Cyclists, rejoice: The Colchester Causeway has reopened for the season, and the bike ferry that transports riders from it to the Champlain Islands will soon follow suit.

The bike ferry, operated by Burlington nonprofit Local Motion, will resume  operations on August 12, following the causeway's unexpected reopening earlier this week. The 20-passenger boat transports cyclists across the 200-foot cut in the four-mile causeway and connects riders to South Hero.

A severe windstorm in May 2018 washed away portions of the causeway, requiring $1.8 million in repairs. The coronavirus pandemic pushed the expected reopening from Memorial Day to Labor Day weekend, but the contractor finished the job on July 30, more than a month ahead of schedule.

"If the causeway is open, there's no reason the ferry shouldn't be running," Local Motion services and marketing director Tom Clark said. "We're committed to the recreational biking public out there, and we wanted to run the boat."

Vermont Democratic Party chair Terje Anderson is stepping down due to ongoing health issues, the party announced Thursday, just weeks before the August 11 primary election.

A prominent former AIDS activist, 62-year-old Anderson has been party chair since late 2017. In a statement, Anderson said the unspecified health problems prevent him from being able to devote enough time and energy to the role.

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The 90-degree heat didn’t stop more than 100 volunteers from painting the words "Black Lives Matter" along Burlington's Main Street on Sunday. Clad in masks and armed with rollers, they spread traffic-cone-orange paint in a message for racial justice in front of courthouses and alongside city hall.

“I think it’s important to show the support and to show the allies that we have in the community,” said Adam Carnes. He and Tia Marosy brought their young son, Felix, to the event. They moved to Burlington from Brooklyn two years ago. Being Black in Vermont, Carnes said, can be isolating.

“I feel like taking [Felix] to stuff like this is really important to see that you might find your community and feel like you’re at home here,” Marosy said. “I also hope that it’s not just a show. I hope there’s actually some substance behind it.”
The Burlington City Council voted unanimously in favor of the street painting in a July 13 meeting. The resolution, drafted by Councilor Karen Paul (D-Ward 6), Councilor Zoraya Hightower (P-Ward 1) and city racial equity director Tyeastia Green, says the mural will be maintained through October 2023.

Volunteers stood in lines at the end of Church Street awaiting name tags and painting assignments that routed them to an assigned letter, already outlined on the roadway. Organizers poured paint and guided them in filling in the letters. Drummers from Jeh Kulu Dance and Drum Theater kept the mood lively.

Elijah Hines awaited his turn to paint with Piper Turosak. Hines recalled some of his own experiences as a Black man living in South Burlington. His brother, Isaiah, led a push as a student at South Burlington High School to change its mascot from the Rebels. Isaiah was harassed for his advocacy, and a South Burlington man was convicted of a misdemeanor stalking charge against him.
“We have both faced a lot of racist name-calling,” Elijah said. “There’s been a lot of shit that’s gone down, and our family hasn’t been protected in the same way that a white family most likely would have.”

But Elijah said events such as this could engage the wider community in conversations about race. “There’ve been things that have kind of made me ashamed to live in Burlington, and live in Vermont, and this is one of the things that helps to change that,” Hines said. 
Turosak agreed and said art can be powerful by starting conversations and reminding people of the racial justice work still to be done in Vermont.

“I’m an art student myself, and I’ve done murals and posters, and it genuinely changes people’s minds,” Turosak said. “Public art — it’s the most impactful thing, because it’s there for everybody to see and it evokes an emotional response.”

The City of Montpelier took similar action in June. The Black Lives Matter sign painted on State Street was almost immediately defaced with dirt, oil and graffiti. A muralist for the nonprofit Arts So Wonderful, Jamie Bedard, told Seven Days that her own Black Lives Matter mural, on Burlington’s old YMCA building, was also targeted with graffiti. In both cases, the artwork was quickly restored.

Mayor Miro Weinberger, who took a turn with a roller, said that the city will take a “hardline” approach to any vandalism, prosecuting anyone who tries to deface the Main Street mural. Weinberger said he views the painting as a reminder of the city’s commitment to racial justice, which he said was solidified by the recent declaration of racism as a public health emergency.

“This is something that is symbolism of the work we’ve started together as a community and we intend to do,” Weinberger said. “I hope it’s a reminder to everyone that’s committed to that work.”

Many of the test results that suggested a large coronavirus outbreak in southern Vermont appear to have been flawed, state health officials said on Friday.

The Vermont Department of Health has only been able to confirm two infections in the Manchester-Londonderry area so far this week, and all 405 samples processed from a pair of emergency testing sites have come back negative for the virus.

“This is a good indication that these cases are not spreading within the community,” Health Commissioner Mark Levine said.

Town residents began panicking last weekend as local doctors at an urgent care clinic reported a sudden spike in positive COVID-19 tests. Manchester Medical Center, an independent commercial clinic, has reported roughly 60 positive tests over the past week — far more than the total cases recorded in nearby towns since the pandemic began. Businesses shut down, the weekend farmers market was canceled, and rumors abounded about the sources and severity of the suspected outbreak.

But the clinic was using a new antigen test for the virus that causes COVID-19, which state health officials don't recognize in their official data. So while the state scrambled to trace patients' recent contacts and set up mass testing sites, it also sought to verify the initial cases by using the traditional polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, testing method.

As of Thursday night, only two of 17 completed retests could be confirmed as positive COVID-19 cases, Levine said at a Friday press conference. The other 15 were negative.

"Although our investigation is not complete, it appears that many of the positive antigen results reported by Manchester Medical Center might have been false positives," Levine said.

State officials said they still don't have enough information to confirm the presence of an outbreak. The state was still waiting for hundreds of outstanding tests, plus dozens of confirmatory PCR tests for those who had tested positive through the antigen method.

The antigen test used at Manchester Medical Center was approved in May by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, though it is not used widely in Vermont and health officials here consider it relatively unproven. Antigen tests can provide results in just 15 minutes, whereas the traditional PCR tests take days to be processed. The antigen tests, however, are known to miss as many as 20 percent of infections — what's known as a "false negative" result.

A positive antigen result is typically seen as very reliable, making the spate of likely false positives in Manchester especially befuddling. Levine suggested that the problems could stem from a "systematic issue" in how the test kits were being processed at the clinic, but he said the department needed more data.

Levine also noted that many of the antigen tests were performed on patients who did not have COVID-19 symptoms. The tests were only studied on people with symptoms, and current federal and other public health guidance does not recommend their use in general screenings.

Dr. Janel Kittredge-Sterling, one of the clinic's co-owners, has emphatically defended the positive antigen test results on Facebook and in a Thursday interview with Seven Days. On Friday, as Levine called more of those results into question, she continued to express confidence but wrote in a text message that "we have to be critical of all data."

The state recorded nine new coronavirus cases statewide on Friday, bringing the total since March to 1,334. Of those, just over 200 are considered active infections. Four patients are currently hospitalized.  

Last month, interim president Jonathan Spiro announced that the college would resume regular courses under an altered schedule. Now, with the start of the semester just several weeks away, the public liberal arts college has decided instead to deliver all classes online. It's the first traditional residential college in Vermont to do so.

The nationwide spike in COVID-19 cases — including record caseloads and deaths in states such as Texas, Florida and Arizona — prompted the move,  Spiro said in an announcement on Wednesday.

“Vermonters are doing a great job of containing the virus. However, the public health situation in the rest of the country has dictated that we move nearly all of our courses online for the fall semester," he said.