By Curt Peterson On the Friday, Jan. 10 Merisa Sherman delivered a petition to town hall with the requisite signatures required to add an article to Killington’s Town Meeting Ballot on March 4. Bearing 73 signatures, the petition asks voters to expand the town Select Board from its present three-member configuration, to a five-member body.…

Hartland residents speak out about proposed 173-foot tower By Curt Peterson After the Hartland Select Board and planning commission each received notice that IT&W (Industrial Tower & Wireless) and/or Crown Coastal Inc. (a large NYSE listed corporation headquartered in Dallas) was proposing to erect a 173-foot tower with a 80-square-foot base on leased property next…

By Curt Peterson Industrial Tower & Wireless (ITW) of Massachusetts has plans to erect a 174-foot steel communications tower on a site on Town Farm Hill Road in Hartland. Obtaining necessary approval for the project is complicated, with opportunities for public and town government input, according to Kevin Reed, whose informed post on the Hartland…

By Curt Peterson There are at least three well-known reasons to focus on Quechee Road, a major route from Three Corners to Quechee: first, the condition of parts of the road is so bad it aggravates wear-and-tear on one’s vehicle. Second, band-aid patchwork and overall repaving for years have been very expensive with unsatisfactory results.…

By Curt Peterson No one will ever call Lucrecia Wonsor a “nine-to-fiver.” The veteran Killington clerk (20 years, 4 months) and treasurer (11 years, 10 months) is known for her dedication to her responsibilities, working long hours and some weekends to successfully manage the official and financial affairs of this resort town of about 1,500…

By Curt Peterson Miguel Cervantes, author of the Spanish classic novel “Don Quixote,” once said: “In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.”  Cervantes’s Quixote, who had a questionable grasp of reality, donned a suit of armor and rode the countryside “tilting at windmills,” seeing them as “ferocious giants” threatening civilization. In…

By Curt Peterson The Hartland Select Board has to make an important decision before the deadline to publish the Town Report and the articles for Town Meeting in March 2025. The first rough estimate to rebuild Quechee Road, a major route from Hartland Three Corners to Quechee, was $6.5 million. An engineering report from Pathways…

By Curt Peterson Hartland resident Charles Bestard was splitting firewood for seniors when he mentioned a brand new school in Lebanon that’s focused on students yearning for exposure to and learning about visual and performing arts. “During the pandemic, arts programs lost out,” principal and founder of the New England School of the Arts (NESA)…

By Curt Peterson Long-time employee BJ Mattson is the recently appointed new permanent highway department road foreman. Mattson, 44, has worked for the department for 18 years. He replaces 20-year road foreman Bill Barrows, who retired in June.  Mattson has been “acting” road foreman since Barrows’ departure, so it’s just an official title change. Town…

By Curt Peterson Several residents from Bird Hill Road in Hartland Four Corners petitioned the Select Board Monday evening to take over maintenance of their short private road accessed over a short bridge from Brownsville Road. Deborah Davis, who lives in the first house, read a prepared presentation describing the history of homeowner maintenance over…

By Curt Peterson Amanda Ann Palmer’s ceramics studio seems a “hidden corner of creativity.” She makes her beautiful array of hand-made pottery pieces that range in size from small tree ornament mushrooms and coffee mugs to good-sized fruit bowls. She exhibited her wares at Reading Greenhouse’s crafts fair last weekend, and generally at Long River…

By Curt Peterson Governor Scott’s controversial appointment of senate-rejected Zoie Saunders as “interim” secretary of education, after leaving the important post vacant for a year, came with his defensive endorsement: “Once you meet her, you will know she is the right person for the job.” Secretary Saunders is touring Vermont school districts to introduce herself,…

By Curt Peterson State Representative Charlie Kimball hosted a Public Forum on the Future of Education in Vermont at North Chapel in Woodstock last Thursday, Oct. 17, featuring Rep. Emily Kornheiser, chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means and chair of the Education Financing Subcommittee, and Rep. Peter Conlon, chair of the Vermont…

By Curt Peterson At 6 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 29, Debra and Chuck Dupuis, who live just past the second covered bridge on Mill Street, called 9-1-1 and asked for an ambulance. Chuck, 73, who has diabetes, has had by-pass surgery, and suffers dementia, exhibited symptoms of transient ischemic attack (TIA), what’s called a “mini-stroke.”…

By Curt Peterson Twenty-five people, fans and the curious, gathered at the Hartland Library Sept. 12 for Sarah Stewart Taylor’s introduction of her new crime novel, “Agony Hill” (Minotaur Books, 2024). The first in a new series by Taylor, “Agony Hill” has a local setting — Bethany, a fictional village in Vermont’s Upper Valley in…