This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

Montpelier has become the latest Vermont municipality to approve “just cause” eviction protections for renters this Town Meeting Day.

The measure passed by 16%, or about 400 votes, according to results reported Tuesday evening by City Clerk John Odum.

But the measure will need to make it past the Legislature and the governor before it can go into effect – and so far, other local “just cause” charter change votes have gotten stonewalled.

“Hopefully, this will send a strong message to lawmakers in the Statehouse that ‘just cause’ eviction is a serious policy that has a lot of support from Vermonters across the state – including outside of Chittenden County,” said Joe Moore, a Montpelier resident who helped gather signatures to get the charter change measure on Tuesday’s ballot.

The new measure clearly delineates under what circumstances a landlord can evict a tenant.

In Vermont, landlords can generally decline to renew a tenant’s lease for any reason. “Just cause” protections prohibit these evictions for “no cause” — but still allow a landlord to evict a tenant because they haven’t paid rent, or they’ve broken state landlord-tenant law or the provisions of their lease. 

The language approved by Montpelier voters mirrors measures passed by Burlington and Winooski voters in recent years. It would effectively require property owners to give current tenants the right of first refusal for the unit when the lease ends. Landlords and tenants would still be able to renegotiate, but with more guardrails. For instance, a landlord would be barred from enacting “unreasonable rent increases” which can amount to “de facto evictions.” 

Many small-scale landlords would be exempt altogether. Property owners who live onsite at a duplex or triplex or who rent out an accessory dwelling unit on their property could continue to evict tenants as they do today.

Given the state’s razor-thin rental vacancy rates and rising rents, proponents of such protections argue that they’re a necessary tool to give tenants greater leverage in the housing market – and insulate them from profit-driven or retaliatory evictions. 

But so far, state leaders have blocked the local eviction measures passed in other cities and towns from becoming law.

Local charter changes in Vermont must get the greenlight from legislators and the governor before being enacted, and thus far, no “just cause” measure has cleared both hurdles.

Burlington residents approved a “just cause” charter change in 2021, and the next year, lawmakers gave it their rubber stamp. But Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the measure, arguing at the time that it would discourage property owners from renting out units to “vulnerable prospective tenants,” instead encouraging them to give preference to renters with better credit scores and no criminal history on their records. Rather than pass the tenant protections, Scott emphasized the need to promote more housing development. Lawmakers fell one vote short of overriding his veto. 

In 2023, Burlington representatives again pushed for the charter change, and voter-approved “just cause” measures from Winooski and Essex headed to the Statehouse, too. But last year, none advanced. And this session, the prospect of passing the local charter changes appears grim.

Last month, Rep. Mike McCarthy, D-St. Albans City, who chairs the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs — which has control over whether local charter changes move forward — told VTDigger/Vermont Public that the committee would not advance the measures this year.

(McCarthy noted that the committee removed the Essex “just cause” provision — which included broader language than the Burlington, Winooski and Montpelier measures — from a larger charter change bill for the town, which has advanced). 

McCarthy offered a few reasons why now is not the time to pass these “just cause” measures town by town. The bills are likely to meet yet another veto from Scott, and McCarthy does not think they would garner enough votes in both chambers for an override. He also argued that such tenant protections should be married with policies that streamline and expedite the eviction process more generally by bolstering court staffing, thus clearing the path for landlords to remove tenants who are causing safety concerns.

Instead of “just cause” protections, McCarthy wants to work on funding eviction prevention programs — and focusing on regulatory reform to bring more housing online. 

“I don’t think that, in this current environment, where there are a lot of changes going on in housing, that this is the policy lever that we should push,” he said. 

That hesitance under the golden dome means Montpelier’s newly approved charter change is likely to hit a major roadblock. But Moore hopes lawmakers will shift their footing after the Montpelier victory. 

“We look forward to seeing the charter change move in the Legislature as soon as possible,” he said.

As local charter changes stall, some lawmakers are considering a temporary pause on “no cause” evictions statewide until July 2025. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Montpelier voters approve ‘just cause’ eviction protections.

For just over two years, Craftsbury Academy, which educates roughly 140 students on its Craftsbury Common campus, has had no potable running water.

Instead of using fountains, students and staff drink from bottled water that is trucked in — at the state’s expense. But it’s not only drinking water that’s affected.

“They’re having to pour water out of bottles to cook with and all of that, which makes it a little more challenging,” said Joe Houston, the Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union’s facilities director. “Dealing with bottles and bubblers, and making sure that water deliveries come on time and get refilled, is just one more complication to the operation.”

The reason? Tests have detected toxic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, in a Craftsbury public water system.

PFAS are toxic chemicals present in a variety of manufactured products, including electronics, construction products and fire-extinguishing foam. According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, PFAS can increase the risk of cancers and have a range of negative impacts on human health.

It’s not clear how the contaminants got into Craftsbury’s water. But Craftsbury Academy’s workarounds are an example of how some schools with hundreds of students have had to adapt to life without potable running water — in some cases, for years.

‘Got into a rhythm of it’

Under a 2019 Vermont law, public water systems — public systems that serve 25 or more people — are required to test for PFAS regularly. And schools, many of which depend on their own individual public water system, are bearing an apparently disproportionate PFAS burden.

“There are approximately 150 schools in Vermont that are (on) their own public drinking water system,” said Ben Montross, drinking water program manager at the Department of Environmental Conservation. “So they’re served by their own on-site well. And because they serve a public population of more than 25 people, they’re regulated as a public system.”

Montross said that small, rural schools are likely more susceptible to PFAS contamination because they may have both water and septic systems on-site.

At those schools, “floor waxes, floor polishes, floor cleaners and various other chemicals that would be used as part of the cleaning and maintenance processes would then wash down the drain,” Montross said, giving a hypothetical example. “And the drain would go into the on-site septic (system), and then the PFAS would travel through the aquifer into the drinking water system.”

The public water system currently under a Do Not Drink Order in Craftsbury serves both Craftsbury Academy and Sterling College, according to a spreadsheet of state data provided by Montross. The data does not include information about small private and residential properties, only public water systems.

“Over time — you know, it’s now been just about two years — over time, we all kind of got into a rhythm of it,” said Nicole Civita, a Sterling College administrator and a commissioner on a Craftsbury fire district board, which oversees the water system. “So the water truck comes in, somebody notices, and a whole bunch of Sterling staff or students get out and volunteer to offload jugs.”

Mount Holly Elementary School and Woodbury Elementary School are under similar orders because of PFAS levels, according to the data. Mt. Holly, which educates about 110 pre-K-6 students, has been under the order since December 2019. Woodbury, a roughly 55-student elementary, has been under the order since November 2022.

In Woodbury, officials are working to determine the source of the contamination so a new system can be installed, and at Mount Holly, a “new well and treatment design” is in the works, according to the state spreadsheet.

The Dover child care facility Kids in the Country and the Morgan independent Turning Points School are also under Do Not Drink orders due to PFAS. Kids in the Country has been without potable tap water since 2020, while Turning Points has gone without since 2021. A sports bar in Killington and a mobile home park in Rockingham also exceed PFAS limits in their water, according to the data.

The town of Morgan owns the school building occupied by Turning Points, a therapeutic school with about 30 students, and the town pays for the water.

“It’s hundreds of dollars a month,” said Eric Pope, the chair of the Morgan selectboard. “But it’s not astronomical.”

Pope said that PFAS had been detected at other private properties nearby Turning Points. The town is planning to drill a new well that Pope hopes will be PFAS-free, he said, and if all goes well, clean water could be flowing by the summer.

Tasha Tobey-Pike, the assistant director of Kids in the Country, in Dover, said she believed the nonprofit child care center was paying out of pocket for bottled water.

Using bottled water could be an “inconvenience” if the nonprofit ran out during the day, she said. And “with us paying for it out of pocket, it is an added cost that we wouldn’t typically incur.”

PFAS and PCBs

The state has implemented an upper limit when it comes to PFAS contamination in water: 20 nanograms per liter. No current federal limit exists, but the federal Environmental Protection Agency expects to release its first PFAS regulation limits early this year.

Anyone following the state’s ongoing saga around polychlorinated biphenyls — aka PCBs — in Vermont schools may see parallels with PFAS.

The story has a similar shape: Vermont releases regulations about the permitted concentrations of a toxic chemical that are more stringent than federal ones. And in schools, the detection of that toxic chemical requires mitigation and racks up costs.

Luckily, however, the presence of PFAS has not been nearly as disruptive to schools as PCBs. For one thing, the short-term remedy consists of simply trucking in bottled water — not, for example, rebuilding a school from scratch, as is happening with the contaminated Burlington High School.

But PFAS still has its costs. As of early November, according to Montross, the state had paid out $88,000 to purchase bottled water for systems affected by PFAS. Of that sum, $66,000 went to Craftsbury alone.

Civita, of Sterling College and the Craftsbury Common fire district, expressed gratitude that the state was picking up the water tab. Without that, she said, the cost would have been “tremendously burdensome” for customers, including Craftsbury Academy and Sterling.

In Craftsbury, however, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Tests from a newly drilled well have come back clean — meaning that, with luck, bottled water could be on its way out.

“Hopefully, sometime this summer, drinkable water will start flowing through the taps again in Craftsbury Commons,” Civita said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Some Vermont schools have been without potable tap water for years.

Now that the countdown to Christmas is in full force, less-organized shoppers who celebrate the holiday may still be searching for this year’s Christmas tree. With some farms sold out of inventory and already closed, panic is possible.

Although the supply of locally grown trees is tight this year, industry observers, including Jim Horst, the executive director of the New Hampshire-Vermont Christmas Tree Association, have an assuring message.

“Most people that want to buy a Christmas tree are gonna be able to get one in Vermont,” said Horst.

But it might require persistence. The current state of Vermont’s industry fits into a national trend of a tightening supply of Christmas trees. As trees take roughly a decade after they’re planted to grow large enough to sell, the industry goes through long cycles of supply and demand, with a tightening supply since 2016, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

“The Christmas tree industry, like most industries, goes through oversupply and undersupply, just like the housing market, or any market,” Jill Sidebottom, a spokesperson for the National Christmas Tree Association, said.

Given the long growing period of trees, the effects of financial crises that happened years ago can still be visible in the industry.

“The start of the issues that we’re experiencing now started all the way back with the recession in 2008, and at that time there was an oversupply, and the economy wasn’t good, and a lot of tree growers were having a hard time selling their trees. And because of that many weren’t planting as many (trees) as they normally do,” Sidebottom said.

However, the limited supply is not only due to financial ebbs and flows but also a potential increase in demand for the real thing. According to a survey by the Real Christmas Tree Board, a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promote the use of real trees, 20% of respondents this year were planning to buy a real tree for the first time.

According to Horst and some tree farm owners, there is also growing interest among families in the cut-your-own tree experience in Vermont.

“It’s just the trend of, and I think it started especially during Covid, that people like to get outside and do things,” said Jack Manix, owner of Walker Farm’s Elysian Hills in Dummerston. “You go outside and we have hot cider and popcorn and cookies and all kinds of stuff like that, and it’s like a little event.”

While Manix expects to be open until Christmas Eve, others, such as Isham Family Farm in Williston and White Trees in Jericho, have already closed for the season. That’s not unusual for this time in December, said White Trees’ owner Bob White.

“Everybody wants to cut their own trees — that’s typical. It’s a struggle to find a place to go this time of year. You could find a hundred farms — we all sell out pretty much, that I know of,” White said.

During a call with VTDigger, White had to pause to send numerous customers away. When asked where to, he said: “There’s nowhere else to send.”

White said that he needs to be judicious about how much he cuts to keep sales consistent from year to year. “If we cut (trees) all in one year, it will take four or five years before we open again,” said White.

While the supply may be more plentiful again in the near term, the future of the local industry remains precarious for other reasons. White’s farm, for example, is on a floodplain.

“If (a flood) happens in the spring or fall that doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. But when Tropical Storm Irene hit in late August 2011, “we lost half the farm and it took eight or 10 years to recover from that,” White said.

And apart from a changing climate, the long cycles in the Christmas tree industry pose a real problem for Vermont’s aging population, as new farmers can only begin selling trees after four to five years.

“Assuming you’re planting on an annual basis, you got ever-increasing expenses and no income coming in,” Horst said. “The flooding that we had in July has complicated things a little bit, but even over the last several years there have been people to some extent leaving the industry, primarily because of age, and no one to take over.”

On top of that, the land available is limited, making it difficult to get into the industry, and also to expand to keep up with demand.

“I’d love to plant a lot more trees (but) there’s no land available because I can’t bet against housing projects. Housing projects win every time,” White said. “We only grow X amount of trees, and the demand has grown. … So we do the best we can but we aren’t going to make it to Christmas anymore.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Christmas tree farms grapple with a tight supply this year.

The late Vermont artist Norman Rockwell is best known this time of year for “Freedom from Want,” his 1943 portrait of three generations of family gathered for Thanksgiving.

The four grown children of Don Trachte are grateful for another Rockwell work, “Breaking Home Ties.” Many people recognize the 1954 Saturday Evening Post cover for its stoic farmer seeing off his college-bound son. The Trachtes know it better as the painting their father purchased for $900, then forged a copy of so he could hide the original during a contentious divorce.

This is not your typical holiday story. But in the end — and as seen in a new exhibit, “The Norman Rockwell Mystery,” at Bennington’s Monument Arts and Cultural Center — it’s punctuated by a $15.4 million payoff.

As his children tell it, Trachte was the cartoonist of the Sunday comic strip “Henry” — syndicated to 400 newspapers in 40 countries from 1935 to 2005 — when they moved from the Midwest to the Arlington-Sandgate town line in 1950.

Trachte soon befriended a palette of renowned area artists, including Grandma Moses and Saturday Evening Post illustrators John Atherton, George Hughes, Gene Pelham and Mead Schaeffer. But the cartoonist was most drawn to Rockwell, who worked for the Post when it was the most widely circulated weekly in America.

Completing his first Post cover in 1916, Rockwell created 322 more until his last in 1963. His 1951 “Saying Grace” was voted the most popular in the magazine’s history. Second place went to “Breaking Home Ties,” the final cover he created in Vermont before moving to Massachusetts.

Trachte loved the latter painting, in part because his neighbor had posed as the farmer. Seeing the work for sale at Manchester’s Southern Vermont Arts Center in 1962, the cartoonist bought it for $900.

Trachte hung “Breaking Home Ties” in his living room. Then he and his wife, breaking their own home ties, divorced in 1973.

Aiming to divide the couple’s assets, lawyers called for an art sale. But Trachte, not wanting to part with the Rockwell, convinced his wife they should keep eight various collected works so their children could inherit them.

And so “Breaking Home Ties” remained in the family, with Rockwell borrowing it for special shows in such world capitals as Cairo, Moscow and Washington, D.C.

After Trachte moved to an assisted-living home in 2001, his children sent the painting for display and safekeeping at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Enter John Howard Sanden, artist of the official White House portraits of President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.

“Imagine my puzzlement,” Sanden wrote on his website, “when visiting the exhibition for the first time and confronting the large canvas labeled ‘Breaking Home Ties,’ I realized at once that the painting before me was not by Norman Rockwell.”

Sanden mailed seven letters to the museum starting in 2003, pointing out such discrepancies as the work’s faded colors. But curators, explaining away such changes as due to the passage of time and improper cleaning, held firm they were exhibiting the original.

Trachte died in 2005 at age 89, leaving his children the painting — and lingering questions about its authenticity. Son Dave was searching for answers on St. Patrick’s Day 2006 when he called his brother Don Jr.

In a recent interview, the latter remembered his sibling’s pronouncement: “I think I found something.”

Meeting at their father’s old studio, the brothers noticed a gap behind a bookcase along the wall. The wood paneling, they discovered, was actually a sliding door. Opening it, they found a crawl space with all eight paintings from the divorce settlement, including the Rockwell.

Failing to unearth any written explanation, the family contacted the Norman Rockwell Museum, which confirmed all the hidden works were originals and the “Breaking Home Ties” it had on display was a replica.

The New York Times reported the revelation on its front page of April 6, 2006. In an exclusive interview, the family speculated that Trachte painted the duplicate himself to keep the true one away from divorce lawyers.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” ex-wife Elizabeth Markey was quoted as saying.

Amid the publicity, the children decided to auction off the Rockwell.

“People don’t realize how large these paintings are,” Don Jr. said of a framed canvas that’s nearly 5 feet in width and height. “It’s a burden if you have something too valuable.”

And so the family sat at New York’s famed Sotheby’s auction house in November 2006 as the original their father purchased for $900 went up for bid.

“You always worry at an auction,” Don Jr. recalled. “Anything can happen, right?”

Within minutes, his anxiety morphed into amazement when the painting sold to an anonymous bidder for a then-record $15.4 million.

The family returned to Vermont with the replica — now part of the exhibit “The Norman Rockwell Mystery” that just opened at Bennington’s Monument Arts and Cultural Center. The show features the forgery next to a full-size photo of the original, which went back into hiding after the auction.

The family doesn’t regret letting go of such a prized possession.

“A lot of people have paintings,” Don Jr. said. “Lucky us, we’ve got a heck of a story.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: How a Vermonter forged a Norman Rockwell painting — and why his family is thankful.

WASHINGTON — At the place where Poor Farm Road meets Route 110, about five miles south of Washington Village, a simple wooden cross stands beside the road sign where Michele Demar’s body was found on the morning of Aug. 3.

The cross, placed by her family, is adorned with photos of Demar as a child and as a young woman. It bears her name and a simple heart at the intersection of the wooden pieces.

The 33-year-old woman’s death received little attention at the time, as outward appearances suggested her death was by suicide. A press release issued by the Vermont State Police said an autopsy confirmed that Demar’s death was due to hanging but added, “the manner of death remains pending.” As of this month, her death certificate still said the same.

“Initial evidence gathered at the scene indicated the death is not suspicious, but this remains an active and open case,” state police said in mid-August, encouraging anyone with information to call the agency or leave an anonymous tip.

But Demar’s death has received more attention, and more scrutiny, since Oct. 25, when hunters came across the body of a second woman, 23-year-old Tanairy “Tanya” Velazquez Estrada, at the northern end of Poor Farm Road. The remoteness of the location was not lost on area residents, who were still questioning the circumstances of Demar’s death about three miles away and not even three months earlier.

“People come up here to dump tires and trash, not bodies,” said Bob Sherman, a retired Montpelier lobbyist and 40-year Washington resident. Velazquez Estrada’s body was found about 20 feet from the gate to his property, Sherman said, in or near an old cellar hole at a spot where the rural road turns particularly rugged.

“Clearly, the person who dumped the body didn’t have four-wheel-drive,” he said. Noting that the remote road has long attracted illicit activities, he added, “I believe they knew exactly where they were going when they left that body there.”

Velazquez Estrada, who state police said had lived “most recently” in Barre, had been reported missing by her mother on the same day the hunters found her body, police said. Her mother told police in Fitchburg, Massachusetts that she had not heard from her daughter in more than a week.

The cause of Velazquez Estrada’s death remains pending, as toxicology tests are expected to take from “several weeks to several months,” state police said.

On Thursday, Maj. Dan Trudeau, who heads the state police Major Crime Unit, confirmed that police “were treating it as a homicide,” but offered few other details, citing the importance of protecting the investigation.

In the days following the discovery of Velazquez Estrada’s body, grisly details about her death spread among community members in the small central Vermont town, which claims just more than 1,000 residents, while high school students took to social media to share what they had heard.

Rumor and speculation have filled the void left by the lack of information offered by state police, whose resources have been stretched thin by a string of eight apparent homicide cases in the month of October alone.

While it is not unusual for police to hold back details of a case that is under active investigation, Sherman and others said the silence does little to squelch the rumors or offer residents some needed context.

With the deaths being the topic of conversations at local gathering spots, including the Washington Village Store and the post office, Sherman said of Demar’s death, “I haven’t talked to anyone in town who believes it was a suicide.”

“Two deaths on a rural road, it makes no sense,” Sherman said, adding that the deaths have prompted “a plethora of emotions.”

“Some people are scared, some are confused, some are angry,” he said. “I think they should be releasing more information to the community.”

Trudeau, however, said nothing more could be offered at this point.

“I’m well aware that with any death investigation, there are often rumors among people in the communities,” he said. “In these cases, I cannot provide any more details to the public because it would jeopardize the investigation.”

Trudeau also declined to say whether there are any known connections between the two women or their deaths.

“The investigations into both of the deaths have been complicated by the fact it has been difficult to track down and interview associates,” he said. “But that is common in a lot of investigations.”

As he spoke, he chose his words carefully, clearly struggling with the limitations of what he could offer and urging patience.

“I feel like we’re making progress on the majority of the cases that we have pending right now,” he said. “Unfortunately, cases sometimes take a long time. They are not solved in the first week or so, and it is frustrating to us as well.”

What are the chances?

Henry Demar, Michele’s father, is among those looking for answers.

“Police aren’t telling me anything. It’s been very limited. I’ve actually had to contact them and they are all short-staffed,” Demar said this week.

Demar said his last contact with police was when he reached out to the detective heading up his daughter’s case and learned that there were polygraph tests being conducted. He estimates that was about five weeks ago.

There’s been no further communication since Velazquez Estrada’s body was found, he said.

“I know police had issued a statement saying (Velazquez Estrada’s) death was not connected to any of the other ones where foul play was happening, but they didn’t mention whether it had anything to do with our daughter’s death,” said Demar, a Northfield resident who, with his wife, also named Michele, have custody of their daughter’s two children.

Demar is forthright in acknowledging that his daughter led a troubled life, stemming from a decade-long struggle with substance use disorder. She found it difficult to stay off drugs after she was recently released from jail, despite a period of sobriety when she appeared to be pulling her life back together, he said.

Demar has his own theories on how and why his daughter may have died, mostly related to her being caught up in the drug culture that he believes left her vulnerable. While his daughter had previously used heroin, he said, she had more recently turned to crack cocaine.

Demar also believes there are inconsistencies in the stories of the last people to have seen his daughter alive, and he isn’t accepting that his daughter took her own life on that August morning, an explanation he said state police offered soon after her body was found.

“They specifically told me it looked like suicide and I said ‘no way.’ My daughter has certainly been in the dumps before, but she had two kids she loved and she and her sister were very close,” he said. “Michele would have left a note, and she wouldn’t have just drove out there and said, ‘that’s it.’”

“Something’s not right. She could have been drugged out. I just really don’t think my daughter would have done this to herself,” he said, adding that he has heard the speculation and rumors related to his daughter’s death. In one instance, a photo of her deceased body was photoshopped in a manner that only fueled the rumors, he said.

In light of the second woman’s death, Demar said the notion of his daughter dying by suicide seems even harder to believe.

“Something’s going on there, two on Poor Farm Road,” he said. “What are the chances?”

Little has been publicly released about the circumstances of Velazquez Estrada’s death, although those with knowledge of the case have said the injuries to her body were extensive and vicious. Efforts to reach her family members were unsuccessful. Fitchburg police, who took the missing persons report from her mother, declined to release the report, citing the ongoing police investigation in Vermont.

At the Goodrich Academy in Fitchburg, Principal Alexis Curry confirmed that Velazquez Estrada was a 2020 graduate of the alternative high school, which is part of the public school system. Curry said she had not been aware of Velazquez Estrada’s death.

“She was a very kind young lady. Staff were very fond of her,” Curry said. Noting that Velazquez Estrada had “overcome a lot of challenges in her life,” she added, “She just wanted to graduate and do bigger things.”

A 2019 photo from the Fitchburg Public School website shows a photo of Velazquez Estrada working with elementary school students as part of a community service learning program.

Community candlelight vigil planned

Diane Kinney is co-director of Circle, one of three agencies working in central Vermont to support people affected by domestic and sexual violence. She said the two deaths, combined with reports by women who said they have recently encountered suspicious behavior on rural backroads, has only heightened anxiety levels, as evidenced by an uptick in calls to her agency in October.

“Callers just say they are more afraid than usual; they aren’t going out at night. They are worried that there is someone out there hurting people,” she said.

Since the three agencies — Circle, Safeline and Mosaic — work with survivors of violence, Kinney said efforts to develop safety protocols have been made harder by all that is unknown about the deaths and reports of suspicious vehicles in the area.

“We’re all pretty frustrated, honestly,” Kinney said. “We work with a population that is very traumatized. Therefore, they are hypervigilant and want answers, just like the general public. We are finding ourselves not able to support them.”

Vermont State Police have said they responded to the reports of suspicious vehicles with “high-visibility patrols” in the region that includes Corinth and Topsham, but were unable to substantiate that any criminal behavior had taken place.

“The state police is aware of community concerns regarding these reports, and investigators also acknowledge that individuals may have varying perceptions regarding interactions with strangers,” state police said in a Nov. 1 press release.

While state police have said last month’s eight apparent homicides across the state appear to be “isolated incidents,” Kinney said police could do more to elaborate on the reasons why residents should not feel in danger.

“What else can they tell us? I don’t know,” she said. But given the number of recent homicides, she said, “it just doesn’t seem to add up.”

The sense of increased violence in the area, she said, prompted the three agencies to organize a candlelight vigil, scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday in the town’s Carpenter Park. A flier for the event hangs in the village store, prominent near the exit door. It promotes the vigil as “a gathering for healing from the violence and trauma.”

“We decided to come together and invite folks to find a place of support and hopefully, in the community, find a little bit of hope,” Kinney said. “We don’t have the answers either, but we can support people in figuring out what things they can control.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In the rural town of Washington, rumors fill the void as details prove scarce in the deaths of 2 women.

Leaders from the city and town of St. Albans shared some of the first details Monday of their long-discussed plans for a police department that would serve both municipalities.

A draft operating budget shows the joint department could cost just shy of $5 million in the 2025 fiscal year, which starts next July and is when the plan is slated to take effect. That total would be shared evenly between the two communities. It’s about twice the cost of this year’s department budget, which supports policing in the city as well as the northern Franklin County town of Highgate, but not St. Albans Town.

On Monday night, a new public body tasked with advising the department, called the Joint Police Board, discussed the budget during its first meeting. The board is made up of six town and city officials and chaired by Timothy Hawkins, a St. Albans city councilor.

Together, the communities — one of which surrounds the other — have a combined population of about 14,000, though officials said that number approaches 18,000 during the day.

The roughly $2.4 million cost to both St. Albans City and Town next year accounts for what police Chief Maurice Lamothe on Monday called a best-case staffing scenario.

Currently, the police department has 12 uniformed officers, but Lamothe said he wants to bring the total up to 16 uniformed officers before starting to cover the town next July (the agency plans to end its part-time contract with Highgate at that time). As of Monday, the department had two new hires in training toward full-time certification, Lamothe said, as well as several candidates “we’d like to proceed with” after conducting interviews.

The chief said his agency does not need 16 officers on-call at a given time, but rather, that figure would give him flexibility when some officers take time off or go on leave.

“I have to make sure we have enough people to do this safely and effectively,” Lamothe said during Monday’s meeting, speaking about expanding service into the town. “And for me to do that, I need to have the status quo — and then one or two up — all the time.”

The proposed budget also includes funding to stand up what Lamothe called a “street crimes” unit aimed at investigating and curbing illicit drug sales in the area. The unit would require an additional two new officers, on top of the four who would be hired to cover St. Albans Town.

The St. Albans department had a “street crimes” unit as recently as 2021, officials said, but it ran out of funding when the town — which had a contract with the city police at the time — decided to hire the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office for policing services instead. Lamothe said that the Covid-19 pandemic also hindered the “street” unit’s work.

In response to a question Monday, Lamothe said he could not say whether the “street crimes” unit would actually reduce local crime, noting that he did not think the area was seeing more crime today than at the time the unit was disbanded in 2021.

He and other police officials present, though, said the unit could allow the department to conduct deeper investigations into drug-related crimes, which often take a significant amount of time and resources — freeing up other officers to do other police work.

“We’re not going to make it necessarily go away,” St. Albans Police Lt. Jason Wetherby said of illegal drug sales. “But at the same time, we’ll hopefully prevent some major tragedies.”

Members of the police board appeared broadly supportive of the unit, though they asked Lamothe to gather statistics on the unit’s former operations for a future meeting.

“I’m 100% for that,” said Trudy Cioffi, the St. Albans city councilor for Ward 4. “I have drugs pushing out right down the street from me, and I live in the ‘nice’ part of town.”

In all, the department’s personnel costs are set to increase by about $1.1 million in the 2025 police budget over the current budget. The department also proposed allocating $200,000 to purchase and outfit five police cruisers, two of which it would buy used.

Under St. Albans Town’s current contract with the sheriff’s office, officials have said they expect to spend about $1.3 million during the current fiscal year. They’ve said the higher cost of the new police agreement is worth it, in large part because St. Albans City leaders agreed in exchange to stop charging a controversial fee on new hookups to the city water and sewer systems that are located in the town.

Town officials have long said that this fee — which has been the subject of lawsuits between the two communities — has hindered growth in the town. The city is slated to eliminate the fee completely on July 1, 2024, the day town policing services start.

Several town officials also indicated that they think the city police department could provide better and more responsive services than the sheriff’s office, largely because the sheriff’s office has a greater area — much of Franklin County — to patrol.

Town Manager Sean Adkins also said some town residents have complained that the sheriff’s office is not responding to overnight calls in a timely manner. Adkins raised these concerns with Sheriff John Grismore, he said, and the sheriff told him staffing challenges are likely to blame — which the administrator said that he understands.

Town officials have been adamant that their decision to end their contract with the sheriff’s office had nothing to do with the fallout from an incident last August in which Grismore kicked a handcuffed man who was in custody. The sheriff is now facing an assault charge in court and possible impeachment in the Vermont Legislature stemming from the incident, as well as a Vermont State Police investigation into his conduct.

While town residents can expect an increase in police spending next year, the city is set to spend about $92,000 less than it does now once the town takes on its new share.

The Joint Police Board still needs to approve the department’s 2025 budget, after which the city and town governments would incorporate their share of the department’s costs into their respective 2025 municipal budgets. Those municipal budgets will be up for approval from voters in both communities in March on Town Meeting Day.

The board’s next meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Nov. 15.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Plans shaping up for joint police department in St. Albans City and Town.

Hunters on Friday afternoon discovered a body in a remote area in Plainfield, and Vermont State Police say the death “occurred under suspicious circumstances.” It marked the second time this week that hunters found a body in central Vermont.

Since Oct. 5, Vermont State Police have reported seven deaths considered to be suspicious. By comparison, there were only nine reported homicides in the state for all of 2021, although that number spiked to 25 reported homicides in 2022.

No arrests have been made in any of the seven recent cases.

Col. Matthew Birmingham, who leads the Vermont State Police, called the rash of killings in such a short period of time “a little unprecedented” in Vermont.

Until this month, Vermont’s homicide rate had been trending lower for the year, Birmingham said on Saturday. Prior to October, he said, nine homicides had been recorded. If all seven suspicious deaths this month prove to be homicides, the year-to-date total would be 16.

“As far as we can tell, they are all isolated incidents with no corresponding trend that we can identify at this point,” he said.

Some of the recent death investigations are also proving very complex, he said.

“To have so many in such a short period is very unusual — and not just so many, but these are very complicated homicides,” he said. “No one is in custody yet and that is what is making it very upsetting to us and very challenging.”

“I can say with great confidence that none of them are tied together. We don’t have a single person responsible,” he said. The nature of the homicides also differs with each case, so there appears to be no singular pattern or motivation, he added.

In the most recent case, hunters in Plainfield discovered the body in woods along Gore Road around 4:30 p.m. Friday. Gore Road runs along the southern edge of the L.R. Jones State Forest, where the popular Spruce Mountain hiking trail is located.

“Evidence gathered on scene indicates the death occurred under suspicious circumstances,” state police said in a press release issued late Friday night.

Police said an autopsy was planned “to determine the cause and manner of death and help determine the victim’s identity.” State police encouraged the public to contact them with tips related to the crime.

On Wednesday afternoon, hunters discovered the body of a 23-year-old Barre woman in a remote area of the town of Washington. On Friday, police identified the woman as Tanairy “Tanya” Velazquez Estrada, whose mother reported her missing to police in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on the same day her body was discovered. Police said the cause and manner of death was pending but it was also labeled suspicious.

Also on Wednesday, the bodies of two Massachusetts men who were recently reported missing were discovered in a remote area in Eden. Autopsies found that Jahim Solomon and Eric White, both 21, had died of gunshot wounds and their deaths were ruled homicides, state police said.

On Oct. 16, 27-year-old Gunnar Watson was shot and killed at his home in Wheelock. Police have released few details about the death. Watson was a member of the Vermont National Guard since 2020, according to WCAX.

On Oct. 14, a 27-year-old man was shot and killed in Newport Town. Wilmer Rodriguez, 27, of Hartford, Connecticut, died from multiple gunshot wounds and his death was ruled a homicide, state police reported.

On Oct. 5, Honoree Fleming, a highly regarded retired college dean, was shot to death while walking on a rail trail near her home, just a short distance from the Vermont State University campus. Police released a sketch of a “person of interest“ in the case.

Birmingham said the investigations into all seven deaths remain very active, with some expected to be resolved sooner than others. But the demands of so many investigations at once, often requiring detailed forensic work, are testing the limits of his agency, he said.

“We are being challenged on the resource side of the house,” he said. “Without question it is taking a toll on our resources.”

Birmingham said state police are receiving help from federal agencies. The state police Major Crime Unit, which includes detectives, a technology unit, crime scene search teams and victim services, is being augmented by other units within state police to help in the investigations, he said.

“Everybody is assisting. It’s not just the criminal division,” he added. “We are making progress on a few of them. Some are just going slower. But I am confident we will make significant progress towards resolving them.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Hunters find body in Plainfield, 7th suspicious death in Vermont this month.

Leslie Haviland and Derek Temple have been spending nearly every day for the last three weeks getting a new space ready for the reopening of Hugo’s, the Montpelier fine dining restaurant destroyed by the July flood, as early as next week.

The reopening of Hugo’s and several other restaurants is part of the restitching of Montpelier’s lively bar and dining scene, which went quiet after the floodwaters moved in and the debris piled up on the city’s deserted sidewalks.

“It’ll feel like Montpelier is becoming Montpelier again,” said Hugo’s owner, Tom Greene.

Over at Enna, her restaurant on State Street, Shannon Bates was painting when she spoke to VTDigger Monday. She, too, hoped to reopen sometime next week.

Bates said she had expected to reopen within weeks of the flood — before she realized her building would have to be stripped down to studs. She said she is grateful to have a landlord who took care of and paid for reconstruction. She got the keys to go back into her place last week, she said.

All her kitchen equipment was contaminated by the toxic floodwaters and had to be replaced, she said.

After seeing an outpouring of volunteers in the first weeks after the flood, Bates said she began to feel in the dark as time went by because there was no contact from the state or from city officials. Only in the last few weeks, she said, did she receive disaster unemployment assistance and a grant from the state’s $20 million Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program, known as BEGAP.

Bates has been busy organizing an Oct. 28 Oktoberfest event at Farr’s Field in Waterbury, with other Montpelier restaurant owners that will help offset the costs of reconstruction.

Across the street, Julia Watson, the owner of Capitol Grounds, is getting ready to reopen her coffee shop, which at times, especially when the Legislature is in session, can feel like the main gathering spot in Montpelier. She hopes to reopen in the next two weeks.

It has taken three months, Watson said, in part because it was impossible to line up carpenters, plumbers and electricians when everyone else also needed them, but also because she had to figure out with her landlord who was responsible for what part of the rebuilding.

Most of her 26 employees have found other jobs and will not be returning. Joe McHugh, the cook, is one of the few who are coming back.

“It’s like having your life turned upside down indefinitely,” McHugh said of the three months since the flood, during which time securing unemployment compensation proved to be a big hurdle.

“It was a complete failure,” he said, explaining that his claim was lost and then a hold was put on it. It took him about a month before he could start collecting unemployment, he said.

He has been back on payroll for about a week, he said, getting the walls and floors finished and the equipment cleaned and wrapped in plastic until it gets put in place for the reopening.

“I’m just looking forward to being back in a functional kitchen, having some sense of order restored,” he said.

Inside Three Penny

Wes Hamilton, one of the owners of Three Penny Taproom on Main Street, has already opened a small indoor space occupying about one-third the size of the restaurant and bar. The restaurant is serving cans of beer, not its famed list of beers on tap, and a limited selection of sandwiches and soup. He hopes to reopen fully by early November.

Hamilton calls the last three months “one giant nightmare.”

It was not until the end of August that the place was properly dried out, he said. He and a business partner would come in once a day to empty out the dehumidifiers.

“It just really felt like nothing was happening,” Hamilton said.

Once the contractor was satisfied that the humidity level was low enough, the rebuilding began, he said, though all the equipment had been lost.

Hamilton said he is waiting for a second round of BEGAP grants to come in. Flood insurance covered only a fraction of the rebuilding costs, he said. The business had $100,000 in insurance coverage, but the lost inventory alone was $50,000. It cost $60,000 to replace the equipment, not to mention paying contractors. He credits Montpelier Alive for coming through with grants.

Montpelier Alive is the downtown Montpelier business association. Together with the Montpelier Foundation, it has been a major source of fundraising for businesses affected by the July flooding, and helped to organize volunteers to help with cleanup and rebuilding.

Hamilton also applied for a disaster loan from the Small Business Administration. He recommends that the federal government make grants available to businesses in times of disaster, rather than loans.

“This is like my daughter’s future that I rolled the dice on in order to reopen the restaurant,” Hamilton said. “If something happens to me, my daughter’s got 30 years of payments to the feds to make.”

Upstairs at Hugo’s

Haviland, the general manager at Hugo’s, has been loading the new menu into the computer system, working on charts for the layout of tables at the new restaurant, which will fill the second and third floors of the Main Street space once occupied by the old Black Door, across from City Hall.

“It’s definitely outside the floodplain,” Greene said of the upper-floor location of the new space, but he said he had no choice but to move, as his old landlord decided not to rebuild Hugo’s old space as a restaurant.

Greene said the new incarnation of his restaurant will be more affordable, less fine dining and more Asian fusion meets classic bistro.

He said that, for a long time after the flood, he was working alone, as he could not afford to keep people on payroll.

“We would not be reopening without the support of Montpelier Alive and the Montpelier Foundation,” Greene said, along with people who contributed more than $9,000 to the restaurant’s GoFundMe campaign, and the support of the state’s BEGAP. The state will close applications for the $20 million grant program for flood-damaged businesses and nonprofits Oct. 23. As of earlier this week, it had received more than 700 applications.

Haviland has been deep in “the scheduling nightmare” of assigning shifts for new and returning employees, she said.

Temple has been reupholstering the tattered barstools that had not been sat on since 2018, when the last restaurant at that location closed. He has also been buffing the old tables to a new shine. Temple said he has also been working part-time, mostly as a bartender at catering events for Woodbelly Pizza.

“It’s been rough,” Haviland said of the three months since the flood. “We’re used to making a lot more than unemployment.”

Still, she said, staff members have held on to their friendships.

A food truck in the meantime

If some restaurants are rushing toward reopening, for others, that goal remains months away.

Melissa Whittaker and Carlo Rovetto, the manager and the owner, respectively, of Positive Pie on State Street, were driving to Atlanta to pick up a food truck when VTDigger reached them Monday.

Whittaker said they had little savings when the flood hit, and it took months for much of their funding to come in. A $4,000 grant from Montpelier Alive arrived within two weeks of the flood, but no other funding came in until three weeks ago, she said.

“We had all our volunteers clean it out, and then the restaurant basically just sat there,” she said.

Positive Pie received an initial $20,000 grant from BEGAP and is expecting a second grant, but Whittaker said she does not know the size of that grant. The business also received a second grant for $20,000 from Montpelier Alive.

Positive Pie owns its building and received an insurance settlement of $100,000, she said. All told, including more than $6,000 from a GoFundMe campaign, the business has received $170,000, but she estimates $600,000 will be needed to rebuild. She said the business has been approved for a $500,000 loan from the Small Business Administration, but that money has yet to arrive.

“I feel like I’m ice climbing with no ice picks,” said Rovetto.

Whittaker said she’s mindful that her 65 employees can only be on unemployment for so long before accepting other jobs. A food truck would enable her to rehire most of the kitchen staff, she said, and Montpelier’s city government has agreed to allow the truck to be parked in front of Positive Pie, on State Street.

Whittaker said the goal is to open the food truck in the next two weeks. But they are months away from being able to reopen the restaurant.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Montpelier restaurants are reopening, but at a cost..

Vermont State University should end 10 degree programs, including agriculture, music and school psychology, and lose around 20-33 faculty positions, Interim President Mike Smith said in a draft report issued Oct. 2.

Smith’s report also recommends consolidating another 13 degree programs and moving 11 among the university’s multiple campuses. None of the recommendations, if implemented, would affect current students in those programs, according to VTSU leadership. The changes would begin in the fall of 2024.

The school administration is soliciting feedback on the recommendations until Oct. 27, according to the preliminary report, a copy of which was obtained by VTDigger. University leadership will make final decisions by Oct. 31.

“None of this is easy, and I recognize that impacted faculty will have a period of transition ahead of them,” Smith wrote in the report, adding, “What we are doing with these recommendations is confronting our pressures head on — not running from them — and forging a path to address each and every one of them either through steps to obtain fiscal sustainability, strategic plan for admissions, or a student success model to keep students engaged in academic life.”

Smith did not immediately respond to calls and texts Monday night. The report is expected to be made public Tuesday morning.

In the document, Smith recommends discontinuing degrees in agriculture; forestry; landscape contracting; an applied business degree completion program; computer engineering technology; music; photography; performance, arts, and technology; climate change science; and school psychology.

Ending those programs would not necessarily mean that instruction in those subjects would cease entirely. For example, the report notes that VTSU’s recently created Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship is working to “identify opportunities for a newly designed Agriculture program that is sustainable and meets the needs of Vermont’s workforce.”

And while the report recommends ending the degree in climate change science, it also suggests promoting a climate change concentration within an atmospheric sciences degree.

The programs that Smith recommended cutting currently enroll 77 students, he said, roughly 2% of the university’s student body. All told, the cuts and consolidations proposed in the report would eliminate between 20 to 33 full-time faculty positions — between 10% and 15% of the university’s total of 207.

Vermont State University is planning to release details about a buyout program for faculty “in the coming days,” the report states. “If there is sufficient uptake in the buyout program, layoffs may not be necessary.”

The university was formed this summer through the merger of three public institutions: Castleton University, Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College. The merger was intended to put the three on a pathway to financial stability.

Monday’s report — an initiative that administrators dubbed “Optimization 2.0” — appears to be the next phase of that consolidation. According to Smith, VTSU offers too many academic programs — 99 in total — while some have too few students enrolled.

That situation, he said, is financially untenable. VTSU ended the most recent fiscal year with a $22 million deficit, and the university “must realize efficiencies now that we are unified,” the report reads.

Smith’s term ends Nov. 1, at which point he will be succeeded by the recently hired interim president David Bergh, who is expected to run the university for roughly 18 months.

Monday’s report identifies 13 programs that should be consolidated with others, many of which appear to be already similar.

It proposes merging a program in architectural & building engineering technology with a program in architectural engineering technology, for example.

Among other consolidations, the report recommends combining musical theater and theater arts programs, as well as merging a degree in creative writing with one in literature and writing. And it proposes folding a degree in “Health Promotion” into a health science degree or discontinuing it.

Another 11 programs should shift their location from one of the university’s campuses to another, according to the report.

Last month, in response to complaints from faculty and staff that VTSU employs too many administrators, Smith vowed to examine the institution’s administrative positions and their effect on the budget. In Monday’s report, he reiterated that promise.

“Please know that I strongly agree that administrative costs of the university must be optimized and reduced as well,” Smith wrote. “With this first set of recommendations out the door I will now turn my attention to administrative costs, releasing a recommendation before my departure at the end of the month.”

Linda Olson, a sociology professor who represents VTSU faculty for the American Federation of Teachers, said that there were still many unanswered questions about the report.

“I think that there needs to be a lot of explanation still about why the proposal is making the recommendations that it is,” she said. “And also, more importantly, what data they’re basing it on.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont State University president recommends cutting 10 degree programs and up to 33 faculty positions.