cgrotke

Selectboard Meeting Notes – Brattleboro Firefighters Retroactive Raise, Final Meeting For John Allen

by cgrotke | Town News

The Brattleboro Selectboard approved a new contract with Brattleboro firefighters Tuesday evening. Negotiations began in 2016, stalled, resumed, and just recently wrapped up. Firefighters will be getting a retroactive raise going back to when the process began.

Liquor licenses, a finance report, a grant for bulletproof vests, and an update on Windham Regional Commission were all punctuated by news that this meeting was John Allen’s final regular selectboard meeting.

Windham Regional Energy Plan Public Hearings

by cgrotke | Town Plan

The Windham Regional Commission (WRC) will hold two public hearings on the proposed Windham Regional Energy Plan as an amendment to the Windham Regional Plan at 6:30pm on Monday April 9 at the Townshend Town Hall and Thursday April 12, 2018 at The Westminster Institute.

Selectboard Meeting Notes – Winter Roads and Education Taxes

by cgrotke | Town News

The board had a discussion of winter road conditions, causes of potholes, methods of repairing potholes, and specific reasons why Western Avenue has so many of them.

The board considered a letter to state education officials asking to support the results of the vote against a school district merger, as it would negatively impact Brattleboro taxes. The Brewer’s Fest permit was approved, Brattleboro Words are being explored and celebrated, and a pile of tires near the Marina is a problem for plants and animals in the vicinity.

Selectboard Meeting Notes – Municipal Broadband, A Rebellious Abatement, Potholes, and More

by cgrotke | Town News

The Brattleboro Selectboard held a meeting full of exciting twists and turns. From a sudden interest in municipal broadband to a re-examination of requiring write-in candidates to pre-register, the meeting was full of surprises.

There were the scheduled issues as well with liquor licenses renewed, an animal control officer appointed, grants accepted, and so on, but even these provided curious side paths.  Consider, for example, that the board decided to willingly challenge what they felt was an unfair ordinance, all in the name of compassion.  Or the matter of the fly in need of rescue…  In short, it was an eventful meeting.

iBrattleboro Turns 15 Years Old

by cgrotke | iBrattleboro

Happy birthday, everyone. iBrattleboro is now 15.

Fifteen years ago, Brattleboro had one newspaper, owned by an out-of-state media corporation. There was no “social media” and Brattleboro had few online sources of information. There was also a threat of further major media consolidation.

We wanted Brattleboro to have another option.

Quite The Dow Drop

by cgrotke | Economics

I took a short break today to watch an historic event. It wasn’t intentional, but I caught the stock market dropping like a rock this afternoon. If you missed it, in less than an hour it went a bit like this: