RWSU - February Meeting Schedules

February 2, 2011	5:30 PM	Ludlow & Union #39 School Boards
		Special Meeting (Building & Grounds Committee)
		Mount Holly Elementary School
February 2, 2011	7:00 PM	Mount Holly Elementary School Board
		Regular Meeting
		Mount Holly Elementary School
February 2, 2011	7:00 PM	Union #39 School Board
		Regular Meeting
		Mount Holly Elementary School
February 2, 2011	7:00 PM	Ludlow Elementary School Board
		Regular Meeting
		Mount Holly Elementary
February 3, 2011	4:00 PM	Rutland Windsor Supervisory Union Board
		Superintendent Search Committee
		Special Meeting
		Rutland Windsor Supervisory Union
February 15, 2011	7:00 PM	Union #39 School Board
		Informational Hearing
		Black River High School  - Library
February  16, 2011	5:45  PM	Plymouth Elementary School Board
		Regular Meeting
		Rutland Windsor Supervisory Union
February  16, 2011	7:00 PM	Rutland Windsor Supervisory Union Board
		Regular Meeting
		Rutland Windsor Supervisory Union
February  28, 2011	7:00 PM	Plymouth Elementary School Board
		Annual Meeting & Informational Hearing
		Plymouth Town Office
February  28, 2011	7:00 PM	Mount Holly Elementary School Board
		Annual Meeting & Informational Hearing
		Mount Holly School

NITKA’S NOTES FROM THE STATE HOUSE

By Senator Alice Nitka, Windsor County, January 28, 2011 

The VT Office of Child Support (OCS) handles 30,000 phone calls per month and offers customer service in person to approximately 3,000 persons per month. In Fiscal Year 2010, they collected 55 million dollars in child support. Of that amount, 68% or 37.5 million was collected through wage withholding. The money also included arrearages and the 1% per month that is charged on arrearage when one falls behind on payments.

OCS works to improve the financial lives of children by locating non-custodial parents, establishing parentage as well as establishing medical and child support obligations. They work for families who receive public assistance as well as for families who have no involvement with any public assistance system. Last year, they had 11,000 court “events”.

VT employers are playing a critical role in getting money to children from their employees.  Forty-eight per cent of VT employers recently surveyed are dealing with out of state child support agencies as well as our VT agency. Those surveyed expressed an interest in alternative payment options such as electronic payments which would ease their burden. Presently, 34% of employers submit payments through electronic fund transfers. The remainder are using child support coupons to identify their employees. An employer is able to charge their employee $5 per month for the administrative cost.

 In these difficult economic times with high unemployment, persons hours being reduced and the self employed struggling, many parents have been unable to meet their support obligations. When non-custodial parents find themselves in this position, it is very important that they file with the court re their change in circumstance.  A change in their support order can only go back to the date of filing, not the date they became unemployed which might have occurred three months prior. Recently, a constituent told me he failed to file because he didn’t have the $75 filing fee. The court can and does waive the fee if the filer meets certain financial criteria. If one doesn’t file, the 12% surcharge per year starts to accumulate and it is very hard to pay this additional amount later. If a person has a stipulation to go with their petition and has met those requirements, the fee is $25.  

Vermonters generally do well in meeting their support obligations. Non-custodial parents who have stable employment and a residence pay 90% or more of their payments. Generally, each month, 70% of parents are meeting their obligation but 30% goes unpaid adding to the $100,000,000 already on the books. There are those in OCS terms who are “unable” to pay and others who are “elusive”. Some “unables” are persons incarcerated, on public assistance or chronically unemployed.  However, many of these persons do have nominal obligation orders ranging from one dollar to $145. The “elusives” are a more difficult group, often working under the table, moving from state to state, living off of other people and for many, feeling no responsibility to support their children. They are a labor intensive, expensive group to track and to try to get to pay. Many have already lost their drivers license for failure to pay. Other licenses are also subject to revocation such as those for electricians, plumbers, barbers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, hairdressers and so on. When the hunting and fishing license went on the books as approved to revoke, it generated the most back payments.

Some strategies being considered and weighed against cost benefits are mandatory training programs, OCS probation authority, electronic house arrest, denial of vehicle registration, as well as strengthening the child support contempt statutes.                                                                                               

 Consider visiting as tours can be arranged or you can tour by yourself with a handheld audio device. I can be reached at home at 228-8432, State House at 1-800-322-5616 or at [email protected]  or P.O. Box 136, Ludlow, VT 05149   Find schedules and bills at www.leg.state.vt.us.

United Church Dinner Feb. 26

 

Local Programming Highlights on LPC-TV

Submitted by LPC-TV

Here are some programming notes from LPCTV, community TV for the Black River Valley, for the upcoming week. LPCTV is on local cable TV channels 8 and 10 in the Towns of Ludlow, Plymouth, Cavendish, and on Channels 20 and 21 Mount Holly. Local shows can also be viewed online at www.lpctv.org.

CHANNEL 8 (Channel 20 in Mount Holly)

Black River High School Basketball

Several Black River basketball games are on tap this week, with “Bruce & Bruce” on LPCTV. Bruce Perry on camera and Bruce Schmidt on play-by-play.

That Was the Week That Was

Ralph Pace & Leo Graham are back together for another episode of the longest-running studio show at LPCTV.

CHANNEL 10 (Channel 21 in Mount Holly)

Ludlow Community Center Open House

A spirited tour of the new facility and former Ludlow Armory building; produced by LPCTV.

Governor Shumlin Budget Address

Newly-elected Governor Peter Shumlin gives his first budget address to the VT legislature.

Substance Awareness for Educators

Dover Police Chief and Deerfield Valley Community Partnership advisor Bob Edwards leads a discussion on substance abuse prevention at the new Ludlow Community Center.

Local Government Meetings

Gavel-to-gavel coverage of the local meetings play each night at 7PM and repeat the following morning & afternoon. Here’s this week’s schedule: Ludlow Village Trustees (on 2/2), Rutland-Windsor Supervisory Union (on 2/3), Mount Holly School Board (on 2/4), Ludlow Elementary School (on 2/5), Union-39 School Board (on 2/6), Substance Abuse Prevention for Educators (on 2/7), Plymouth Selectboard (on 2/8).

Gorman and Dover to Play Ludlow in April

 

FOLA (Friends of Ludlow Auditorium) Program Director Bruce Farr announced that Ludlow will have an opportunity to hear and see two legends of western and Celtic music on Saturday, April 16 at Ludlow Town Hall's Auditorium.  Farr noted that Skip Gorman and Connie Dover would be performing in the auditorium on that date, sponsored by FOLA.

Cowboy singer/musician Skip Gorman and Celtic singer and poet Connie Dover bring together their down-deep, heartfelt interpretations of the traditional music of the American West, Ireland and Scotland. Dover, described by the Boston Globe as the “finest ballad singer America has produced since Joan Baez,” and Gorman, who Bluegrass Unlimited magazine calls “a masterful interpreter of cowboy ballads” blend their music in a concert of the “sweet old songs” of the trail, the cow camp, and the Old-World ballads that were their predecessors.

Connie and Skip met in the Owl Creek Mountains of north central Wyoming, where Connie is a ranch cook, and Skip worked as an entertainer and wrangler during cattle drives and roundups.  Their chance meeting on the trail led to impromptu duets around evening campfires, and blossomed into a musical friendship that led to concerts throughout the United States and embassy-hosted tours of South America with musical friend Tom Sauber, where they sang traditional North American songs at community concerts and school workshops throughout Chile, Argentina and Paraguay. Recent collaborations include a series of concerts to benefit Wrangler Ranch, Inc. (Thermopolis, Wyoming), whose mission is to offer children in crisis the healing benefits of horse-related activities in a working ranch environment. Their recent performances include appearances include the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, Cowboy Songs and Range Ballads in Cody, Wyoming, and a return tour of South America.  The  launch of the compilation CD, Songs of Yellowstone and the Tetons (produced by The Western Folklife Center), took them on a Springtime tour of the Yellowstone area to The Museum of Wildlife Arts in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, The Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, and Cody’s Buffalo Bill Historical Center., and they performed at the 2010 Colorado Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Skip and Connie’s performances are a rare treat:  their music is drawn from the ballads and old-time dance tunes that brought them together on the Wyoming prairie.

Connie Dover

Acclaimed by the Boston Globe as "the finest folk ballad singer America has produced since Joan Baez," Connie Dover finds her  inspiration in the landscapes and culture of the American West.  When she is not performing, she works as a ranch cook in the beautiful country between Wyoming's Wind River and Absaroka Mountains.  Her soaring, crystal-clear voice and powerful interpretations of traditional music and original songs speak to the hearts of listeners, and have garnered rave reviews around the world.

Connie received a 2007 Emmy Award for her PBS documentary soundtrack: Bad Blood: The True Story of the Missouri-Kansas Border Conflict, and she was awarded the Grand Prize in the 2007 Yellowstone and Teton Song Contest, sponsored by the Western Folklife Center (Elko, Nevada). She is the winner of the Speakeasy Prize in Poetry, and she has twice been a finalist for Native American Music Award and Scotland’s Living Tradition Award. She has been a guest on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, Weekend Edition Sunday (What’s in a Song), The Thistle and Shamrock and A Prairie Home Companion, and her original music was featured on Democracy Now!, hosted by Amy Goodman. In addition to her solo CDs, Connie can be heard on numerous film and television soundtracks, and on the Sony, Virgin, EMI, Narada and Rounder record labels. Her first collection of poems, entitled Winter Count, was published in 2007. Her CD of traditional Christmas songs, The Holly and the Ivy, recorded with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra, was released in 2008.

Born in Arkansas and raised in Missouri, Connie is of English, Cherokee, Mexican and Scots/Irish descent.  Her studies at Oxford University have further enriched her unique perspective of the context of traditional songs, and she offers a musical experience that transcends cultural boundaries and affirms our connection with the past. From a tender love song in Irish Gaelic to an ancient Scots ballad or the mournful plaint of an American cowboy, Connie’s pure, powerful voice - in spoken word or music - transports listeners across centuries.

Skip Gorman
 
Through his music, Skip Gorman brings back to life the workaday world of the old “waddie” cowboys of the American West.  His music is the simple yet poignant songs performed around campfires by cowhands and westward settlers in the late 19th century. Since the early 1970s, as a member of Utah's Deseret String Band, which culminated in his seminal recording of "Powder River" for Folk Legacy Records in 1977, Gorman has brought to western music a scholar's knowledge of the cowhand's Spanish, African-American and Celtic roots. Along with an exquisite touch as a singer, guitarist, mandolinist and fiddler, Gorman brings to his music personal experience gained as a working cowboy on Wyoming ranches.

Gorman has performed on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, at folk and bluegrass festivals and cowboy gatherings (including Elko, Arvada, Monterey and Santa Clarita) throughout the American West and in Europe. Filmmaker Ken Burns featured Skip’s music in his PBS documentaries, Lewis and Clark and Baseball.  Gorman has several award-winning CDs on his own Old West label, as well as the Rounder and Folk Legacy record labels. His musical accolades include an INDIE Award and a Top Ten folk pick on Amazon.com.  His latest releases are Dogie Music with his group, The Waddie Pals, Mandolin in the Cow Camp, featuring artwork by the renowned Western artist, William Matthews, and Roll on Prairie Wagons – Let ‘Er Buck, Young Pards (Ballads and History for young Cowpokes).

BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ AT CAVENDISH FILM SERIES

Submitted by Mary McCallum

Corrections is in the news almost daily.  While being imprisoned is tough on inmates  and their families, today’s conditions are radically different than those portrayed in the 1963 film classic Birdman of Alcatraz, part of the Black & White Nights film series in Cavendish.  Burt Lancaster was nominated for his portrayal of the real-life Robert Stroud, a remorseless killer sentenced to a life of solitary confinement.  He finds solace in raising birds, ultimately becoming a renowned expert on their behavior and diseases.  Karl Malden plays the tough prison warden whose harsh theories on punishment inspire Stroud to make something of his life, and Thelma Ritter was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Stroud’s gritty but supportive mother.  Lancaster shows us a tough and emotionally closed Stroud who finally achieves a level of humanity through his work that began by saving a wounded bird. Nominated for four Academy Awards, Birdman of Alcatraz is a powerful film about redemption.

It will be shown at 7:00 on Friday February 4th at Cavendish Elementary School on Rte. 131 in Proctorsville.  Donations are welcome but not required, and there will be refreshments available.  For more information call 226-7187.

BIG GAME WEEKEND SAVINGS AT OKEMO

Submitted by Okemo Mtn Resort

Whether football fans are cheering for the Steelers or the Packers, Okemo Mountain Resort has the ticket to pre-game skiing and riding with the Big Game Sunday Solution, Feb. 6, and an even better deal for Monday-morning quarterbacks the day after, Feb. 

Okemo understands that sports fans may want to make it home in time for pre-game revelry, so the Big Game Sunday Solution ticket takes another $10 off Okemo’s already reduced Sunday Solution rate.  That means skiers and riders can enjoy the slopes from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for only $61 for Adults, $52 for Young Adults and Seniors, and $38 for Juniors. 

For Monday-morning quarterbacks who prefer to re-live every play of the game from the comfort of a chairlift, Okemo has an extra special lift ticket value that depends entirely on the final score of Sunday’s game. On Monday, Feb. 7, the price of a full-day lift ticket will be charged at $1 per point, based on the total combined points scored during Sunday’s Big Game. If the final score of the game is Packers 24 and Steelers 21, the price of a lift ticket on Monday will be $45. How low could it go? A scoreless game would mean free lift tickets; however, the lowest combined score in Super Bowl history was 21 points in 1973. In case of a high-score game, Okemo is capping the Feb. 7 lift ticket price at $59.

OKEMO LAUDS GATORADE FREE FLOW TOUR WINNERS

Submitted by Okemo Mtn Resort

Okemo Mountain Resort hosted The Winter Gatorade Free Flow Tour on Jan. 22 and 23.  The official amateur series of the Winter Dew Tour, the Winter Gatorade Free Flow Tour made a stop at Okemo to give top amateur competitors a chance to win an expense-paid trip to the Tour Finals and a shot at a wildcard spot in the first Dew Tour stop next winter.

Freestyle skier Dan Rosenblum, of Stamford, Conn., took top honors and earned a spot and all-expenses-paid trip to the Free Flow Tour Finals in Snowbasin, Utah.

Snowboarding 

In Men’s Halfpipe, first place went to Joe Mensch (86.25). Levi Gunzburg (85.75) took second and third place went to Shane Serrano (80.5).

The Women’s Halfpipe winner was Whitney Kulich (88.25).

The Jr. Jam Halfpipe winner was Austin Hawkes  (81). Second place went to Austin Rebeltz (78.5) and rounding out the podium was Taylor Spaulding (73).

Austin Hawkes placed first in Jr. Jam Rail Jam.  Taylor Spaulding took second and Dylan Okorowski finished third.

Freeski 

Halfpipe honors went to Daniel Rosenblum (89). Colby Vavolotis (86) took second and third place went to Cody Buchalter (80).

The Jr. Jam Halfpipe winner was Leland Broadhurst (78) and second place went to John Lohnes (59.5)

The Jr. Jam Rail Jam winner was John Lohnes. Leland Broadhurst took second and Sean Rush, third

Tyler Duncan (93) won the Slopestyle Final. Alex Beaulieu (90.25) placed second and third went to Will Hibbs (89.75).

Complete Gatorade Free Flow Results are available at http://www.allisports.com/winter-gatorade-free-flow-tour/results.

CCCA to Hold Wildlife Corridor Presentation

Submitted by Peter J. LaBelle

The Cavendish Community and Conservation Association will host a presentation on Cavendish Wildlife Corridors by Forrest Hammond of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department on Thursday, February 3rd from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. in the meeting room at the Cavendish Town Offices, 126 High Street, Cavendish.

Mr. Hammond is Project Leader at the Fish and Wildlife Department for wild turkey and black bears and he will target his presentation to specific wildlife corridors in our area.

Corridor habitat is land that links larger areas of habitat within a landscape allowing for the movement, migration and dispersion of animals.  Corridors are especially important for wide ranging animals such as bobcats, otters, bears and owls, but are also important for small creatures such as the spotted salamander.  Creation and protection of corridor habitat reduces the negative impact of habitat fragmentation and population isolation.

Whether you are a hunter, a developer, a wildlife enthusiast or just plain interested in the animals that live in our woods, fields and waterways, this is sure to be an educational evening that will help you understand the principles of maintaining a healthy and diverse environment.  All persons are invited and refreshments and home-made cookies will be served.  For more information please call Robin Timko at 802-226-7736.

NITKA’S NOTES FROM THE STATE HOUSE

By Senator Alice Nitka, Windsor County, January 21,  2011
 
In 1978, the Vermont Legislature decriminalized public intoxication under the “Alcohol Services Act”. There was a goal of getting more public inebriates as these persons are known into treatment rather than jail. In 1977, the year before the legislation, 550 persons were jailed after being charged with public intoxication. Some of you may recall the “Andy Griffith Show”, whereby the local drunk came and stayed in the local jail, with the door unlocked until he sobered up. This is similar to what was going on in VT at the time, although I don’t know about the unlocked door. Many towns had their own lock ups and housed these persons until they were able to function and then sent them on their way. Some towns and cities still have a local lock up for short term use but generally they are no longer available and have become storage areas. The issue of needing to house public inebriates who do not have a place to go to when drunk or under the influence of other substances has not gone away. It is an expensive problem weighing on the Corrections Dept. budget as well as on local police department budgets.

In 2010, there were 1,617 lodgings around the state for an average of 134 per month. These were persons who needed supervision as they were incapacitated and had no one to take them home or look out for them. Another 1,700 were in similar condition but had a relative, friend or a responsible person who could step forward and keep them from being sent to a public shelter or detox bed. As there are not enough local services or beds in the state for the persons who need a secure setting, they wind up being housed in our prisons where they are kept separate from the regular prison population and are monitored. They are not charged with a crime and do not have a criminal record because of this. Some are in need of hospitalization so all need to be screened before they can be placed which requires supervision while they are being screened as well as transport to the site for screening which is most often a hospital emergency room.  The full cost of care for these individuals can run from $1000 to $3000 dollars depending upon what is needed.

 A person can be held for up to 24 hours or until judged by the facility personnel to no longer be incapacitated. Many times they are now in a correctional facility a county away from where they live and have no way to get home and are frequently without money, sometimes don’t have appropriate clothing for the weather and in one case I know of were without their shoes. Some of these individuals are homeless with no place to go. A majority of persons enter the public inebriate program only one time. Chittenden County had highest number of public inebriates last year and many are young adults, sometimes very inexperienced drinkers. Others are the repeaters who churn through the system many times. For many of the repeaters their operating blood alcohol level is 1.5 and they don’t get themselves into trouble until it is around 3.0.

There is work being done to try to get a better handle on these problems and to reduce the Dept. of Corrections costs as well as communities’ costs.                                                                                                                     

School groups are starting to visit the State House and today Governor Douglas visited with his Middlebury College students. Consider visiting as tours can be arranged or you can tour by yourself with a handheld audio device. I can be reached at home at 228-8432 or at [email protected]  or P.O. Box 136, Ludlow, VT 05149   You can find schedules and bills at www.leg.state.vt.us.