Williston Observer

By Kim Howard
Observer staff

The box Scott Lowe takes from his office closet contains a rarity: an owner’s manual for a Ford Tri-Motor aircraft.

“It’s my pride and joy,” the Richmond resident said.

Ford Motor Co. made the Tri-Motor in the 1920s and 1930s. About 200 of the planes were built; only 500 of the manuals were printed, Lowe said.

If Ford Motor Co. was in Vermont, the manual is the kind of artifact Lowe (pronounced “Lau”) could archive in his proposed new digital museum called Local History Online. Once it’s live, the Web site www.mylocalhistory.org will list Vermont towns, villages and cities. A visitor to the site will be able to click on a location, Lowe hopes, and be able to see everything from photographs and postcards to video and audio archives. Lowe will unveil his digital museum concept this Sunday at the Richmond Historical Society annual meeting and winter program.

A self-identified 11th generation American, Lowe, 48, said history has been a big part of his identity and a major hobby since he was a teenager.

“It is my intention with this digital museum project to spend the rest of my life doing this kind of archiving,” he said.

Lowe has not only the passion but the skills to do so. A professional Web designer, Lowe already has experience putting together a range of Web sites, including those with a historical bent. He created a Web site, for example, in tribute to the Ford Tri-Motor.

The idea of an online local history archive came after volunteering to create the Williston Historical Society Web site a little more than two years ago. Lowe and his family had just moved to Vermont from California, and Lowe thought the project would help him meet people.

“It was then I realized how lively the historical community is in Vermont,” Lowe said.

Lowe’s primary purpose in creating the nonprofit archive is to assist local historical societies in archiving private collections of artifacts otherwise not easily accessible to the public. He said he’ll ensure private collectors maintain control over their collections. Digital images of photographs, for example, will be watermarked or otherwise copy-protected.

Vermont Historical Society Executive Director Kevin Graffagnino said Lowe’s proposal has “wonderful potential for the state of Vermont and our state local history.”

Most of the 196 local historical societies and museums in Vermont are “collecting organizations,” Graffagnino said. “Most of them have things that could benefit from digitizing – documents, photographs, postcards and the like.”

Yet, most also have small staffs or a small volunteer base, so Lowe’s technological expertise could be quite useful to them, Graffagnino said.

“If Scott can bring this to fruition, this will be a service that will be useful to lots and lots of organizations in Vermont,” Graffagnino said. “It will strengthen the collection and accessibility of those collections.”

It could be of great benefit to people outside Vermont, too, according to Richard Allen, co-editor of the Essex Community Historical Society newsletter and a teacher in Williston.

“There are 101 reasons why someone might want to dig into something from out of state,” Allen said. From home genealogy projects to academic study about immigration and settlement patterns, Allen said it isn’t unusual for his organization to get requests from out of town. A Web archive would save money for researchers who otherwise would need to travel to see the artifacts.

Allen said reviewing digital artifacts is not quite as romantic as going to “the musty, dusty shelves of the library and finding that one document or postcard that’s going to break your research” open. However, upon learning of Lowe’s project he said he would see it as “tremendously valuable.”

“(Digital) is so much the way that stuff is going now,” he said.

Lowe said his ability to start working with private collections and other historical societies is about a year away. First he must finish securing Local History Online’s nonprofit status, and he needs to firmly establish a template, which he will do with the Richmond Historical Society. Finding funding for the long-term viability of the project will come in time.

He doesn’t seem the least bit worried about the project’s future. He said his deepest wish is that someday the site would expand to include other states’ local histories.

“I get nothing but enthusiasm, pure enthusiasm from everybody I talk to about this,” Lowe said. “There’s so much about the present and so much about us that’s alive in history. And that’s ultimately what I want to convey about this project.”

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Lack of competition ‘disconcerting’

By Kim Howard
Observer staff

Despite town efforts this year to increase interest in public service, Williston Town Meeting Day ballots will sport not a single contested race.

Of the 16 elected public service openings to be decided by voters on March 6, ten positions have only one candidate and six positions have none.

Town Manager Rick McGuire said it was “disconcerting” to hear that.

McGuire said the town’s first-ever public service job fair held two weeks ago is a “first step” to increasing interest in running for town government. Previous board members have told McGuire they got involved because someone asked them to, he said.

That was the case with newcomer Laura Gigliotti who is running to replace outgoing Williston School Board member Andy Bishop for a two-year term.

Running for School Board, Gigliotti said, “was something on my own I probably wouldn’t have done.” She was encouraged to consider it, and after doing some research decided she was interested in the position. Gigliotti has a daughter in second grade and a son not yet in kindergarten.

Keith Roy, a helicopter pilot and flight instructor for the Vermont Army National Guard, is running for a three-year term on the Williston School Board, replacing long-time board member Marty Sundby.

“Running for School Board is a way to stay involved in the community and stay involved in my children’s school environment,” said Roy, who has a first and second grader.

No one submitted petitions for lister, cemetery commissioner, trustee of public funds, town agent or town grand juror. In November, Williston voters agreed to eliminate the latter three positions by amending the town charter, but the amendments do not take effect until affirmed by the state Legislature. The Selectboard may appoint candidates to open town positions.

McGuire said he believes that in the short term there is not a “tremendous effect” when open offices have just one candidate.

“Long-term, that’s not good,” McGuire said. “The town relies on volunteers to help guide policies and the future of the town. Without that guidance, most likely people may become dissatisfied with the way things are going; and then they may get involved.”

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By Kim Howard
Observer staff

The Chittenden Solid Waste District last week ended talks with the Town of Williston about a buyout that could have cost at least $76 million. The buyout, if it had proceeded, would have released the town from an agreement to host a proposed regional landfill.

“It’s a two-party discussion and when one party says they don’t want to talk anymore you don’t have a whole lot of choice,” Williston Town Manager Rick McGuire said. “…That doesn’t mean it’s the end of discussions period, it just means it’s the end of discussions on this buyout option.”

Solid waste district Manager Tom Moreau said it was out of respect for Williston – so as not to string town officials along – that the buyout talks were halted.

“We don’t think this is the best time (to continue the discussion),” Moreau said. “There’s a lot more work to do. We don’t know what the alternatives would be.”

Moreau said the district continues to look at options for reducing the waste stream – from expanding the kinds of recyclables it will accept (plastics Numbers 3-7 are expected to be accepted within the next year) to increasing the amount of organic matter collected.

“There’s a point of diminishing returns,” Moreau said. “There’s a point where if you remove enough, it’s no longer economically viable to build a landfill.”

As research work continues, Moreau said, all alternatives will be considered.

“If the landfill is still a good idea, we’re going to go through with that,” he said. “If the landfill no longer is a good idea, then I don’t think it’s Williston’s responsibility to buy the district out.” Moreau emphasized that is his personal opinion, not necessarily the opinion of the board’s.

Unofficial minutes of the Jan. 24 solid waste district board meeting indicate that Commissioner Paul Stabler of South Burlington said the buyout discussion was done as a “courtesy.”

“There are no viable alternatives to a landfill at this point in time and it is ethically responsible to take care of our own (Chittenden County) trash,” the minutes say Stabler indicated. The parenthetical statement appears in the minutes.

The board did not take a formal vote and nine commissioners were present, Moreau said. According to the District’s Web site, three seats on the 18-member board are vacant.

Moreau said if a buyout was further considered, the solid waste district would not have required Williston to pay back the $1 million it was paid in the early 1990s as compensation for signing the Host Town Agreement. A landfill known as “Phase 3,” run in the early-to-mid 1990s, had an impact on Williston, Moreau said. “We don’t expect that money back.”

Still, the cost of a buyout could have been prohibitive. In a Jan. 19 memo to the Board of Commissioners, Moreau outlined four potential buyout costs. The district’s costs since the host town agreement was signed amounted to over $4.3 million. Hinesburg Sand and Gravel, the business in a legal battle over the land, might require reimbursement for legal expenses, an amount the business had not yet shared with district officials. The proposed landfill is estimated to save the district a net of $72 million over the current practice of transferring waste to the two private landfills. And then there are inflation costs.

In October, McGuire wrote a letter formally requesting talks with the solid waste district about buying out of the “Host Town Agreement.” Williston voters in 1992 approved the sale of town land to the solid waste district and the agreement to host a future regional landfill. Solid waste district officials have said 2011 is the earliest the landfill would open, in part due to an ongoing lawsuit over land with Hinesburg Sand and Gravel. Moreau said he expects a conceptual design for the landfill will be available for public comment in April.

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Thousands sign up for Front Porch Forum

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

Many have remarked on the increasing social isolation of Americans. The Internet is sometimes blamed, with critics saying it encourages interaction among far-flung strangers while reducing time spent with next-store neighbors.

But a free online service by Burlington resident Michael Wood-Lewis could turn that conventional wisdom about the Internet on its head.

Front Porch Forum (www.frontporchforum.com) is an e-mail newsletter that connects neighbors in Williston and throughout Chittenden County. Those who sign up receive regular messages containing recent posts only from neighbors. The messages can be anything from someone trying to find a car seat for their child to commentary on a neighborhood controversy.

“Our goal is that people feel like they know their neighbors,” Wood-Lewis said.

Wood-Lewis moved with his wife, Valerie, from Washington, D.C. to the Five Sisters neighborhood in Burlington several years ago. After learning he had missed a block party, he wondered how he could improve communication and foster friendships in his neighborhood.

“We were having a heck of a time meeting our neighbors,” he said. “It’s not that it was an unfriendly place – quite the opposite. It’s just that people were busy and on the run.”

So he decided to start a neighborhood e-mail list. Now more than 90 percent of the 350 households in Five Sisters subscribe.

The effort was so successful that he decided to launch Front Porch Forum last year, a Web site that allows people in other towns like Williston to sign up. Now more than 130 neighborhood forums cover every address in the county.

Sitting in his sunny kitchen last week, Wood-Lewis displayed on his laptop computer maps showing the location of each forum. Boundaries were outlined in red and each had a little bubble containing the number of members.

Roughly 3,300 households have signed up, about 7 percent of the county, Wood-Lewis said. In Burlington, some 15 percent of households are members.

In Williston and other outlying towns, the numbers are smaller, at least so far. Only about 9 percent of households in Williston have subscribed.

Brennan Woods, the town’s largest subdivision, is the only neighborhood with large numbers. About 85 percent of the households there are signed up.

That high percentage was achieved thanks to the Brennan Woods Homeowner’s Association, which sent out a group e-mail to all residents saying they would be signed up to Front Porch Forum unless they opted out. No one did.

“Instant critical mass was achieved,” Wood-Lewis said, noting that he is willing to work with other homeowner associations to spur sign-ups.

Lisa Roy, treasurer of the Brennan Woods Homeowner’s Association, said the neighborhood was a good candidate for Front Porch Forum because the vast majority of residents use e-mail. She said the service supplements newsletters sent out by the association.

The forum, which started in the fall, has seen limited activity to date. “My guess is that most people read them, but there’s not a lot of people posting yet,” Roy said.

However, the forum has served as a neighborhood watch, with a post telling people to be on the lookout for teenagers ringing doorbells, Roy said. The Williston Police Department has been asked to use the forum to notify residents about break-ins or other crimes in the neighborhood.

Brennan Woods resident Marty Bonneau submitted a post asking for advice on deep-frying turkey and another one asking for help with a bottle drive.

“I really see it as beneficial because a lot of people are online here,” said Bonneau, who is vice president of the homeowner’s association. “At least for the little things, it’s getting more information out there than usual.”

Front Porch Forum contrasts with other online services such as MySpace because it is narrowly tailored to specific neighborhoods. Only residents can access their neighborhood’s forum, and can send messages only to the group as a whole. All posts are periodically condensed into a single e-mail message and sent to forum members, avoiding a flooded in-box.

Also contributing to the community feel is the fact that all posters are identified by name, street and e-mail address. That helps keep inappropriate messages to a minimum, Wood-Lewis said. He said he has only removed a couple of the thousands of messages posted since the service started.

A typical message falls into the “my cat is lost” category, which includes people looking for help from neighbors in finding some item or service, Wood-Lewis said. But more importantly that type of interaction leads to people getting to know each other and sometimes meeting in person.

“When these things start working, you’re dealing with your neighbors,” he said. “Neighbor-to-neighbor connections grow and multiply.”

How much the venture will grow remains an open question. Wood-Lewis, who previously worked as the executive director for a regional trade association, said running Front Porch Forum has become a full-time job. The only revenue so far has been $50 from a couple of Google advertisements.

But he hopes to sell more ads in the future, perhaps to small businesses that can’t afford the rates charged by large publications but want to target specific neighborhoods.

In the meantime, Wood-Lewis said he is excited about building a sense of community throughout Chittenden County – one e-mail at a time.

“I see it as having a huge potential to spread,” he said.

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Thousands of flags show U.S. death toll

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

It’s a striking but mysterious sight: thousands of yellow utility flags planted in a snow-covered field next to a weathered barn on North Williston Road.

The display is easily visible to the thousands of motorists traveling the stretch just north of Mountain View Road each day. But what are the tiny flags, which are usually used to mark gas lines, doing there? And why so many?

Pat Brown, who lives in the adjacent farmhouse and owns the property, has the answers.

There are 3,066 flags, he explained, one to mark each American killed in the Iraq war. (The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that the number had risen to 3,086.)

“I put them there because I didn’t think the media were reminding people often enough that people are dying every day,” he said.

Brown said he deliberately omitted obvious indications of the flags’ purpose because he wanted viewers to draw their own conclusions.

“I purposely didn’t put any sign out because I just wanted people to think,” he said.

Brown’s views on the war are as opaque as his display.

“I’d rather not say,” he said. “I put it out there because the war is an interesting issue. I don’t think the media are doing enough to teach us about what is going on.”

The flags have drawn reactions from a few passing motorists. Brown said some have stopped to ask about the flags’ purpose. One person driving a military vehicle snapped photographs.

Jericho resident Jill Cronkrite-Potvin sent an e-mail to the Observer asking about the flags, which she passes during her commute to South Burlington. She correctly guessed their purpose but wondered if the newspaper knew anything about the display.

In a follow-up e-mail, she said she first noticed the flags in the early fall.

“I remember thinking that if that is what they symbolized, there would be more every day,” she wrote. “The flags have been a reminder to me of my own father’s service to our country in the Navy during WWII, as well as the sacrifice of more recent veterans and their families.”

Brown, 55, is director of student life at the University of Vermont. He is married to Amy Huntington, a children’s book author. The couple have two grown children.

Huntington said the flags, purchased on the Internet for a couple of hundred dollars, were her husband’s idea. She said she supports the display and its thought-provoking nature.

“It’s so easy to forget (the death toll),” she said. “On the news, you get a little blip that so many people died in Iraq. It’s not an anti-war thing so much as you want people to remember what it’s all about.”

Polls show that a majority of Americans oppose the war. Protesters numbering in the tens of thousands marched to the U.S. Capitol on Saturday. Hundreds of Vermonters participated.

Brown said he started displaying the flags after Thanksgiving. He has since occasionally added flags to reflect the latest death toll, most recently on Sunday.

As a college student in the 1960s, Brown said he was involved with Vietnam War protests “until they turned violent.” He said he also protested nuclear power during the 1970s.

Huntington said her husband “is the kind of person who gets fired up” about issues like the war in Iraq.

She also declined to voice her opinion about the conflict, but likened it to Vietnam.

“We remember the Vietnam War,” she said. “And now we have kids. It’s another generation and it’s happening again.”

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