Last night, Addison County residents registered their opposition to a proposed natural gas pipeline, loudly and clearly. The strongest rejection came from residents in Cornwall, who voted overwhelmingly — 126-16 — against Phase II of the Addison Rutland Natural Gas project, which would carry natural gas from Middlebury to the International Paper plant in Ticonderoga, N.Y.

But Cornwall — a hotbed of dissent against the project for months now — wasn't alone in that opinion last night. As voters there were casting paper ballots at the local elementary school, members of the energy committee of the Addison County Regional Planning Commission were debating the project in Middlebury. They decided 4-1 not to endorse the pipeline, ruling that it does not comply completely with the energy section of the area's regional plan. 

Meanwhile, down the road in neighboring Shoreham, voters were considering an article similar to the non-binding measure in Cornwall. They, too, sided against the pipeline — by a margin of 66-38. 

On Tuesday, the Addison County Independent reported that the town of Monkton denounced Phase I of the pipeline project, which would run through Monkton, in a "near-unanimous voice vote."

A week out from Town Meeting Day, opponents of a hotly debated proposed building project in Middlebury are accusing the town of peddling false information to town voters. Pointing to a flyer sent out at the cost of nearly $3,000, the opponents believe the town is trying to convince voters to OK a $6.5 million bond to build a new town office and recreation center — but say the town isn’t being upfront with its residents.

“I am disappointed that my taxpayer dollars have been spent on what comes off as a flagrant attempt to mislead the voter,” said selectboard member Craig Bingham, addressing his fellow members of the seven-member board on Tuesday evening. “How can the voters trust the information that has been given to them when the town produces and mails a document to each voter that contains deceptive information and glaring falsehoods?”

But what opponents of the project call “glaring falsehoods,” other town officials describe as a good-faith effort to educate voters about the upcoming ballot item.

“Nowhere on [the flyer] does it say how to vote,” said Nancy Malcolm, who chairs the steering committee for the town office project. “It just is straight information.”

Updated March 2 to correct an earlier error in the final paragraph.

When residents in Ward 7 head to the voting booths next Tuesday, they will choose between two political fledglings — Democrat Bianka Legrand and Republican Tom Treat — to fill their open city council seat.

Treat, 47, has lived in Ward 7 for 17 years, along with his wife and three children. An engineer at Koffee Cup Bakery, Treat said he’s followed national politics more closely than local politics, but he’s “kept on ear to the ground” on issues like school spending and the city’s pension system. Treat adds that his candidacy offers a chance for voters to keep at least some GOP representation on a council dominated by Democrats and Progressives. 

The Democrats’ hopes rest with Legrand, who has lived off and on in Ward 7 since moving to Burlington in 1997. She and her family came to the city as refugees, fleeing the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Legrand didn’t speak English when she arrived in Vermont as a 17-year-old. Now 33, she’s fluent, and she holds a B.A. in psychology from the University of Vermont and a master's in organizational leadership from Norwich University. 

Rosanne Greco, a retired Air Force colonel who has fought to prevent local basing of the F-35 jet, capped three turbulent years on the South Burlington city council with a verbal thrashing of most of her colleagues on Tuesday night.

Greco, who is not seeking re-election, accused three councilors of orchestrating “a mockery of democracy.” Chairwoman Pam Mackenzie and council members Pat Nowak and Chris Shaw constituted a “bloc of three” that ignored the views of many South Burlington residents and appointed political supporters to city positions, Greco charged.

“I am very concerned that this city will go back to the old way of doing business in which residents' wants were overshadowed by what big developers wanted to do in our city,” the former council chairwoman added in a prepared statement.



Greco's barbed farewell remarks demonstrated the passion and polarization that have come to characterize politics in South Burlington. The bitter battle over the F-35 was representative of a wider fissure in a changing community where aggressive liberals have challenged the suburban-style conservatism that has long prevailed.

Ryan Emerson, the Democratic candidate for a city council seat in Burlington’s Ward 2, has withdrawn from the race. Emerson announced his decision Tuesday afternoon, the day after Seven Days inquired about past allegations of domestic violence brought against him.

On two separate occasions in 2005 and 2006, a Chittenden County judge issued relief-from-abuse orders against Emerson, after Sarah Hart, the mother of his child, complained of allegedly violent behavior.

During an interview on Monday morning, Emerson acknowledged the orders but said he'd closed that chapter of his life. “I went through a very dark period in my life with alcoholism and depression. Now seven years later, looking back, I’m a lot different person. Sarah and I have a great relationship now, and I’m just moving on.”

Emerson, 27, emailed this statement to Seven Days on Tuesday: "This campaign has been about the issues facing Ward 2. Out of respect of the voters, and not wanting to distract from those important issues, I am formally dropping out of this race. I wish Max Tracy well in his second term of faithfully serving our ward." 

The deadline for candidates to enter the race has passed, so Emerson’s decision clears the way for incumbent Max Tracy to secure a second term. He was the only Progressive candidate facing serious opposition. Emerson's announcement positions the party to up its representation on the 14-member council, from four seats to five. 

Emerson announced his bid for the Ward 2 seat in early December, and public safety was a cornerstone of his campaign.

Every Town Meeting Day, the Vermont media run a few heart-warming stories that reinforce the Rockwellian ideal of what it means to participate in local, direct democracy — such as this chestnut from WCAX about "Newark's Tasty Town Meeting Day Tradition."

(Spoiler alert: it involves "casseroles and salads galore.")

And then there's Steven Pappas' town meeting takedown. In a piece headlined "Has Town Meeting Run Its Course?" (behind the paywall), the editor of the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus calls for ending the cherished tradition and replacing it with voting booths.

The piece begins:

I’m going to make a motion. I know it will eventually get a second, and plenty of discussion. 

In the end, I expect it will fail.

My motion is this: “I move that all town and school budgets, as well as election of local officers, across Vermont be decided by Australian ballot, hereby ending the ‘traditional town meeting’ as we know it.”

For real. Once and for all. It’s a relic, and its worn parts are really starting to show.

Damn. At first, I thought Pappas was joking — that this was some ironic set-up or journalistic bait-and-switch that, in the end, would call for fixing town meeting's broken parts but not scrapping the whole enterprise.

I mean, really. The editor of state capital's daily newspaper crapping on, of all things, town meeting? That's got to be satire, right?

Nope. As the piece goes along, it becomes crystal clear the dude's dead serious.

Town Meeting Day in South Burlington presented voters with a clear choice on their city’s direction, and they delivered a decisive verdict: Out with the new, in with the old.

Incumbent city councilors Sandy Dooley and Paul Engels were buried in a landslide that swept challengers Pat Nowak and Chris Shaw onto the five-member panel. Dooley and especially Engels presented themselves as a new guard with progressive views, while painting Shaw and Nowak as exponents of an old, pro-development way of conducting the city’s affairs.

But the more than 2-1 rejection of the incumbents by voters does not necessarily signify a triumph of the right over the left. Council candidates in South Burlington don’t run with party labels. And Dooley and Engels were members of a body that made some broadly unpopular moves that had nothing to do with liberal or conservative attitudes. Those actions left them on the defensive throughout an intensely fought campaign.

“It was a combination of things — interim zoning, the F-35, Cairns Arena, the National Gardening Association” that accounted for the outcome, Engels said on the morning after.

Interim zoning refers to a two-year freeze the council imposed on most development in the city, with the aim of enabling four study groups to develop recommendations for South Burlington’s future. “The developers were against that from day one,” comments council chair Rosanne Greco, who remains in office but who will almost certainly have to surrender her gavel when the new council convenes.

“The development community bought this election,” Greco added, referring in part to the heavy advertising on behalf of Nowak and Shaw that ran in South Burlington’s weekly paper.

One-party rule in Burlington will have to wait.

One year after Mayor Miro Weinberger won a landslide election, ending Democrats' 30-year exile from Burlington City Hall, his party failed to win enough seats to claim a majority on the 14-member city council. Democrats picked up an open seat in the New North End, long a Republican stronghold, but Progressives recaptured a seat in the Old North End and an independent in Ward 1 hung onto her seat.

In the end, voters went for the better known candidates — and the result will be more divided government in the Queen City.

But the big story of the night was the drubbing of incumbent South Burlington city councilors Sandy Dooley and Paul Engels, who lost by two-to-one margins to challengers Chris Shaw and Patricia Nowak. The incumbents found themselves on the defensive about their vote against basing F-35 fighter jets at Burlington International Airport, and about the firing and $140,000 severance paid out to city manager Sandy Miller.

Happy Town Meeting Day, everyone! Once again Seven Days is teaming up with Burlington's Channel 17 for coverage. We'll have a live blog and chat with writers and readers from around the state, plus live streaming video from Channel 17. We'll also aggregate Town Meeting Day reports from media outlets around the state and update results as we get them, including from the competitive city council races in Burlington. The fun starts at 6 p.m.

Click here to tune in.

Local opponents of the F-35 are throttling up their campaign by petitioning for a cutoff of construction funds for Burlington International Airport if it agrees to host the fighter jets.

Activists began gathering signatures during Town Meeting Day voting today in support of a 2014 ballot initiative stating that "no more than one dollar may be spent for construction, equipment and improvement" at the airport in the event F-35s are based there.

Bristol attorney Jim Dumont, speaking on behalf of the plane’s opponents, argues that Burlington voters have the power to slash the airport’s budget. He bases that claim on a section of state law that requires local voters to approve the budget of a municipally owned airport. Burlington has apparently flouted this law for decades by not making airport funding contingent on direct approval by city voters, Dumont said at a news conference Tuesday morning at the Mater Christi School polling place.

City attorney Eileen Blackwood says Dumont has it wrong.

In a statement emailed to reporters on the evening prior to the press event, Blackwood said, “Burlington’s city charter trumps the general state law on this issue.” Burlington’s charter vests budget-making authority solely with the city council, she notes. Airport spending therefore could not be directly blocked by the city’s voters, Blackwood says.

Dumont (pictured) responded on Tuesday that it’s Blackwood who’s got it wrong.