“We did a good job explaining the need for the projects, and I was very happy the public accepted that,” said Town Manager John Hall.

The Wastewater Treatment Facility in St. Johnsbury

The more-expensive project involves the screw pumps at the wastewater treatment facility. This will cost Saint Johnsbury about 1.35 million dollars. The current pumps are twentyfive years old, which according to Hall, is the normal life of a pump.

The motors to the pumps will stay, but the pipes will be replaced.

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“If the screw pumps were to go down, there is no way to process sewage without bringing in very powerful expensive pumps,” said select board member Kevin Oddy. “That cost could be astronomical.”

There will be two companies that will bid to design the pumps, which are about forty-feet long and four feet in diameter

When the pipes are delivered on-site in six to eight months, the plant will shut down one pump and run on the other. It will take two or more weeks to replace each pipe, as two cranes will be required to lift each one. This will allow the sewage to function normally on one pump while the other is being installed.

Hall hopes for the plan to be complete within the next year, weather permitting.

The Moose River main is set at a price around eight-hundred thousand dollars.

The pipe bringing drinking water into the area was initially installed below the bed of the river, and has found it’s way near the surface. This has increased the risk for damage, which worries Hall.

“Right now the pipe is not buried, and a log or a piece of ice could come down and hit that exposed pipe,” Hall said. “That is our main water source, and if that were to happen, we would likely have to restrict water use.”

The risk of losing water does not only hurt residents, but companies as well.

Weidmann Electrical Technology in Saint Johnsbury would greatly be affected if a water shortage were to happen.

“They are our biggest water customer, and they use millions of gallons for production,” said Hall. “We would hate to see anything slow down their production ability.”

There are a few options the town is looking at to bring the pipe back under the river bed.

There are a lot of rocks in that area of the river, so it may be difficult to resolve.

“Because the bed is like a rock bottom, we can either dig a trench at the bottom, or bore underneath the river and come up the other side,” Hall said. “We will allow contractors to give us proposals on both methods.”

With the main having a high risk of being damaged, the town wants this problem to be fixed quickly.

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“Either one could go at any time or could last a couple more years but it is like playing Russian roulette to let them go,” said select board member Kevin Oddy.

The money for the projects would be funded by individual bonds for each project. Different agencies will be considered for each of these projects. Grants have previously been given to Saint Johnsbury, and have helped the town pay for projects like these in the past.

“We have been lucky to be the recipients of a lot of federal money, low and negative interest grants that we have used to fund a lot of work and we will continue to do that in a way that improves our systems and do it at a cost that keeps our water and sewer reasonable,” Hall said.

Upgrades for Powers Park Pool By: Tim Laroche

Snow covers the ground and pool at Powers Park in Lyndonville.

It’s winter at Powers Park. Only a few snow tracks dot the frozen ground. The Rotary Pavilion is empty, and so are the acres of open land that surround it.

But spring is approaching fast, and in a few months’ time, the park will be busy once again. However, the pool at Powers Park faces a less certain future.

More than 400 children take part in summer programs at the park every year.

The pool draws most of the attention. But 30 years of harsh Vermont weather have pushed it deep

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into disrepair.

At the Lyndon’s annual town meeting, Christian Thompson stood to answer questions about a $25,000 appropriation to update the pool and its facilities. As a resident and a user of the pool himself, Thompson has a stake in the appropriations for the pool.

“At this point, I think there’s probably been about five generations swimming at Powers Park, just in my wife’s family alone, my son will be fourth generation,” Thompson said. “And so most of the people at town meeting, either they took their swimming lessons in the town pool or they have children that do or grandkids.”

But as Vice President of the Village Improvement Society, Thompson is in a greater position than most residents to improve the conditions.

The VIS formed in the 1850’s in an effort to beautify Lyndonville. The group planted flowers, cleaned the streets and maintained a wooded area off Main Street. Although many of their roles have been delegated to other organizations over time, they developed the wooded area into Powers Park, in memory of Erving Powers. The park is now exclusively maintained through the efforts of the society.

In the 1950’s, the VIS installed the first pool at the park. A second pool was constructed in its place and maintained until 1985, when the current iteration was built. Now, Thompson has taken the responsibility of applying for a Land and Water Conservation Fund grant to ensure that the third pool will last into the future.

The cost of repairing and updating the pool has been appraised at $100,000, of which the federal grant only cover half. So the VIS is tasked with raising $50,000 before the repairs are slated to begin. With the town’s appropriation secured, the VIS must come up with the other $25,000 and compete with other municipal projects in order to receive the federal funds.

By far, the most expensive line item for the renovations is the resurfacing of the interior of the pool.

Appraisers estimated the cost of the resurfacing at $85,000, 85% of the total cost.

“The existing surface of the pool has to be taken off, put into a dumpster, and then the background concrete needs to be cleaned and etched, and then the new surface needs to be put on,” Thompson said. “So it’s just a very labor intensive process.”

“Either they took their swimming In 2010, an update to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1968 lessons in the included legislation requiring that public pools be accessible to people with physical disabilities. After slipping out of compliance town pool or with the act, the pool also requires updates to its bathhouses and the main pool deck, upon which they will have to install a new chair they have lift. The updates will tack on an additional $10,000 to the total cost of the renovations.

children that do And the remainder of the funding will be used to purchase a new or grandkids” pump for the pool, which is expected to cost another $5,000.

-CHRISTIAN THOMPSON “Two summers ago it was really really hot and the pump shut down, it has a thermal protection on it, and it’s from 1985,” Thompson said. “It’s wearing out, it’s working harder and it’s less efficient every year.”

But even though Lyndon’s appropriation was secured, the future of the Powers Park pool is still uncertain. The VIS submitted the application for the grant in early February and expects to find out if they will receive the money in late May. If the grant is not awarded, the appropriation will be NewsINK - Spring 2015 Edition, Volume 1

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returned to a town general fund and residents will essentially get their money back. But if the pool does not undergo the updates, Thompson said it will become dangerous for children to use.

“It’s been, you know, usable up until now,” he said. “We just don’t know when that phase will end.”

The children of Lyndon won’t be the only ones to feel the sting if the pool closes. Although about 60% of the admittance to the pool comes from Lyndon, the remaining 40% consists of people from surrounding communities. For this reason, some surrounding towns also pay annual appropriations to the VIS, although Lyndon will carry the entire burden of the $25,000 in repairs.

Assuming the grant is awarded, the VIS will receive the funding in late May, in time for the park’s annual summer programs to begin. After the pool closes in early fall, repairs are expected to take up to 6 weeks before the pool is sealed by November. But without the grant, the pool might not reopen in 2016.

“The issues we’re starting to see now are kind of the tip of the iceberg on what’s going to happen,” Thompson said. “We don’t want to let the pool get to the point where we have to shut it down.”

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