Williston Observer

By Mal Boright
Correspondent

Despite some differences in their views, Williston’s three members of the Vermont General Assembly are optimistic that the 2005 legislative session will bring some progress toward solving some of the problems in the state’s health care system.

Three separate plans from the House, Senate and Gov. Jim Douglas are currently in various stages of deliberation as the session enters its final weeks. The House has passed a framework for eventual public financing for all Vermonters while the Senate is working on incremental steps at cost cutting and access for the uninsured.

Douglas’ plan, made public late last week, would subsidize care for uninsured Vermonters.

Rep. Jim McCullough, who supports the House plan, believes, “something will come out of the session and go to the Governor’s desk. Everyone is committed to that.”

He sees a scenario in which the House and Senate plans will be taken up by a conference committee of members of both bodies with the result an acceptable bill.

McCullough firmly believes that the legislature needs some kind of progress this year and points to the out-of-control cost inflation in health care.

“Our system is a pieced together process that is not really organized,” he said. “Part of the reason for the spiraling costs is that there is really no system. People are falling between the cracks.”

McCullough added that “universal access to health care will be the answer,” and that the house bill will start the process of reorganization in preparation for a new, more comprehensive program. Funding of that program, probably public, is yet to be worked out.

Opposing the House bill was Rep. Mary Peterson.

“I thought it was too aggressive a plan,” she told the Observer over the weekend. “There are a lot of problems that need to be studied before we have that kind of payer (public funding) system.”

Peterson said she wants more immediate emphasis on “driving down the costs,” through paperwork reductions and other strategies.

She also believes that there will be some action taken by the legislature before it adjourns for the year.

“Really, everybody agrees that we need measures to save costs such as a single form,” she said. “But I don’t see any new tax being implemented this year. I’ll be happy just to make progress on the cost side.”

Peterson, whose husband is an orthodontist, and McCullough have differing experiences with small business people and their reactions to the House bill which, if ever implemented, would relieve business firms of medical insurance costs for employees.

McCullough, a longtime small business owner, says that small business people are making it known in Montpelier that the health care issue needs to be addressed now and there is support for the House plan.

Peterson says that while she has heard about this support, the small business people who have talked with her generally oppose the house bill.

Sen. Ginny Lyons, a member of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, has been in the middle of the action on the Senate side where legislation was finished in her committee Friday and sent to the Finance Committee.

She said the bill as presently constituted includes measures for cost containment and provides insurance packages for those without health insurance.

“The cost containment includes a prescription drug benefit, a hospital budget proposal, better integration of health systems and chronic disease initiatives,” she said.

Lyons admitted that “funding is the hard part.”

The Senate legislation calls for a 3 percent payroll tax on uninsured employees and a 3 percent tax on businesses who do not offer insurance to employees.

While Lyons admits there is still a long way to go to get diverse ideologies and opinions reading from the same book, she believes a movement toward consensus is underway.

“The Chamber of Commerce, the Vermont School Boards Association and many others are all working hard on this,” she said, adding that the Vermont League of Cities and Towns is calling for universal coverage.

Lyons also believes that there will be some legislative accomplishments by the end of the session which is but a few weeks away,

“We will have some long range goals set,” she forecast, “and we will have some initial cost containment pieces in place.”

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Police allege relationship lasted two to three years

By Tom Gresham
Observer staff

A Williston man faces life imprisonment after being charged with having a long-term sexual relationship with the young daughter of a friend.

Mark Hulett, 34, was arraigned Tuesday on two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child. Both assault charges carry potential life sentences.

Hulett pleaded innocent to the charges. He is being held without bail at Chittenden Correctional Facility.

According to court documents, Hulett made a full confession to officers with the Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations on Monday. Hulett, who was interviewed in an unmarked car at Taft Corners Mobil gas station at approximately 11 p.m., admitted to having sexual contact with the girl, who is now 10 years old, multiple times over the past two to three years, court records say. Hulett said the last time he and the young girl had had sex was in April.

Hulett is a friend of the young girl’s parents and often stayed over at their house. The girl’s father told police that they frequently found Hulett sleeping in the same bed with the girl in the morning. The parents also told police that Hulett often babysat the girl and was in the house alone with her.

In an affidavit, Detective Sgt. Bruce Bovat, director of CUSI, said he had told the girl’s father how upset he would have been to find a man sleeping in the same bed with his daughter. The father responded that he had thought she could handle it.

The Observer is withholding the names of the parents to protect the identity of the girl.

The girl never disclosed any inappropriate touching with police when she was interviewed. However, she did confide in a cousin that she was having a sexual relationship with Hulett, court documents say. She also told the cousin that she loves Hulett and did not want to see him get in trouble, pleading with the cousin not to tell anyone, according to the court records.

During his interview, Bovat asked Hulett what he would say to the young girl.

“I’m very sorry and it will never happen again,” he told Bovat, according the court documents. “I’m sorry if I led you to think something that wasn’t real.”

Police are investigating allegations that another man sexually assaulting the girl. In 2003, CUSI investigated a sexual abuse case involving the girl, Hulett and the other man, but no probable cause was found to arrest either man.

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Old Brick Café to open next year

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

The rush on new restaurants in Williston over the past couple of years has bypassed the village. That apparently is about to change.

The Development Review Board last week approved plans for the restaurant called the Old Brick Café. The restaurant is scheduled to open January in a two-story historic home on Williston Road across from Town Hall.

The owner, Williston resident David Herskowitz, plans to initially serve breakfast and lunch. He has yet to decide on the menu, though he vows it differ from the offerings of chain restaurants clustered around Taft Corners. The cook he hires will help determine what will be served.

"We’re still waiting to hire a food person," he said. "We’ll decide then what’s on the menu and what’s reasonable." He is also considering bread and other items baked on the premises.

Herskowitz said he will spend between $180,000 and $200,000 renovating the 160-year-old home. Workers have already cleared trees from the back of the building to make room for parking and demolished the ell that linked a small barn to the house. The project has won federal approval as an historic renovation, making Herskowitz eligible for tax credits.

The bulk of the renovations will take place in the rear of the building. A patio and a new entrance will be built. A reconstructed ell will house the kitchen.

He plans to make only minor changes to the building’s interior to adapt is for a restaurant, moving a couple of walls and constructing new bathrooms.

In approving the eatery, the Development Review Board placed a handful of restrictions on its operation. The restaurant can be open only for breakfast and lunch, said Williston zoning administrator Scott Gustin. As part of the approval, Herskowitz was required to place landscaping on the side of the house to shield the parking lot from adjacent buildings.

The front of the home, which dates back to 1842 and contains just over 1,000 square feet of space, will remain unchanged except for a fresh coat of paint. The restaurant will seat 50 diners inside and 15 on the outdoors patio.

Parking is tight at the site, with room for just 17 cars. Herskowitz was granted an easement that allows cars to use the town-owned lot near Williston Central School and Community Park.

Herskowitz still needs to obtain a sewer allocation before he can open the restaurant. There is sewer capacity available for such commercial uses, said Public Works Director Neil Boyden.

Herskowitz is new to the restaurant business. But he does have experience with historic renovations. He owns a renovated youth hostel in Philadelphia’s historic district.

The village has been without a restaurant since Bread & Beyond closed in 2001. Since then, many village residents have hoped for a replacement that would give them someplace to eat closer than Taft Corners.

Williston has added numerous restaurants over the past three years, all clustered around Taft Corners. Most of them have been franchise operations, including Chili’s Grill & Bar, 99 Restaurant and Ponderosa Steakhouse. Locally owned eateries have also opened, among them Belle’s Café and Nicco’s Cuchino.

If business is good at the Old Brick Café, Herskowitz said he would consider expanding its hours and serving dinner. Gustin said the café would need approval to amend the existing permit to increase its hours of operation.

"If things go really well, our goal two or three years down the line is to serve dinner on Thursday, Friday and Saturday," Herskowitz said.

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Snafu forces public hearing on zoning revisions

By Tom Gresham
Observer staff

An apparent bureaucratic snafu eliminated a proposed landfill as an acceptable use in the agricultural/rural residential zoning district, but town officials are moving to correct the mistake.

Williston Town Planner Lee Nellis said the “C” that would indicate landfills and transfer stations are conditional uses in the district is missing from the town’s zoning table. Nellis said he initially wondered if the absence of the “C” was a typo, but he did not find any evidence that it was an accidental omission.

Therefore, the town will go through a public process of revising the table.

“It appears to have been an inadvertent thing and we’re just trying to correct it,” Nellis said. “We have to go through the process and make sure there are no questions about it. It’s just a formality — at least from the town’s point of view.”

Last week, the Selectboard agreed to schedule a public hearing on the proposed zoning changes. The hearing will be held Monday, June 6 at 7:30 p.m. during a Selectboard meeting.

In addition to the missing “C” for landfills and transfer stations, there is no “C” alongside the line for recycling centers in the district.

The Chittenden Solid Waste District currently has a transfer station on Redmond Road that accepts recycling in the agricultural-rural district. Waste Systems International operates the facility. CSWD has plans to replace the transfer station with a landfill in the same vicinity sometime in 2008. In addition, Waste Systems International operates a recycling center for CSWD at the site.

The transfer station and recycling center are now characterized as non-conforming uses because of the apparently accidental change in the zoning table.

The Selectboard revised the town’s zoning ordinance early in 2004. The change to the zoning tables removing landfills, transfer stations and recycling centers as acceptable uses appears to have been made back then.

The town had little motivation to remove the operations as acceptable uses. The removal violates the town’s host town agreement with CSWD. The town receives compensation for the refuse deposited at the facilities.

Selectboard member Jeff Fehrs said he believes he remembers talking about the proposed landfill during the zoning ordinance discussions. He thought the Selectboard had included the landfill as a conditional use.

The Planning Commission held a public hearing on the proposed changes on April 19. The hearing lasted from 7:31 p.m. to 7:32 p.m., according to minutes of the meeting. Only Richard Hamlin and Tony Barbagallo, a representative of Chittenden Solid Waste District, were in attendance. Both supported the change.

“It was a pretty sleepy event,” Nellis said.

Fehrs emphasized that his interest in changing the zoning regulations to allow for landfills and similar uses was not because a landfill was proposed for the district, but because it fits with the comprehensive town plan.

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By Tom Gresham
Observer staff

The abandoned buildings that rest conspicuously alongside U.S. Route 2 at Mahan Farm will be taken down in the next six months to make room for a new fire and rescue facility. However, a town official hopes the buildings can be removed rather than demolished.

Public Works Director Neil Boyden said he has begun to investigate whether someone might be interested in preserving the buildings, which include a house, one storage building, one barn and two silos.

Boyden said, in the past month, he has received two serious inquiries about the long red barn, including one informal offer for acquiring the building. Boyden said the barn might be the best candidate for restoration. He does not expect the silos, for instance, to draw much interest.

“We’re hoping to get some good proposals for removing at least the red barn,” Boyden said. “We think that definitely still has some value to it. We’d like for everything to be saved.”

Boyden said salvaging the buildings has some appeal from the standpoint of not wasting the structures. Preserving the buildings, which total 20,000 square feet, could also prove less expensive than demolition, Boyden said. The town has $90,000 budgeted for the removal of the structures — $25,000 for environmental clean up and $65,000 for demolition and removal.

Boyden said he hopes finding other uses for the buildings would cut into the costs, though he acknowledged: “There’s a whole lot to getting rid of buildings. It’s kind of new territory for myself and my staff.”

Second Harvest Antique Lumbers, a Jeffersonville business, plans to take a look at the buildings. John Wilson of Second Harvest said he had not yet seen the Mahan Farm facilities, but said complete restoration is the No. 1 goal of salvage operations.

“The goal is to be able to put it together just like it was,” said Wilson, who seemed particularly interested in the house. “Every piece can be saved sometimes.”

Wilson said even when an entire building cannot be put back together, different parts of buildings are often salvageable and useful. For instance, Wilson said Second Harvest occasionally sells floor planks to a California business that uses them for the construction of movie sets.

It is unclear whether the long red barn lends itself to the alternate uses — house, artist studio, restaurant — into which abandoned barns are occasionally transformed. It is metal and the newest of all of the structures on the site, so it does not carry the vintage cachet. Its most likely future use would be the same as its former and current uses — as a barn or storage building.

The Mahan Farm buildings are one of four sets of abandoned buildings close to U.S. Route 2 between Taft Corners and the village. Other boarded buildings are located at the Pecor farm, which is owned by Ray and Jeanie Pecor; the Goodrich farm, which is owned by the Snyder Companies; and the Chase property, which is owned by Al Senecal.

Boyden does not believe the barn and silos lend any rural charm to the drive into the village.

“It’s become a pretty good eyesore,” Boyden said. “It continues to deteriorate and get in worse shape. And there’s some liability with it, too.”

Boyden said some vandalism had occurred at the property over the years.

The town received the Mahan Farm property from the developers of Maple Tree Place. The property was tagged to serve as a wooded buffer between the development of Taft Corners and the village. The site of the buildings was deemed ideal for the new fire and rescue facility.

Boyden said he believes it will take between four and five weeks to prepare the site for construction of the fire and rescue building. Boyden said Town Manager Rick McGuire has given him a Nov. 1 deadline to have the site cleared for construction.

One challenge will be removing the items currently housed in the long red barn. The town, the Williston School District and the state Agency of Transportation each use the building for storage, and, at least in the town’s case, there is no obvious place to put its equipment.

Boyden said the town will discard some items, but others, like tractors and the library’s bookmobile, will need to find new homes.

“That’s going to be an issue for us,” Boyden said.

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