Williston Observer

By Kim Howard
Observer staff

Williston voters next month will face a school budget that’s $287,000 leaner than the budget they defeated last month.

The Williston School Board last Thursday approved a $15.69 million budget, a 4.88 percent increase over the current year’s school budget. The board will hold a public hearing on Thursday, May 3 at 7 p.m. at Williston Central School, five days before the May 8 vote, as required by law.

Due to the budget cuts, and an anticipated change by the Legislature in the state base tax rate, home-
owners can expect to see school property taxes go up a little more than 2.5 percent if the budget passes. The owner of a $300,000 home, for example, can expect a tax bill about $129 higher than the current year, before any adjustments for income sensitivity. That’s about half the increase taxpayers would have seen had the March proposal passed.

Before the cuts were made, some parents had asked the School Board to consider putting the same budget before voters next month. The School Board said that was not what the voters wanted given the margin by which the budget lost – 192 votes.

Parent reactions

Parents’ reactions to the cuts have been mixed.

“I think it was a good budget the first time,” said parent Jan Mazzone, who attended the last three weeks of budget meetings. “I don’t think it’s a better budget, but I think it’s the best budget they could come up with under the circumstances.”

Linda Longenbach, who also attended the recent meetings, said she thought the cuts were “balanced and measured.” Whether the cuts are enough to garner more than 50 percent of the vote, Longenbach said she doesn’t “have a pulse” on that.

What is important, she said, is the board’s stated commitment to look at four areas for future potential savings: the hot lunch program, sports programs, transportation, and class configuration.

Parent Dave Martel, who did not attend the budget meetings, said he does not want the stress of any additional taxes.

“To be honest with you, I don’t think I’m getting my money’s worth for our taxes as it is,” he said.

Parent Ryan Press, who attended the budget meetings, also has heard concern about increasing taxes, and she said she will not support the budget May 8.

“I feel that Williston is somewhat like Stepford in that we all smile and we nod and we all agree on everything,” Press said, referring to a fictional town in which wives are robotically submissive. “But I think there’s an underlying current of people who don’t agree but they don’t say that because they’re so afraid of being picked out or being singled out as ‘not one of us.’”

The cuts

Of the roughly $287,000 in cuts made, 37 percent were made in special education services. In the new budget, however, special education still will see about a $250,000 increase.

“I wouldn’t be putting these cuts out there professionally if I didn’t think we could live with them,” said Carter Smith, who oversees special education services for Williston schools. “I don’t like them, but I think we can live with them.”

The board did fund increases in supplies for foreign languages, design and technology classes and guidance and enrichment activities, and expanded computer technology staff by one hour a week. Those items totaled about $7,000.

An instructor for advanced math students will likely come from a staff member in the supervisory union, so while the 10-percent time position was not funded, student needs in this area will be met, District Principal Walter Nardelli said.

Also funded are a half-time social worker and a half-time one-on-one reading specialist to assist students struggling with reading. Those positions will be funded through federal Medicaid money.

Voluntary changes in personnel – retirements, leaves of absence or hour reductions – yielded roughly $89,000 in savings. The literacy coordinator will be reduced from an 80-percent time position to a 60-percent time position, and will refocus her efforts on first through fourth graders. Williston Central School Principal Jacqueline Parks, who has a background in literacy, will assume responsibility for fifth through eighth graders in this area.

Other cuts included elimination of the band bus serving 15-20 students in the mornings, a kindergarten bus run, and a regular school bus run. Student classroom supplies were reduced by $10 per student, leaving $80 per student in funds.

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Downsized plan finds support, opposition

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

After hearing sometimes emotional testimony – both pro and con – the Development Review Board last week approved conceptual plans for a huge new church in Williston.

Essex Alliance Church seeks to build a 141,500-square-foot complex on 54 acres adjacent to residential neighborhoods on Vermont 2A between Taft Corners and Mountain View Road. The church has outgrown its current facility on Old Stage Road in Essex.

The church’s plans had been scaled back after the board concluded at an earlier hearing that the initial 169,000-square-foot proposal was simply too big. The new plan converted the original single structure into five smaller buildings linked by enclosed walkways.

But some neighbors who spoke at last week’s meeting said the complex was still out of scale with the surrounding area. Many of them complained that it would snarl traffic along heavily traveled Route 2A.

“It’s not the church we are against, let’s be very clear,” said Joachim Poetzsch, who lives in the Meadow Run subdivision near the site. “It is the enormity of the project.”

“I think it’s misplaced in this location,” said Carol Tandy, who also lives in Meadow Run. “I think with the scale of it, it would be nice out in the country.”

That remark drew a response from Rand Larson, who attends Essex Alliance Church and owns Vermont Eye Laser in Williston with his wife, Juli.

“Churches don’t belong in the country,” he said. “Churches belong where they can minister to people.”

Larson was among the many Essex Alliance churchgoers who crowded into the meeting room at Williston Town Hall. About 50 people in all attended the March 27 session, filling all seats and spilling into the hallway.

The Rev. Scott Slocum, senior pastor at the church, said in an interview that he informed parishioners about the meeting during Sunday services. He said those interested in going were given a chance to learn more about the project during a post-service meeting.

Some churchgoers spoke passionately about how the Essex Alliance had helped them.

“I have been going to Essex Alliance Church, and I have found a home,” said Fran Landis, who lives on Forest Run Road in Williston. “It would be such a blessing to have this church in my town.”

Landis said in an interview that when she was growing up the local church was one of the few places for teens to gather. She said the church’s extensive facilities would provide a similar benefit for Williston’s youth.

The church complex would include athletic fields and a recreation path, which would be open to the general public.

Williston resident Craig Revilla said he has attended Essex Alliance Church for 26 years. He said the church has helped his family and the community as a whole.

“I’m just looking forward to what the church can do for the people in my town,” he said.

But other residents living near the site said they were weary of the ever-increasing traffic on 2A, which makes it difficult to enter and exit their streets and driveways. They worried the church would only make things worse.

“Traffic is a major concern for us,” said Robert Coon, president of the homeowners’ association in Meadow Run. “This probably won’t increase traffic at peak hours. It will just extend it to other times.”
Mark Smith of Resource Systems Group, a traffic engineering firm hired by the church, said a previous study showed that weekend traffic along Vermont 2A on Sundays was light compared to weekdays. He said peak traffic occurs between noon and 1 p.m., after church services are completed.

Though scaled back, the church would still be by far the largest in Williston. An amphitheater would seat 1,800 worshippers. The complex would include a cafe, a children’s area and church offices. There would be parking for 600 vehicles.

In granting conceptual approval, the board required the church to conduct a complete traffic study. Another condition requires the church to include 20 units of housing.

That requirement was driven by the town’s application for growth center status. D.K. Johnston, the town’s zoning administrator, told the board that half of all future development within the growth center, an area that would include the church, must be housing.

Growth center status could also help the church because it eases Act 250 requirements.

The church project must undergo two more rounds of review – preliminary and final – by the Development Review Board. As of Tuesday, the town had yet to schedule the next hearing on the project.

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By Kim Howard
Observer staff

School board members and some voters expressed surprise last month when the Williston School District budget failed for only the second Town Meeting Day vote in at least a generation. Yet a closer look at Williston’s voting history shows, on the whole, a voting community largely split over school spending.

Secret balloting for town and school budgets began in Williston in 2001. With the exception of 2004, the year in which taxpayers saw revisions to the Act 60 state education funding law, the margins by which the local school budget has passed have not been enormous.

In the last seven years, Williston has voted 10 times on the school budget, including four times in 2003. In Vermont that year a record number of communities voted down school budgets, in part a symbolic vote of disdain for Act 60. Williston was no exception. While the second budget barely passed in April (a margin of 21 votes), some voters petitioned for a third vote. The May re-vote failed. The June vote – a 2.8 percent budget increase, but a drop in per-pupil spending given rising enrollment – passed by a healthy margin.

In half of Williston’s last 10 school budget votes (2001, 2002, April 2003, 2005 and 2006) the passing margin has been less than 100 people. In 2005 the budget passed by a mere 12 votes; last year the budget carried by 69 votes.

No comparisons can be made with Champlain Valley Union High School budget since votes among member towns – Charlotte, Hinesburg, Shelburne and Williston – are co-mingled.

As support for the Williston school budget has largely danced between the 45 and 55 percent marks, support for the town budget has been diminishing.

In 2001, the first year of secret balloting in Williston, roughly 70 percent of voters supported the budget. By 2005, voters supporting the budget had dwindled to just over 55 percent. The low mark was this year in which 53 percent of voters passed the town budget.

The anomaly is 2004, a year in which voters overwhelmingly supported all budget items, including a $2.6 million sidewalk bond. That year 77 percent of voters supported the town budget.

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By Kim Howard
Observer staff

A Williston Central School investigation of a college student teaching intern found that his alleged actions do not meet the state’s legal definition of sexual harassment, according to a report summarizing the investigation.

In the school’s report, the intern denied any improper conduct, though the report does not conclude whether the alleged actions occurred. The intern was “permanently removed” from his assignment, the report says.

The Williston Observer is not naming the intern since the investigation concluded his alleged actions did not meet the legal definition of sexual harassment. The report included no names and listed the intern as “A-1.”

“While A-1’s [alleged] conduct obviously made some of the girls uncomfortable, the allegations do not meet the definition of harassment under the statute,” the report reads.

Under Vermont law, someone’s conduct constitutes sexual harassment only if either “submission to that conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of a student’s education” or if “submission or rejection of such conduct by a student is used as a component of the basis for decisions affecting that student.” The report says there was “absolutely no evidence anywhere” of the intern’s alleged conduct matching those criteria.

On March 26, five students brought complaints about the University of Vermont intern to school administrators. One of the complaints, for example, was that the intern massaged a girl’s shoulders and snapped the front of her bra strap, the report says. The report indicates five students expressed discomfort with the intern.

The intern said that while he touched one complainant on the outside of the arms and shoulders, he did not “make contact with bra strap,” the report says.

“He denied ever touching a student, but allowed that there are ‘tight quarters’ in the classroom and that students may walk into him occasionally,” the report says.

None of the employees or additional students interviewed as part of the investigation expressed concern about the intern’s conduct.

Jeff Wakefield, assistant director of communications for the University of Vermont, said university representatives are unable to comment on any action that has or has not been taken in a case like this because doing so would be a violation of federal privacy laws.

Chittenden South Supervisory Union Superintendent Elaine Pinckney left for vacation shortly after completing the report and could not be reached for comment.

CSSU Chief Executive Officer Bob Mason, who was not part of the investigating team, said that the sexual harassment statute is not the only avenue for addressing alleged inappropriate behavior by school employees. Mason emphasized he was speaking generally about school employees, and not specifically about the Williston intern.

Teachers’ contracts include procedures for dealing with inappropriate professional behavior, Mason said. For non-union employees, the employee handbook outlines expectations of professional behavior and the process by which compromises of those expectations are to be investigated. Employee training includes, Mason said, distinctions between what the “giver” and “receiver” of touch may find comfortable.

“What’s more important is the receiver,” Mason said. “If the receiver finds it uncomfortable, difficult, unsettling, then it’s uncomfortable, unsettling behavior.”

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By Kim Howard
Observer staff

When Tom Spencer approached the register at Dunkin’ Donuts last Friday morning, manager Christine Jimmo welcomed him by name.

“Tom, your usual?” Jimmo asked him.

“Yep,” Spencer responded. Every day, even when there’s snow like on this April morning, he orders an iced coffee, he said.

When Scott Carter reached the register, Jimmo knew he’d want a cinnamon raisin bagel, not toasted. Carter said he goes to Dunkin’ Donuts only a couple of times a month.

“I think she remembers a lot of people,” Carter said as he left the store.

After a decade serving many residents and local business people their morning coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Simon’s Plaza on U.S. Route 2, Jimmo completed her last day of work on Friday.

“I’m shocked that she’s leaving,” customer Kim Wieck said when she found out “Chris,” as many customers call her, was moving on to a new job. “I don’t know who can follow her. She knows her customers, that’s for sure.”

The line for coffee was unrelenting from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. last Friday, and country music from WOKO 98.9 hummed out of the radio in the background. While some customers grabbed their goods and headed out without comment, a number of them chatted with Jimmo. As various customers left, Jimmo would tell a reporter that the last customer was a state trooper, or that another was a social worker. She didn’t know the names of all of the regulars, but she seemed to know about their lives. She said some of them know about hers, too.

Jimmo was born in Middlebury and raised in Burlington. She’s been married 35 years and has nine children and more than 30 grandchildren. She shy about her age of 65.

“I don’t hide my age from anybody,” she said. “You can hide it all you want, but it don’t change it.”

In her free time, she likes shopping, bingo, taking care of a two-year-old grandson, and attending tractor pulls with her husband. Boston Kreme doughnuts are her favorite; jelly is a close second. She’s not a fan of flavored coffee.

Jimmo was the first employee at the Williston Dunkin’ Donuts when it opened in March 1997, and Jimmo said she’s been manager there for eight years.

As manager, she had to work shifts if an employee didn’t show. Sometimes that meant she’d have as many as five or six weeks without a day off, she said. It was time to move on, so she took a new job with Thomson Prometric, a testing and assessment business in Blair Park.

“I probably would have moved on a long time ago, but I had a lot of really, really nice customers,” Jimmo said.

Customer Jon Ebel, who said he has come for coffee “every morning” since Jimmo started working there, asked Jimmo upon reaching the register Friday morning if she’d already given her employers notice of her impending departure.

“I’m going to miss my customers,” Jimmo told him.

“They’re going to miss you,” he responded.

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