Williston Observer

current building causes health problems

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

Some state workers who are now housed in a building blamed for health problems may move to Williston.

The state has been looking for new office space for about 140 Agency of Human Services employees who currently work at 1193 North Ave. in Burlington, said Steve Gold, the agency’s deputy director.

Among the potential locations is the former Rossignol building on Industrial Avenue in Williston. Agency officials say they may divide the employees between that location and other office space in Burlington.

“That (Williston) space, were it available, is definitely an option,” Gold said. “We would strongly consider moving there at least some of the staff now working on North Avenue.”

The move would be temporary while the state constructs a new building, officials say. It will address workers’ concerns that the current location is causing respiratory illnesses.

But there’s a catch with the Williston location. The building, which was shuttered following Rossignol’s merger with a California company, is located in an industrial zoning district that permits offices only as an accessory use. Town ordinance would have to be changed to allow the state’s move.

Earlier this year, Burlington architect J. Graham Goldsmith proposed converting the 144,000-square-foot building into a small business incubator. The idea is to provide inexpensive space for fledgling businesses. That proposal would also require a zoning change.

Town Planner Lee Nellis is currently rewriting Williston’s zoning ordinance, and one of the changes may allow more office use in the industrial district. Nellis said the state could wait for the rewrite or apply to have the building rezoned before the new ordinance is adopted.

The Planning Commission considered the matter on Tuesday night. Chairman David Yandell said the commission agreed in principle to alter zoning by allowing a greater proportion of office use in industrial buildings.

“We just see the need to loosen up the zoning a little bit to allow the owner more flexibility to attract tenants,” Yandell said.

Both the Planning Commission and the Selectboard must first hold public hearings before officially changing the zoning. Yandell said the commission could schedule its hearing as soon as the end of this month. The Selectboard has the final say on zoning changes.

Tom Sandretto, the state’s deputy commissioner of Buildings and General Services, said new space is needed soon to ease employees’ worries about their health. He emphasized, however, that the situation is not comparable to the case in Bennington, where a state building was shut down after workers claimed to have contracted serious illnesses.

“It’s not a sick building,” Sandretto said. “But the history is that there have been indoor air quality complaints for a number of years.”

Employees have reported sinus problems, respiratory infections and asthma, said Conor Casey, legislative coordinator for the Vermont State Employees Association.

“People in the building have gotten used to being sick,” Casey said. “It’s really a pretty bad situation.”

Dividing the state workers between Williston and Burlington could provide a workable solution for the thousands of people in Chittenden County the agency serves each year, Gold said.

The North Avenue building includes offices for the Health Department and the agency’s Family Services Division. More than half the people who use the agency’s services come from outside Burlington, Gold said.

If the state leases the Rossignol building, Gold said the agency would work with the Chittenden County Transportation Authority to smooth bus service. Though there is a stop in front of the building, riders coming from Burlington must transfer buses to reach Williston.

It would take at least two years to construct a new office building for the employees, Gold said. But the state wants to find an interim home for the employees as soon as possible. If it takes several months to get a zoning change in Williston, he said the state may have to look elsewhere.

“I think the hope is to get settled in a new place sometime this summer,” Gold said. “We can’t make employees wait much longer.”

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Some don’t want super-sized paths in their yards

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

In 2004, Williston voters resoundingly approved a $2.6 million bond to pay for new sidewalks. The bond, passed by nearly a 2-1 margin, was supposed to speed construction, allowing the sidewalks to be finished within three to five years instead of decades.

But now, more than three years later, only a piece of one sidewalk has been completed. The delay is mainly due to residents’ reluctance to allow the walks to run through their front yards.

“We’ve got right of way issues with every sidewalk in town,” said Williston Public Works Director Neil Boyden. “We’ve come up against a fair amount of resistance in some areas.”

In at least one case, there has been barely any progress at all. On Mountain View Road, just two of roughly 43 property owners have granted easements for a sidewalk, Boyden said.

It’s not that the town hasn’t tried. Boyden said every single property owner along each sidewalk route has been contacted, some repeatedly.

In addition to Mountain View Road, sidewalks are planned on U.S. Route 2, on Vermont Route 2A, near the Meadow Run subdivision and on North Williston Road. Only a portion of the Route 2 sidewalk has actually been constructed.

North Williston Road residents have said they want the sidewalk, which would run between Route 2 and Mountain View Road. They noted traffic has greatly increased along their road in recent years, and a sidewalk would ensure pedestrian safety.

But plans for that stretch and the others call for a larger recreation path, which will cut roughly a 20-foot-wide swath through yards. The path itself would be about 10 feet wide and require about twice that much space when buffers are included, Boyden said.

A standard sidewalk is about 6 feet wide, and with the buffer requires an easement of about 10 feet.

The width of easements needed to construct sidewalks varies from one part of Williston to another. It depends on topography and the width of the existing public right of way along each road.

The North Williston Road path would run through Kerstin Hanson’s property. She said many of her neighbors have small front yards to start with, so a wide path would have a dramatic impact.

“For some people, you’d have the path running up to their front doorstep,” she said. “We want this, we just don’t want it to take over our property.”

Jim Chicoine, who lives on North Williston Road near the intersection of Route 2, said he already has a sidewalk along one side of his property. A wide path would leave him partially landlocked.

“I understand the need to extend the bike path, but the original plans just didn’t work,” he said.

Property owners on North Williston Road and elsewhere also worry about the effect a sidewalk would have on stormwater drainage and vegetation. In some cases, mature trees will have to be cut down.

Boyden said the town has offered to mitigate impacts with drainage improvements and plantings, but he acknowledged that decades-old trees cannot be replaced.

The wider recreation path provides more room for simultaneous use by bicyclists, walkers and runners. Standard sidewalks are designed mostly for pedestrians. Still, Boyden said, residents’ cooperation is needed to construct anything, so the town is willing to make accommodations.

Hanson said the town and North Williston Road residents have tentatively agreed to a narrower path that is about 6 feet wide. She and her neighbors complimented the town for listening to their concerns.

Negotiations elsewhere in Williston have been equally arduous. Two property owners along Route 2, for example, have refused to provide an easement, preventing construction of part of the sidewalk planned from Blair Park to North Brownell Road, Boyden said.

He said the Selectboard has a long-established policy of not paying for easements. Instead, the town has appealed to residents’ sense of civic duty by mentioning that the sidewalk funding was approved by voters and then offering to make accommodations.

“You can’t drive things down people’s throats and hold a gun to their heads,” Boyden said.

The town still hopes to acquire the North Williston Road easements and begin sidewalk construction there before fall, Boyden said. Also scheduled to be constructed this year is part of the segment between Blair Park and North Brownell Road.

Other sidewalks will likely have to wait until at least next year, particularly the Mountain View Road sidewalk and the remaining Route 2 segment, which are on hold until residents provide easements.

Chicoine said he sympathizes with the town’s travails in getting sidewalk easements.

“I feel for them, too,” he said. “They are trying to make everyone happy, but that’s never going to happen.”

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Williston gun club offers learning clinics

By Kim Howard
Observer staff

Penny Finnegan jumps when a gun goes off nearby.

Emptying the spent shell from his shotgun alongside Finnegan, Shelburne resident Zack Burris, 18, prepares to aim again at the clay targets hurtling into the field before them.

“I’m scared to death,” Finnegan acknowledges, lining up for her turn behind the trap house for her first go at trapshooting.

The 64-year-old Williston resident has never shot anything before, she tells instructor Parker Brown. Except for in video games, she adds.

With eyeglasses resting atop her close-cropped white hair, Finnegan places the butt of the shotgun in the crook of her shoulder as instructed. Brown tells her to rest her face against the back part of the gun. When she is ready, she calls out “Pull!”

A target is mechanically released out of the trap house in front of her. Within seconds of the start of the “pigeon’s” flight, Finnegan pulls the trigger, breaking in midair the roughly 4-inch neon orange disc.

“Pull!” she calls again moments later.

Finnegan waits longer this time, the target hurtling away from her at roughly 50 miles an hour, before pulling the trigger and shattering the target.

“I think you could have waited another couple of days,” Brown jokes with her, noting it’s easier to hit the targets when they’re closer. “I can’t argue with the results, though.”

Finnegan was one of six who turned out Sunday for a “Learn to Shoot” clinic sponsored by the North Country Sportsman’s Club. A middle-aged couple from Underhill, two young adult brothers from Shelburne, and a Williston teen rounded out the class. The 54-acre club, located off Old Creamery Road in south Williston, will be offering clinics weekly through August as a way to get more people interested in the sport of trapshooting, according to club secretary and Williston resident Cindy Pease.

Trapshooting originated in England around 1750, according to the Amateur Trapshooting Association Web site. Real pigeons were used as targets until the population neared extinction; fake birds were then introduced, and eventually clay targets. The sport got its start in America in 1831.

The sport, which has an Olympic competition, requires a shooter to stand at least 16 yards behind the trap house. In the first part of the lesson Sunday, targets launched directly in front of students. In the latter part of the lesson, the trap house launched discs in five directions randomly. Within seconds, shooters must locate the target and pull the trigger in anticipation of where the target is moving. Generally, Brown told students on Sunday, a target will move roughly five feet between the time a trigger is pulled and when the shot gets there.

“You’ll probably poke a few holes in the sky,” Brown said.

Before walking onto the field Sunday, students also learned about gun safety (“in trapshooting, unlike football, there’s never been a fatal accident,” Brown said), how to hold a gun (“with a firm grip, not a death grip”), and how to aim (move from the hips up). Each 28-gauge shell contains about 350 pellets, Brown said, and it takes only three pellets to break a target.

“You’ve got a 100 to 1 shot,” he said.

The 90-minute clinics cost participants $10, which covers the use of a gun, hearing protection, eye protection, and enough ammunition for 25 targets.Part of the costs are covered by a $1,000 grant the club received from the Federation of Sportsman’s Club. Children under 10 are not advised to participate in the sport. A parent or guardian must accompany clinic participants under 18.

Williston resident Josh Paquette, 14, was the only youth participating Sunday and he brought his own gun. Josh nailed three out of five targets in his first round, aiming straight out over the trap house. He struggled, however, when the launcher oscillated, randomly sending the targets in various directions.

“It didn’t turn out as well as I planned,” the Mater Christi School eighth grader said after he’d wrapped up class. “I didn’t really concentrate; I shot before I was ready.”

This wasn’t Josh’s first try at the sport, and he’ll be back, he said. His family, who lives on Sunset Hill Road, is within hearing range of the club.

“Our attitude is if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” his mother, Linda Leavitt, said Sunday. “Since we hear all this noise anyway, we figure we might as well be a part of it.”

Finnegan can hear club activity from her home on Oak Hill Road as well. She’s known about the club ever since she moved to Williston in 1970, she said, but Sunday was her first visit. Now she plans to join. Though afraid of guns, she’s an avid horse rider and has always been intrigued by the sport of mounted shooting – shooting targets from atop a horse.

“I guess I’m a cowgirl at heart,” Finnegan said. “I don’t want to hunt. I don’t want to kill anything. But shooting targets seemed fun.”

North Country Sportsman’s Club is open for practice on Sundays 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. January to March and on Sundays April to December 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The club is also open Wednesdays 4 p.m. to dusk, April through October.

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By Kim Howard
Observer staff

School Board Chairwoman Darlene Worth put her hand on her chest and audibly exhaled Tuesday night upon hearing that the Williston School District budget passed.

The $15.69 million budget passed 668-595 (53 percent-47 percent), a margin of 73 votes. The budget proposed on Town Meeting Day – roughly $287,000 larger – received support from 44 percent of voters. Town Meeting Day had a higher turnout.

“A huge thanks to all the people that did get involved this time,” Worth said of voters who came to School Board meetings in March and April to share concerns and suggestions.

Worth said the board still needs community involvement in the fall, including at four public forums that will be scheduled to study areas for possible further cuts: food service, transportation, class structure, and facilities.

“These won’t be the last cuts,” Worth said. “We do want their involvement to see why the votes are so low.”

Leaving the polls Tuesday, a number of voters who were asked declined to comment on how they voted. Those willing to comment largely had voted in support of it.

“I think they came up with a budget that’s representative of what’s needed,” George Vandevord said. Vandevord and his wife, Caroline Vandevord, both said they supported the budget. The retired couple has lived in Williston seven years.

Parent Kort Longenbach, who’s lived in Williston 13 years, echoed the Vandevords’ sentiments. He said he felt the board had made some reasonable cuts given the time they had, and he supported the budget. However, he advised the board to step further back next year to look at how they can better contain growth so that percentage increases are lower.

“I think the budget growth is somewhat high given everyone else’s income,” Longenbach said. “I think they need to really step back and look at what the key drivers are, be creative about what they can do, look at what some of the external factors are driving the budget.”

Denise Keefe, who’s lived in Williston 50 years, voted no on the budget.

“I hope our message gets through that we’d like teachers to pay more for their health insurance,” she said.

Teachers in Chittenden South Supervisory Union, which includes teachers in Williston, currently contribute 10 percent to their health insurance premiums. That contract expires June 30. Teachers and school board members are currently negotiating a new contract.

Frank Pavlik, 46, supported the budget. He went through Williston schools himself decades ago, as did his kids, who are now in college, he said.

“The school does a good job, and I don’t appreciate protest votes,” Pavlik said. “When they want to try to save something in the pocketbook they vote a school budget down but there are a lot of things that could be addressed besides school budgets to decrease our taxes and our out-of-pocket expenses.”

Norman Rapoport, a Williston resident for 35 years, said he supported the budget because it’s important to support the school system. He added, however, that it didn’t surprise him the budget failed the first time because of high costs. Though Rapoport supported the budget the first time, too, he said it was important to him to see the School Board make an effort to pare it down after it failed.

“If they didn’t make an effort, I think I would have felt otherwise,” he said of his vote of support.

Worth acknowledged she was concerned about how the vote might turn out, but was relieved the School Board can now move forward with other work. She, like several others on Tuesday, commented on the low voter turnout.

Nearly 19 percent of registered voters cast ballots Tuesday, compared with 24 percent in March.

The vote outcome is not final until 30 days from Tuesday’s vote. By state law, voters may request reconsideration of an article within 30 days of a vote by submitting a petition signed by 5 percent of registered voters.

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By Kim Howard
Observer staff

The suite number does not exist. The phone number is not in use. And the Williston Development Review Board never approved the construction of a group of high-rise buildings reminiscent of Manhattan.

But the Web site of “Bid Assist” attempts to make its viewers believe it’s a bona fide company, based in Williston, which serves as a middleman for consumers making on-line purchases.

“It’s certainly not the skyline of Williston,” Vermont Assistant Attorney General Elliot Burg said, referring to a picture of office buildings on the company’s Web site, adjacent to their alleged address and phone number. “Maybe it’s the skyline in the year 2075.”

The facts, as researched by Observer staff, suggest the business is virtual in more ways than one.

Bid Assist’s building address is 300 Cornerstone Drive – the same building as the Observer offices, and across a parking lot from vBay, a legitimate business (with a real office – we can see it out the window) that assists people with neither the time nor expertise to sell goods on eBay, an online auction service.

Bid Assist’s suite number, 38, does not exist, according to Mel Israel, controller for Allen Brook Development, Inc., which is responsible for 300 Cornerstone Drive. Israel also confirmed no entity by the name of Bid Assist leases space at the location.

The business is registered neither with the Better Business Bureau nor the Vermont Secretary of State. The Web site domain names (www.bid-assist.org and www.bidassist.org) are registered to Privacy Protect, an organization that conceals Web site registrant identities. The recording at Bid Assist’s listed Vermont phone number also does not inspire confidence: “This number is not in use. Thank you for calling. Goodbye.”

The company claims to negotiate and pay for merchandise a consumer wants using the consumer’s eBay login information. It then has the merchandise shipped to a warehouse, and has the consumer pay them for the services. Bid Assist claims to ship to countries that online sellers won’t.

The company’s pricing structure alone is “foolishness,” according to vBay owner Wes Paro. “It doesn’t ring true,” he said.

The “couriers,” according to Bid Assist’s “Careers” Web site page, receive $60 per handled package, and not less than $1,520 per month, for up to eight hours of work weekly.

Burg said he “would have very serious concerns about doing business with this Web site in the absence of some kind of confirmation that it’s legitimate.” Beyond the fraudulent company address, the request for eBay passwords is a red flag, he said. Login information, Burg said, is something “people should absolutely avoid sharing with a third party,” a point reiterated by eBay itself.

An eBay spokeswoman confirmed that Bid Assist is not an authorized partner service. Burg said the Attorney General’s Office gets complaints about Internet fraud, including auction-related fraud, “all the time.” He has two pieces of advice for online shoppers at eBay or other online sellers.

“Do not go off-site – the quickest way to get scammed is to link to somebody’s personal e-mail,” Burg said. “Secondly, don’t wire money … You have no protection. Once the money is wired, it’s gone.”

Burg also advised people beware of entities that are “phishing” for personal information – whether it be bank account numbers or eBay passwords. Those scams, he said, often come in the form of an unsolicited e-mail.

A blogger who alerted the Williston Observer to Bid Assist received such an e-mail, offering him a job with the company “founded by three Stanford University graduates” and “officially registered in March 2004 with the Vermont Department of Corporations.” No such department exists.

“Deception Spotter,” the blogger, believes Bid Assist is not a “phishing” expedition, but a job scam.

Other than to say he speaks English, doesn’t live in the U.S., and may accurately be referred to with the pronoun “he,” Deception Spotter refused to identify himself for fear of being targeted by criminals for spoiling their scams on his Web sites: iDeceive.blogspot.com and SuckersWanted.blogspot.com.

The blogger said for years he’s wanted to help solve the problem of spam.

“The predatory nature of spam began to offend me…so I decided to document as much of this activity as I could,” he said in an e-mail.

As spam laws have taken effect, he believes the effect has not been less spam, but more sinister efforts. Bid Assist, he believes, is one such example where people are scammed into becoming “mules” or go-betweens involved in re-shipper fraud.

Internet job scams are on the increase, according to a Better Business Bureau advisory issued in March.

“Complaints to the Better Business Bureau span dozens of sites, to include employment advertisements listed on well-known, legitimate job sites such as Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo Hot Jobs,” the BBB advisory reads. “A common denominator in all online job scams is the employer’s lack of interest in meeting the employee.”

Of all the tip-offs that Bid Assist may not be legitimate, perhaps the biggest is that these virtual Willistonians have no need to meet their employees. Vermonters, after all, are a congenial bunch.
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