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CALEDONIAN Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2015
CALEDONIANRECORD.COM
ESTABLISHED 1837
SPORTS
ST. JOHNSBURY
Danville Falls
To Enosburg
NO CONTESTS IN
LOCAL ELECTION
Office Seekers
Face No Opposition
By Taylor reeD
Staff Writer
Don’t expect a single race in March at annual
town meeting for seats on the St. Johnsbury
Board of Selectmen or the St. Johnsbury School
Board of Directors.
Three select board positions are open including two year-long terms and a three-year term,
and two school board positions are open including a three-year term and a two-year term. Candidate petitions for ballot placement were due
Monday afternoon.
Barring a successful write-in campaign for the
select board, newcomer Tim Angell will secure
a one-year term, incumbent Tom Moore will be
re-elected for a year, and incumbent Jamie Murphy will step into the three-year slot. The candi-
BURKE
Father And Son
Fist Fight
PAGE B1
ST. JOHNSBURY
75 CENTS
School’s New Boiler
A Warm Welcome
PAGE A2
PAGE A3
DERBY LINE WOMAN FACES CHARGE SHE DEFRAUDED BANK OF $45,000
lodged at Chittenden Correctional
By Jennifer Hersey ClevelanD
Center in South Burlington for lack of
Staff Writer
a $500 deposit on her $5,000 bail.
The defendant, who was born in
NEWPORT CITY — A Derby Line
woman confessed to police that she de- Maine, holds a Texas driver’s license,
frauded Community National Bank of lives in Derby Line, and works for a
$45,000, but told investigators that she New York company, was ordered to rewas working with Florida detectives to side and remain in Orleans County excatch people in an international money cept for work purposes. She is not
permitted to transfer monies greater
scam.
Alisa Kelley-Johnson, 43, told than $500 except for bail, and she’s not
Trooper Callie Field that she had sent allowed on the premises of Commutens of thousands of her own dollars to nity National Bank.
Trooper Callie Field was alerted to
people in Nigeria, Ghana, South
Africa, Belarus, and Egypt since 2012. the alleged fraud when Laura St. Onge,
Kelley-Johnson pleaded not guilty ofﬁce manager of the Derby branch of
to two felony counts of false pretenses Community National Bank, stopped
or tokens Wednesday and remains by the barracks to report it Jan. 16.
St. Onge opened Kelley-Johnson’s
IRA account for her Dec. 29. On Jan.
9, the bank received an overnight
package from FedEx containing a
$48,000 check from MJ’s Sinclair,
Inc., with a reference to Kelley-Johnson’s IRA account.
Not expecting the check, customer
service representative Shelly Winters
called Kelley-Johnson, who said it was
a rollover IRA and Winters deposited
it into the IRA account.
Three days later, Kelley-Johnson
went to the Derby Line branch and
made an IRA distribution of $45,000,
depositing the funds into her savings
account. She wired $25,000 of that to
See Defraud, Page A6
PHOTO COURTESY Of THE VERmOnT STATE POliCE
Alisa Kelley-Johnson
WATERFORD
See Uncontested, Page A6
LYNDON
SELECTMEN APPROVE
WASTE ORDINANCE
By James JarDine
Staff Writer
As Vermont communities move to meet the requirements of the state’s new waste management
laws, Lyndon has completed a new ordinance covering the disposal of solid waste.
Residents may now self-haul ordinary household trash to any solid waste consolidation point
authorized by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. An option allows residents to contract for residential curbside pickup of
ordinary household waste. The ordinance states
rates for disposal shall be determined by the operator of the consolidation point and will be based
on either weight or volume.
Lyndon residents will have options for the collection of recyclables. Residents may self-haul recyclables to the Northeast Kingdom Waste
See approve, Page A6
COURTESY PHOTO
The home schooling families of Northeast Kingdom Classical Conversations celebrate National School Choice Week on Thursday at Union
Baptist Church in Waterford.
CLASSICIAL CONVERSATIONS ANOTHER CHOICE IN AREA EDUCATION
By Taylor reeD
Staff Writer
WATERFORD — It’s not a school, it’s a community, and its members fervently support school
choice.
Northeast Kingdom Classical Conversations, or
CC, a Christian-based home schooling organization
including 22 families with 34 students from Vermont
and New Hampshire who meet Thursdays at Union
Baptist Church in Waterford, is celebrating National
School Choice Week.
The home-schoolers and
See Also
their parents Thursday
■ Choice Matters
donned yellow School
Page A3
Choice Week scarves and
waved banners to mark the occasion during a weekly
“community” meeting at UBC.
“School choice is a blessing that many people
who live in other countries simply don’t enjoy,” said
CC director Lauran Van Der Eems. “National School
Choice Week affords us the opportunity to celebrate
one of the many freedoms that make this country
See Choice, Page A6
NEW HAMPSHIRE SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS LIFE SENTENCE FOR NORTH COUNTRY CAREER CRIMINAL
Kevin Balch Serving 60- to 120-Year Prison Sentence; Court Says It’s Just Following The Law
INSIDE
VOL. 177, NO. 148
© T HE C ALEDONIAN -R ECORD
Classifieds. . . . . . . . . . B7
Entertainment. . . . . . . B4
For the Record . . . . . . A2
Opinion. . . . . . . . . . . . A4
Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . B1
Television . . . . . . . . . . B6
TODAY: Periods of snow,
2-4”, very low wind
chills overnight
HIGH: 30
LOW: 3
Details on Page A2
NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK
cial felony counts of being an armed career criminal, all stemming from burglaries in 2011.
The special felony charges were filed
because Balch, who burglarized scores
of North Country homes through the
years, had at least three prior felony
convictions in New Hampshire.
In June 2012, after being paroled
from N.H. State Prison on previous burglary convictions, Balch, who for years
floated between residences in the North
Country and Northeast Kingdom, had
been arrested again and confessed his
involvement in subsequent burglaries,
Vermont’s New Roman Catholic
Bishop Installed During Mass
–––––
Therapy Adocate Charged With Sexually
Abusing 13-year-old
–––––
Jury Selection Resumes Today
In Tsarnaev Trial
$
18,099,300,756,780
Population: 319,901,794
Your share: $56,577.68
“The budget should be balanced; the
treasury should be refilled; public
debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be
controlled.” –Cicero, 106-43 B.C.
Littleton police said at the time.
During the January trial, Balch was
found guilty of entering two Bethlehem
homes in September 2011 and stealing
three rifles, two shotguns and a handgun.
N.H. RSA 159:3 states no person
who has been convicted of any combination of three or more felonies in New
Hampshire or any other state shall own
or possess a pistol, revolver, rifle, shotgun or any other firearm.
The statute states any person in violation shall be guilty of a felony and
Page A5 & 7
See life, Page A6
NATION
The N.H. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an effective life sentence for
North Country career criminal Kevin
Balch, who was sentenced at Grafton
Superior Court in 2013 on six felony
counts of being a career criminal in
possession of a weapon.
Balch, 36, is currently serving a N.H.
State Prison sentence of 60 to 120
years.
At issue in his appeal was whether
the trial court erred in mandating that
each of the six special felony counts,
carrying a prison sentence of 10 to 20
years, be served consecutively and not
concurrently.
In their ruling, however, the N.H.
Supreme Court justices stated the N.H.
Legislature, in passing RSA 159:3-a,
the statute on armed career criminals,
did indeed intend to have defendants
serve consecutive sentences for each
felony count.
After a jury trial in January 2013,
Balch was found guilty of two felony
counts of burglary, six felony counts of
receiving stolen property and six spe-
REGION
By roBerT BleCHl
Staff Writer
Kevin Balch
Obama Calls For Spending Surge To Burst Past
‘Sequester’ Limits, Buoyed By Rising Economy
–––––
Republican-led Senate Passes Bill Approving
Keystone XL Oil Pipeline, Defying White House
Page A8-10
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A2
THE RECORD • fRiDAY, JAnUARY 30, 2015
FOR THE RECORD
Assault Charge Follows Fist
Fight Between Man, Step-son
By ToDD WellingTon
Staff Writer
A Hardwick man was charged
with a crime after ﬁghting with his
14-year-old stepson.
Christopher Piangerelli, 36,
pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of domestic assault
by kicking and punching the alleged victim outside of 208 Evergreen Manor in Hardwick at 3:06
p.m. on Jan. 17 and was released
on the condition that he not have
contact with the teen.
Caledonia Superior Court
According to an afﬁdavit ﬁled
by Hardwick Police Ofc. Michael
Gero, police responded to the
home for a report of an assault on
a juvenile and found the teen inside sitting in a recliner “crying,
shaking, with red marks on his
face, back of his neck, abdomen,
back and complained of sudden
abdomen pain and pain to the back
of the neck.”
The teen told police his step-father Piangerelli had come to the
residence angry that he had written
“DICK” and “FAGS” on the front
and rear window of his motor vehicle but remembered nothing of
the incident that ensued because he
always blacks-out when he is
angry.
Piangerelli told police the teen
had assaulted him ﬁrst by punching him in the face after Piangerelli
confronted him about the windows
and demanded that he clean it up.
“I observed a contusion consistent with this under Piangerelli’s
eye,” wrote Gero in his report.
During a follow-up interview on
Jan. 18 the alleged victim told police he still remembered nothing of
the incident.
If convicted Piangerelli faces a
possible sentence of up to 18
months in prison and a $5,000 ﬁne.
Ryegate Man Convicted Of
Vandalism With Drum Set Piece
By ToDD WellingTon
Staff Writer
A Ryegate man has reached a
plea agreement to settle charges
stemming from an incident last
summer in which he vandalized a
car with a piece of a drum set.
Brandon Swain, 25, East Ryegate, pleaded guilty to unlawful
mischief and an amended charge
of unlawful trespassing in exchange for a one-year deferred
sentence
Caledonia Superior Court
Swain was convicted of smashing the taillight on a car owned by
Thomas Walls, 25, and entering
the home of Thomas and Melissa
Walls during an incident in East
Ryegate on July 20, 2014.
According to an afﬁdavit ﬁled
by Vermont State Police Tpr. Sean
Brennan, police responded to the
Ryegate village area at 6:22 p.m.
N
for a report that Swain was walking around with no shirt on and hitting and breaking things with a
metal pipe.
“Swain had the pipe with him
and when I ordered him to the
ground,” wrote Brennan. “Swain
went on to tell me that he walked
down the street to Thomas Wall’s
house and smashed the taillight of
his Dodge Neon out with a pipe
which was part of a stand for his
drum set.”
Swain told police he was mad at
his parents, that Wall owed him
money and that he also hit a swingset with the pipe a couple of times.
Melissa Walls told police that
during the same incident Swain entered her home uninvited screaming “Where is Tom?” and did not
immediately leave when asked to.
State police said Swain submitted a preliminary breath test which
showed his blood alcohol concentration to be .128 percent.
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NEWS BRIEFS
Maine Audubon seeks return
of stuffed snowshoe hare, turtle
State Police are seeking information on this man suspected of
stealing catalytic converters from Groton Tire and Auto.
Police seek catalytic converter thief
On Wednesday, the Vermont State Police in Bradford responded
to the theft of catalytic converters from Groton Tire and Auto on
Scott Highway in Groton.
Investigation revealed that catalytic converters were removed
from three vehicles. The incident occurred between approximately
4:30 and 5:01 a.m.
Surveillance cameras captured a dark colored four-door vehicle
with two occupants.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Vermont State Police
in Bradford at 802-222-4680.
Polar Bears snowmobile club
active in Lunenburg
Members of the Lunenburg
Polar Bears Snowmobile Club
are taking to the trails. Recent
snowfall has the Club’s grooming ﬂeet out six nights a week in
preparation for the busy Jan. 30
weekend. This includes increased trafﬁc for the Vermont New Hampshire Open Weekend, plus the Lancaster Grand
Prix.
Riders are attracted to the
Lunenburg area due to the wide
variety of terrain and scenery.
“So far this winter has given us
COURTESY PHOTO
the ingredients for a great, oldGregg
Williams
of
the
Lunenfashioned snowmobile season
with incredible rides” says Club burg Polars Bears installs a
President Jim Simonds. “We’re sign at the Club’s trailhead at
on a full grooming schedule the Town Common.
right now, and with the drop in
gas prices we’re hoping to attract new snowmobilers to the area.”
Trailmaster Dana Nason added staff to operate the Club’s new
grooming machine, which includes a custom-made hydraulic brush
cutter for clearing the trails. “This will make our Class I trails much
safer,” he said. “It’s too big for our smaller Gilman trails, but riders
like to take it slow through the woods and watch for wildlife.”
The Lunenburg Polar Bears Snowmobile Club has been an active
VAST organization since 1966 which also hosts a Hot Dish Buffet
fundraiser on Feb. 7. For more information about the Club or snowmobiling in the Lunenburg area, go to www.vtvast.org or contact the
Club by email [email protected].
PUBLIC MEETINGS
ConCord
Planning/zoning board, Thursday, Feb. 5, 6 p.m., municipal
bldg. Town plan and regular meeting
danville
School board, Monday, Feb. 2,
6 p.m., school library. Administrative reports, student representative’s report, DCC, ﬁnancial,
public input, new, old business, executive session – personnel.
grants, principal and CNSU reports, anticipated executive session – negotiations.
newport
City elementary school board,
Monday, Feb. 2, 6 p.m., municipal
bldg, city clerk’s ofﬁce. (Finance
committee at 5:30 p.m.) Public
comments, ﬁnancial report, principal’s report, superintendent’s report, old, new, other business,
executive session – personnel.
Kirby
St. JohnSbury
Select board, Monday, Feb. 2, 6
School board, Monday, Feb. 2,
p.m., town clerk’s ofﬁce.
5 p.m., superintendent’s ofﬁce. Executive session for residency hearlyndon
ing. 6 p.m. - Public participation,
School board, Monday, Feb. 2, superintendent’s report, discuss
5:30 p.m. Finance, math and liter- plans for next year, executive sesacy reports, annual meeting budget sion if necessary.
discussion, principal and CNSU
reports, anticipated executive ses- Sutton
sion.
School board, Wednesday, Feb.
4, 5:30 p.m. Finance, discuss cost
newarK
of library teacher, principal search
School board, Tuesday, Feb. 3, discussion, discuss need for
5 p.m. Finance, small school weekly meetings.
Little
Mover
Choose the
KAP ENTERPRISES LLC
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Keith A. Phelps
838 Keyser Hill Rd.
St. Johnsbury, VT 05819
Phone: 802-748-9112
Cell: 802-793-7986
E-mail: [email protected]
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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — In what sounds like a cruel twist on an
ancient fable, Maine Audubon is seeking the return of a stuffed hare and
turtle that it uses for educational purposes.
The snowshoe hare and pond turtle, each preserved by a taxidermist
and mounted in a Plexiglas box, as well as a red fox pelt, were stolen
from an Audubon instructor’s locked vehicle last weekend while it was
in a Portland parking garage.
Eric Topper, Audubon’s education director, tells the Portland Press
Herald the items are part of the organization’s legacy.
They’re part of a state-licensed, 130-piece collection of wildlife specimens that are considered difﬁcult to replace and critical to education programs offered by Audubon and teachers across Maine.
Topper says the theft has left “a big hole” in the collection.
Bradford Winter Carnival
impacted by weather
Due to the extreme cold, the outside events for the Bradford Winter
Carnival scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 31, are cancelled, with the exception of the broomball hockey tournament. That will be moved to the
Bradford Academy Gym from 10:30-noon.
The kickoff chowda, chili and cake supper at the Bradford Firehouse
will still be held at 5-6:30 p.m., Friday, Jan. 30. The buffet dinner at the
Grace United Methodist Church will be held Saturday night from 4:306:30 p.m. and the Masonic Pancake Breakfast will be held at the Masonic
Lodge on Sunday morning from 7-10:30 a.m.
At 3 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 1, the Our Town Graveyard Gossip will be
held in the BA Auditorium.
Vermont man injured in
Colebrook snowmobile crash
There was a snowmobile crash Wednesday afternoon in Errol.
The operator, Alan Gilmore, 31, of Tinmouth, Vt., suffered an arm injury. He had pulled off the side of the trail to let a groomer pass, because
of the fresh new snow Gilmore’s sled was stuck. Gilmore then received
help from the Umbagog Sportsman Association Groomer Operator to get
out of the deep snow. As Gilmore drove the machine out of the deep snow
he shot across the trail, through a bridge railing and rode the sled below
into a brook. The machine landed on top of Gilmore injuring his left
shoulder.
The groomer operator, Lorraine Turner of Wentworth’s Location, witnessed the crash and helped Gilmore. Turner not only made sure that both
sleds got out of the deep snow in the ﬁrst place but she assisted Gilmore
into the groomer and transported him to the clubhouse for quick medical
care.
Gilmore was transported from the clubhouse to Upper Connecticut
Valley Hospital in Colebrook for further medical care. 45th parallel EMS
also met Errol Rescue in Dixville Notch so that a paramedic could assist
during the transport. Alcohol was not a factor in the crash. The crash may
have been caused by a “gauntlet” holding the throttle open.
More snow, bitter cold on way to Vermont
WATERBURY, Vt. (AP) — More snow and sub-zero wind chills are
on their way to Vermont. Counties in the northern half of the state are
under winter weather advisory from 4 p.m. Thursday until 7 p.m. Friday
for 4 to 6 inches of wind-blown snow. Temperatures are expected to dip
Friday night through Saturday night, with wind chills dropping to 20
below zero and lower.
The Numbers
POWERBALL (Wednesday)
12-24-35-36-49; Power Ball: 1 PowerPlay: 5
DAILY PICKS (Thursday)
Day Draw: Pick 3: 6-9-9; Pick 4: 3-6-3-6
Evening Draw: Pick 3: 8-6-4; Pick 4: 0-3-1-9
Local Forecast
Today: Light snow with periods of
blowing snow. Additional accumulation 2 to 4 inches. Highs in the mid
to upper 20s. South winds, becoming northwest 10 to 15 mph, gusting
to 25 mph late.
Tonight: Periods of snow continuing, with additional accumulation 1
to 2 inches. Much colder, with dangerously low wind chills developing.
Lows zero to 5 below. Northwest
winds 10 to 20 mph, gusting to 30
mph.
Tomorrow: Chance of a snow
shower early in the morning, then
decreasing clouds in the afternoon.
Highs only in the single digits
above. North to northwest winds 10
to 15 mph. Winds chills 10 to 15
below.
Extended Forecast:
Saturday Night: Partly cloudy.
Lows from 5 to 10 below.
Sunday: Periods of clouds. Highs
around 10 above.
Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy. Lows
around 8 below.
Monday: Decreasing clouds. Continued quite cold, with highs around
5 above.
Monday Night: Mainly clear. Lows
15 to 20 below.
Tuesday: Mostly sunny. Highs
around 10 above.
Daily Weather Highlights
Surface low pressure will be positioned overhead of interior New England
this morning, moving to the coast around
Rhode Island by midday. The low will
then move northward toward nova Scotia, while intensifying this evening. Snow
will tend to taper to snow showers from
west to east across the state late today,
but could continue a little more robustly
over the northeast Kingdom into the
overnight. A strong wind ﬁeld will develop
along the back side of the low tonight,
generating very cold northwesterly
winds, blowing snow, and dangerously
low wind chills. Very cold and windy conditions will persist not just tomorrow, but
well into next week. Today will be the last
day in a while that we’ll see near-average temperatures. It could also be the
last day in while that we see appreciable
snowfall, as recent forecast trends have
been to lower the probability of effects
from a coastal storm early next week.,
says Chris Bouchard of the Fairbanks
Museum weather station.
CONDITIONS AT
4 P.M. YESTERDAY
Mostly Cloudy
TEMPERATURE
Temp. at 4 p.m. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Maximum past 24 hours . . . . . . . . .24
Minimum past 24 hours . . . . . . . . .-16
Yesterday’s average . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Normal average . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Maximum this month . . . . . . . . . . . .42
Minimum this month . . . . . . . . . . .-22
Maximum this date (1906) . . . . . . .50
Minimum this date (1915) . . . . . . .-30
HUMIDITY
40%
DEWPOINT
3
WINDS
0 mph, 0 max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .N
BAROMETER
30.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Falling
PRECIPITATION
New . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.00 in.
Total for Month . . . . . . . . . . . .2.59 in.
Normal Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.34 in.
SNOWFALL
Past 24 Hours . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0.0 in.
Monthly Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22.5 in.
Season Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55.6 in.
Season Norm To Date . . . . . . .48.6 in.
Snowpack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8.1 in.
ALMANAC
Sunrise today . . . . . . . . . . . .7:08 a.m.
Sunset today . . . . . . . . . . . .4:54 p.m.
Length of day . . . . . . . .9 hrs.45 min.
DEGREE DAYS
Average temp. difference below 65°
Yesterday* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
To date since July 1 . . . . . . . . . .4371
To date last year . . . . . . . . . . . . .4636
* calculated for the day before yesterday
CALEDONIAN Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
THE RECORD • fRiDAY, JAnUARY 30, 2015
A3
LOCAL
CHOICE MATTERS IN LOCAL EDUCATION
By James JarDine
Staff Writer
During National School Choice
Week, educators and parents expressed
a number of points of view on what
school choice means to them.
Julie Hansen, Head of the Thaddeus
Stevens School, a private pre k-8 school
that leases facilities on the Lyndon Institute campus, deﬁnes school choice as
“Where a child ﬁnds success, that’s
where the kid needs to go. End of
story.”
Speaking of the Thaddeus Stevens
School, Hansen highlighted the
school’s growth and said that when the
school is at capacity, it will be time to
start a new school with a new focus.
Speaking of public schools’ duty to provide an adequate education for every
student seeking one, Hansen says one
advantage of private schools is that a
private school does not have to accept
students and adds, “I’m comfortable
saying, ‘we have no more room.”
She adds that parents should choose
a school based on the best interest of the
child adding the best interest of a child
means not just an adequate education
but an education that will make the
child successful.
“The average parent cares very
much” about their child’s education,
she said. “Parents really struggle so that
their child can come here.”
Hansen downplays standardization
and common curriculum for all public
schools. “Let schools deﬁne themselves, even if the school is in a supervisory union.” She does not believe
every public school has to be the same,
with the same curriculum and the same
teaching and the same goals. Instead,
she believes even a public school
should be able to decide what the
school wants to be and what they want
to teach. Then parents can choose that
school or a different school that has different goals.
For instance, Hansen says a school
would decide that “Every student has to
belong to a club” and “every student
has to do community service.” Goals
such as those bring students together
and helps promote a common purpose.
Speaking of requirements for teacher
certiﬁcation, Hansen said, “There is no
evidence a license teacher is better than
a non-licensed teacher.” She does think
schools must be accountable and that
testing, restraints on behavior and
tracking outcomes are reasonable requirements.
“Parents must have the opportunity
to ﬁnd the place” where their child can
be successful, she said. The place may
very well be a public school, but parents should be able to participate in the
process.
Tom Lovett, Headmaster of St.
Johnsbury Academy, a private secondary school that accepts students from
St. Johnsbury and area communities in
Vermont and New Hampshire as well
as dorm students nationally and internationally, believes public schools deﬁnitely play a role in education. He
believes in school choice and that parents should make the decision of where
their child should go to school. He said
it should be the parents’ right to choose
the school that is best for their child.
Lovett is quick to add that the best
school for some children is the local
public school. “Not every kid is going
ORLEANS COUNTY
NEW STATE’S ATTORNEY
REPLACES MOST OF
FRANKLIN’S CREW
By Jennifer Hersey ClevelanD
Staff Writer
PHOTO BY JAmES JARDinE
Students head to their next class Wednesday afternoon at St. Johnsbury Academy.
to thrive at St. Johnsbury Academy,” he
said. “This is not the right school for
everyone.” He mentions the Academy
has 950 students from 31 countries and
20 states and that a school such as
Danville High School, with around 100
students, will be a better choice for certain students.
“We want public schools and private
schools to be successful,” he said.
Lovett said the Northeast Kingdom
has “a strong mix of different kinds of
school; public, private, big, small,
boarding and non-boarding. We want
public schools and private schools to be
successful.”
The key for Lovett is that parents
should have a choice. Lovett said his
most important relationship is the one
with the parents of a student. He believes he must deliver on the promise
the school makes to both parent and
student. “If I’m not delivering, you can
go ﬁnd someplace else,” he said.
a parent’s perspective
Ben Clarke lives in East Haven and
sends his children to the Riverside
School in Lyndon. Clarke is a teacher
at Burke Mountain Academy.
Since voting to close its school because of declining enrollment, East
Haven has been a choice town. East
Haven students attend a wide variety of
public and private schools.
“I think people should have choice
and pick the school that would be the
best for them,” he said. “I believe in
small schools and the intimacy of a
small community.”
Clarke thinks East Haven’s decision
to offer school choice is drawing people
to the area.
Orleans County Deputy State’s Attorney
Sarah Baker will not be invited to join the team
of incoming State’s Attorney Jennifer Barrett,
whose term begins Sunday.
Barrett made the decision Thursday, saying
that she needs a team in which she has confidence and that is cohesively working toward
the same aims. “It’s a different outcome than I
expected,” Barrett said, having announced less
than a week ago that Baker would remain on
staff.
Christopher Moll, a current deputy prosecutor in Lamoille County, and Michelle Donnelly,
a deputy in Washington County, will take over
the jobs held by Jim Lillicrap and Baker.
Amanda Jensen, who has eight years of experience working as a victim advocate for the
state police, will assume the same role for the
state’s attorney’s office. Jensen replaced longtime advocate Ann Vining, who is retiring after
decades.
Rounding out the team will be Beth Martin,
who will assume the role of secretary. That position was held by Jessie Davignon.
Jane Malgeri, who was fired by State’s Attorney Alan Franklin in December, is expected
to return to her role Feb. 2.
See Saturday’s edition of the Record for coverage of the swearing-in ceremony for state’s
attorneys with Gov. Peter Shumlin at the State
House.
BURKE
PELLET BOILER A WARM WELCOME AT SCHOOL
Open House
Planned To
Celebrate
New Classrooms,
Heating System
By James JarDine
Staff Writer
PHOTO BY JAmES JARDinE
Burke School Director Tony DeMasi, left, points out a feature
of the Burke School’s new pellet boiler system to Marc Brown,
Facilities Manager and Stacy Rice, Burke School Principal
Wednesday.
It’s estimated 10 tons of pellets
will generate ﬁve gallons of ash.
Brown comments, “We haven’t
found a downside.” The boilers
carry a 10-year warranty.
open house
The board and and school staff
want to celebrate the completion of
the new building and heating system. The open house will provide
tours of the new facilities. There
will also be a Scholastic Book Fair
and lots of food. The children will
enjoy sledding and other activities.
This year the Burke Pre-K
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through 8 has 22o students, with
192 students in K-8 classes. There
is a big volume of children coming
up through the school system with
some big classes for several years.
The new building offers room for
expansion. Burke added a pre-K
three years ago and students from
Sutton, Newark, Burke, East
Haven and Kirby attend the preschool. In fact, according to Rice,
when the preschool was added, tuition costs were actually reduced.
East Haven and Kirby students are
tuitioned to Burke’s k-8 grades.
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14 Ford Focus SE
4-dr., 4-cyl., 5-spd., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, 11,000 miles..........$14,900
14 VW Jetta SE
4-dr., 4-cyl. turbo, auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks,
15,000 miles............................................................................................$15,900
13 Nissan Sentra SR
4-dr., 4-cyl., auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, 13,000 miles ...........$15,900
12 Chrysler 300
4-dr., V6, auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks/seat, 15,000 miles........$19,900
12 Honda Accord SE
4-dr., 4-cyl., auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks/seat, leather,
21,000 mI................................................................................................$17,000
12 Ford Fusion SE
4-dr., 4-cyl., auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks/seat, 31,000 miles ...$14,900
11 Toyota Rav4 Sport
4-dr., 4-cyl., auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, moonroof,
leather, 69,000 miles ..............................................................................$17,500
11 Nissan Altima 2.5S Special Edition
4-dr., 4-cyl., auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr.win/locks, 31,000 miles .............$13,900
10 VW Jetta LTD
4-dr., 5-cyl., 5-spd., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, 66,000 miles..........$10,900
10 Honda Civic LX
4-dr., 4-cyl., auto., air, pwr. win./locks, tilt, cruise, 87,000 miles..............$9,900
10 Dodge Grand Caravan SE
V6, auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, “stow-n-go”, 57,000 miles....$13,000
10 Kia Soul !
4-dr., 4-cyl., 5-spd., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, 114,000 miles ..........$7,800
2013
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10 Mazda 3s Grand Touring
4-dr., 4-cyl., 5-spd., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks./seat, leather,
moonroof, 60,000 miles..........................................................................$12,900
09 GMC Sierra 1500 SL 4x4
Reg. cab, 8' box, V8, auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. locks, 41,000 miles ......$16,900
08 Chevy Colorado Crew Cab LT 4x4
4-dr., 5-cyl., auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, moonroof,
76,000 miles............................................................................................$17,500
2011 NISSAN
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08 VW Jetta SEL
4-dr., 5-cyl., auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, moonroof, leather
heated seats, 88,000 miles ........................................................................$8,500
4-dr., 4-cyl., auto., air,
cruise, tilt,
pwr. win./locks/seat,
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07 Toyota Corolla S
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2009
TOYOTA
HIGHLANDER
$
The Burke School is getting a
good payback from investments
made in a new classroom building
and pellet boiler heating system.
The school wants to share its
new facilities with the community
during an open house on Feb. 14
from 11 a.m to 2 p.m.
The building and the new heating system combined had a total
project cost of $450,000, but ﬁnancial planning and grant funding
means the project was built without the necessity of taking out a
bond. The whole project was completed without an increase in local
taxes.
The biomass heating system replaced an oil system and uses
wood pellets. This year, it is expected the school will save $1,200
in electricity costs and $15,000 a
year in fuel costs.
Some of the $450,000 came
from grants; they got a $50,000
grant from the USDA, a $10,000
grant from the Northern Forest
Center, a non-proﬁt environmental
stewardship center, and a $10,000
grant from Efﬁciency Vermont.
The Board also took out a short
term lease on the heating system
for $60,000. The board created a
Capital Reserve Fund over time
and were able to fund it with
$320,000. The $320,000 reserve
fund means the school expects to
have a ﬁve-year payback for the
entire cost of the new heating system.
The system is set up so that
there are several boilers connected
to one another. Each boiler can operate independently and a second
boiler will only kick in if the ﬁrst
boiler is unable to maintain the
temperature set on the thermostat.
If both boilers can’t maintain a desired temperature, a third boiler
will kick in. An oil-ﬁred back up
boiler can be called upon, but Facilities Manager Marc Brown says
he thinks the oil boiler has used no
more than ﬁve gallons of oil since
the new boiler system went online.
The pellet boiler produces a
very ﬁne powder for ash and the
entire boiler output of ash ﬁts in an
ash receptacle that has a few gallon
capacity. Brown can easily clean
the boilers in ﬁve minutes or less.
4-dr., 4-cyl., auto.,
air, cruise, tilt,
pwr. win./locks,
64,000 miles.
07 Dodge Dakota SLT 4x4
4-dr., V8, auto, air, cruise, tilt, pwr. win./locks, 99,000 miles.................$12,000
07 Jeep Patriot Sport 4x4
4-dr., 4cyl., auto., air, cruise, tilt, pwr.win/locks. 83,000 miles...............$10,000
07 Chevy Impala LT
4-dr., V8, auto., air, cruise, tilt,pwr. win./locks/seat, leather heated seats.
ONLY 72,000 miles! One owner, must see! ...............................................$9,500
04 Chevy Monte Carlo LS
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Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
CALEDONIAN Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
A4
THE RECORD • fRiDAY, JAnUARY 30, 2015
Todd M. Smith, Publisher
OPINION
Dana Gray, Executive Editor
Editorial Comment …
Another Shumlin Scam
Vermont suffers a hard-earned reputation for being hostile to
business. Now Governor Peter Shumlin wants to add a $90 million
payroll tax on Vermont businesses and their employees.
His idea is to apply the money to Medicaid reimbursements,
thereby maximizing the amount of money Vermont can claw in
matching federal funds. Shumlin says that money will go to medical providers who, in turn, can charge proportionally less to private
insurers who have long shouldered the monstrous costs of the notorious “cost-shift” (to make up the $400 million difference the
government doesn’t pay for care received by Medicaid and
Medicare patients).
The Governor insists that will bring down the ever-rising cost of
premiums paid by Vermont’s employers. He says the Green Mountain Care Board, in all its fantastical omnipotence, can guarantee
it. And insurers and hospitals are all on board, Shumlin says.
It sure looks tidy on paper. The only problem, like most of Shumlin’s plans, is that it deﬁnitely won’t work the way he promises.
As Health Care analyst John Franco, a Shumlin administration
contractor, told the House Ways and Means Committee, “You’ve
got all these leaks in the bucket, and that then becomes a very
clunky and inefﬁcient way of getting the savings to Vermonters.”
VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld, who covered that meeting, explains,
“The Green Mountain Care Board, Franco says, has no authority
over health care costs the hundreds of thousands of Vermonters
covered either by self-insured companies, out-of-state companies,
or the federal government. And… 35 percent of hospital costs incurred by residents are done so at hospitals outside the state of Vermont.
“Given the fact that so much health care activity occurs outside
the purview of the Green Mountain Care Board, Franco says it’s
doubtful that the board can exert its inﬂuence in ways that will ensure businesses recoup their $90 million in the form of reduced insurance rates.”
One thing we can be sure of, if the proposal passes, it won’t be
long before that .07 percent payroll tax becomes 1.5 percent, and
then 3 percent, and then 5 percent, and then 7 percent. By that time,
at least, there won’t be any businesses left to suffer Shumlin’s
ceaseless larceny.
Tina Dupuy
Choosing
Weed Policy
Over Cyber
Security
A cyber attack altered your holiday
movie choices last year. Sony
Pictures was the victim of a
massive security breach. Personal emails were revealed,
ﬁlms pirated and employee data
leaked. The corporation immediately kowtowed to the terrorists, rumored to be North
Korean-sponsored, killing the
theatrical release of the third in
a trilogy of Seth Rogan and
James Franco bromance movies
called, The Interview.
It was terrorism. And it was
terrifying. A major motion picture studio had just been brought
to its knees groveling for
whomever they upset not to do
any further damage.
The U.S. has the largest army
in the world. We outspend the
top 10 militaries in the world
combined. We outspend China
with the second largest military
expenditure by more than three
times. Our military budget hovers around $650 billion a year.
Every year. We are armed! We
are ready! We are ﬁghting! Yet
companies on our shores and
our citizens are totally vulnerable—sitting ducks waiting for
the next hacker to take us down.
Anyone at any time can take our
personal information and wreak
havoc.
“No foreign nation, no
hacker, should be able to shut
down our networks, steal our
trade secrets, or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids,” said
President Obama in his annual
State of the Union address. “We
are making sure our government
integrates intelligence to combat
cyber threats, just as we have
done to combat terrorism.”
So here’s a problem with our
current situation: The FBI needs
people who know the computers
and all. And some of
these people who are
knowledgeable in this
cyber hacking stuff,
who could maybe
thwart another attack
promising to “keep our
kids safe”—not all of
them but some—like to smoke
pot.
This came up last year when
FBI director James Comey told
an audience at the White Collar
Crime Institute conference that
the agency was having trouble
ﬁnding computer crime experts
who didn’t smoke marijuana. “I
have to hire a great workforce to
compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids
want to smoke weed on the way
to the interview,” Comey said.
He said he was “grappling”
with loosening the current requirement that to even be eligible to work at the FBI you must
not have smoked pot in the last
three years.
Then anti-drug Senator Jeff
Sessions clutched his pearls and
admonished Comey during a Judiciary Committee following
those comments. “I am absolutely dead-set against using
marijuana,” then clariﬁed
Comey. “I did not say that I am
going to change that ban.” And
according to the FBI’s website,
as of this writing, the ban hasn’t
changed.
After September 11th, the
military was only able to translate at three-quarters capacity.
They were unimaginably desperate for Arabic speakers while
discharging linguists for being
(wait for it) gay. Don’t Ask,
Don’t Tell—#headdesk. So after
the largest terrorist attack in our
nation’s history, when Americans were willing to give up any
civil right for the promise of
safety, we wouldn’t let openly
gay translators in the military?
Basically. Even in the throes of
hysteria and grief, when we
came together as one nation
standing resilient—we still manSee Dupuy, Page A5
In My Opinion…
WHY WE SHOULD FIX THE MEDICAID COST SHIFT
By governor PeTer sHUmlin
It wouldn’t make much sense if
you were charged $1.40 for a cup of
coffee only to ﬁnd the person in line
behind you was charged 60 cents for
the same order. Yet that’s how medical services are paid for in Vermont
and around the country. It’s not only
nonsensical; it’s harmful to Vermont’s economy and health care system, drives up private insurance
premiums paid by Vermonters, and
makes it difﬁcult for some Vermonters to access health care. It’s a problem we can’t afford to ignore any
longer.
The problem stems from what is
called the Medicaid cost shift, which
happens because Medicaid pays doctors and hospitals only 40 to 60 cents
for a dollar of cost. In other words,
for every dollar in care a doctor provides, the practice only receives between 40 and 60 cents. To make up
for those losses, doctors and hospitals
have to charge those with private insurance more.
That has some very real world
consequences for Vermonters. For
those Vermonters who get insurance
from their employer or who buy a
private plan from Blue Cross or
MVP, the cost shift increases premi-
ums by $150 million every
year. And it’s not just Vermonters with private insurance that are affected.
Since Medicaid pays doctors and hospitals so
poorly, Vermonters on
Medicaid sometimes have
trouble ﬁnding a doctor willing to accept their insurance. Most of us take
for granted that having insurance will
gain us access to health care. For the
nearly 130,000 Vermonters on Medicaid, that’s not always the case.
This isn’t a new problem. It’s one
that Republicans, Democrats, and
those in between have argued we
should ﬁx for years. But this time
around, there are two big differences
that should compel us to act. First,
our success in driving down the rate
of uninsured Vermonters through
Medicaid expansion and Vermont
Health Connect has put further pressure on the cost shift because more
Vermonters are now on Medicaid.
Second, we are making signiﬁcant
progress in Vermont in containing
other health care costs and moving
our state to health care payments
based upon quality rather than quantity. Finally addressing the cost shift
with real investment will help use
move our hospitals and
other providers to a more
rational payment system,
saving health care dollars
and improving health outcomes for Vermonters.
Now is the time to act.
The plan I have put forward will use money that would be
spent anyway to draw down hundreds of millions in federal funding
to shore up Medicaid rates and lower
private insurance costs right away.
Under the plan, we will ask businesses to pay a one seventh of one
percent payroll tax (0.7%), which
will raise $90 million a year. For the
majority of Vermont businesses, this
will equal less than $1,000 per year.
And since state Medicaid investments are matched by the federal
government, we’ll draw down an additional $100 million in federal
money to help our efforts.
Of that $190 million, we will dedicate a signiﬁcant portion of it to
shore up Medicaid payments and immediately drive down private insurance rates, resulting in a 5 percent
reduction in private insurance costs
to individuals and businesses. We’ll
invest the rest of the funds in
strengthening the overall health care
system to ensure better outcomes at
a lower cost, meaning businesses
providing insurance will beneﬁt ﬁnancially from lower health care
costs.
I know businesses are skeptical of
new revenue and worried that this
will not return value. I know they are
worried that Montpelier will try to
use this revenue source for other purposes down the road. But here is why
I think this makes sense. Right now,
businesses pay the vast majority of
private health care costs and are the
ones being overcharged. If we act,
businesses will be the ones that will
get the greatest relief if we lower private insurance costs by shoring up
Medicaid. Simply put, we’ll ask
businesses to pay in a payroll tax
money they would have spent in
higher insurance premiums had we
not acted to shore up Medicaid.
This is an incredibly complex subject, and that is exactly the reason it
hasn’t been ﬁxed yet. But I think we
can do it here in Vermont because
unlike other states, Vermonters listen,
debate the facts, and are capable of
having a rational conversation about
a complex topic. I hope you’ll join
me in having that conversation these
next few months.
In My Opinion…
WHY ELECTRICITY COSTS SPIKED
By mereDiTH angWin
A Valley News letter writer was
speaking for many recently when he
asked about huge electric rate increases this winter and paltry explanations for them. David C.
Montgomery of Hanover New
Hampshire said his electricity bill
had increased by 72 percent, even as
petroleum products have dropped in
cost. “All we have seen,’’ he wrote,
“is a rather unconvincing claim about
the need for more natural gas
pipelines in New England and a series of what seem to be diversionary
workshops on insulation.”
His letter states the problem succinctly. Oil prices are down. Gasoline
prices are down to levels not seen for
years. Natural gas prices are still low.
“The need for more pipelines” does
seem a rather weak claim, compared
to the cheapness of the commodity
carried in them. Also, why would we
need more pipelines now, when we
didn’t need them ﬁve years ago? The
demand hasn’t changed that much.
The answer is that the grid itself
has changed in our region. Power
plants have been retired: Salem, Mt.
Tom, Vermont Yankee. When coal
and nuclear plants shut down, existing gas plants run longer and use
more fuel, to make up for that power.
More gas-ﬁred plants are also being
planned for the future.
More Gas needed
Around 2000, about 15 percent of
New England’s electricity was made
by burning natural gas. It was expensive, and used only during times of
peak demand. The rest of the time,
electricity was supplied by a mixture
of coal, nuclear, oil and hydro. Back
then, with only 15 percent of electric-
ity coming from natural gas,
pipelines to the Northeast were adequate.
Now, the price of natural gas has
fallen, and nearly half of our electricity demand is met with the newly inexpensive natural gas. With
increased demand, the pipelines are
no longer adequate. Particularly during very cold weather, when homes
use more natural gas for heating,
there isn’t enough available for
power plants.
Last year, when temperatures
plummeted and natural gas ran short,
power plants burned oil, diesel and
even jet fuel. The price on the grid
went up as utilities bought power
produced with more-expensive fuels.
Last year, bulk electricity prices often
soared past 40 cents per kWh (kilowatt hour) during times of high demand. (It’s usually 3 to 8 cents per
kWh.) You can track realtime prices
on the grid operator site (ISO-NE) on
the Web.
Other costs also go up when
power plants retire, but these aren’t
so easy to track. For example, capacity payments go up. So far, I have described prices for kWh … that is, for
power produced. There’s also something called a “capacity payment”: a
payment for a plant to be available to
produce power. The capacity payment auction takes place three years
in advance. In 2013, the auction
yielded $1 billion for power plant operators. Then a number of plants retired. With more scarcity, the 2014
auction brought $3 billion to plant
operators. These billions are not as
visible as the “price on the grid,” but
the money comes from ratepayers
and raises everyone’s cost of electricity.
Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
winter reliability
Then there’s the reliability issue.
The grid operator will do whatever it
must to ensure reliability. For the past
two winters, our grid operator has
run “winter reliability programs” and
frankly, that program saved us last
winter. Last winter, the operator paid
about $70 million to power plants
that could burn oil. The plants used
this money to stock up — with a supply on site, they had fuel available
when they were called upon. Indeed,
when gas-ﬁred plants could not get
gas, the oil-burning plants went online.
Last year, the Winter Reliability
Program cost $70 million in the
Northeast. This year, it is budgeted at
$80 million. These multimillion dollar programs get translated into our
winter power bills and winter price
rises. However, there is a bit of hope
for the future. This has been a milder
winter, with low oil prices. To date,
the grid’s Winter Reliability Program
has spent far less than last winter, and
that is a hopeful sign for the future.
renewables
What about renewables? I will not
focus much on renewables or their
costs, because they are a very small
portion of the electricity supply. I
have been watching the hourly fuel
supply on the grid rather closely, and
wind has never been more than 2
percent of the supply. Renewables,
including biomass and refuse, are
about 6 percent of the supply. Renewables are not the cost-drivers on
the grid.
Solutions, Maybe
I’ve explained the reasons for recent price rises, but do I have a solution? Well, a partial solution, maybe.
First, I believe in conservation, and I
just invested a great deal in improved
insulation for my house. (And I want
to thank Efﬁciency Vermont for
picking up part of the cost.) To me,
workshops on insulation are not
merely diversionary. They are terribly important.
Being in favor of insulation is
about as controversial as favoring
real maple syrup. My second point is
a little more controversial. Supposedly, we need more pipelines because gas is the fuel of choice …
now. It’s abundant and cheap. But I
don’t think it will remain cheap.
Should we be building more
pipelines because of low-priced gas?
I am not sure. If the price of gas goes
up, the pipelines will not be fully
used.
Instead of more pipelines, I think
we need a diversiﬁed grid. If we
choose, we can build more renewables with a diversiﬁed grid, just as
we can build them with a mostly-gas
grid. And with a diversiﬁed grid (yes,
I mean keeping our nuclear, coal, oil,
Hydro-Quebec power as well as gas),
we won’t have all our eggs in one
basket.
If we are going to have a heavily
natural-gas grid, we could keep our
costs more stable (for now) and our
grid more reliable by building more
gas pipelines. But I think it would be
better to choose conservation and
grid diversity. With that, perhaps we
could have reliability and prevent
further drastic price rises in the future.
Meredith Angwin of Wilder is a
physical chemist who worked for
electric utilities for more than 25
years and now heads the Energy Education Project of the Ethan Allen Institute.
CALEDONIAN Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
THE RECORD • fRiDAY, JAnUARY 30, 2015
A5
NEW ENGLAND
Letters to the Editor …
Sen. Campbell’s
gun grab
to the editor:
Isn’t it funny that the same Sen.
Campbell who just got some $40,000
to $60,000 per year to handle “overﬂow cases” by the Windsor County
State’s Attorney’s Ofﬁce is now
pushing to twist Vermont laws to
mimic Federal Laws? (more “work”
for Campbell) And am I the only one
who sees the “dog-whistle” racism in
his description that “automatic
weapons” (show me one? Campbell
knows the difference between auto
and semi-auto) are being toted by
“out of state drug dealers and criminals” (read—Black and Brown kids
from ghetto’s) when state/federal employees here in the Northeast Kingdom were busted for “improper
records keeping” by BATF and a former Colchester cop stands accused of
stealing heroin and some eleven guns
are “missing” from their evidence
room? Mark my word, the gun-grabbers are playing the long game by
having everyone undergo a “background check” so they can deny legal
sales to anyone who ever has seen a
doctor for any and all psychological
treatment, been arrested for “drugs”
(even a gram over an ounce of pot is
a “felony”), or been dragged into
court for “domestic violence”, a
charge one of my friends battled for
throwing an empty diaper bag in his
girlfriend’s direction, or happens to
be on the “Medical Marijuana” registry like me.
Even when we, the sick and disabled, changed Vermont law to allow
for medical marijuana, were
“promised” the list on their registry
was “conﬁdential”, I now ﬁnd that I
can no longer buy a new ﬁrearm from
a licensed dealer and being on that list
is the only thing that has changed
since I bought my last new ﬁrearm
back in 2006. This is why I “came
out” to the Barton Chronicle’s Tena
Starr, even though it involved “sharing” my medical history in public.
When I nervously testiﬁed for the
law change in 2003 Vt. Sen. Jim
Leddy asked why I was (visibly)
shaken, I said that the Fed’s could
take your house, guns, and other
property and rights for using a plant
our founding fathers had grown way
dupuy
Continued from Page A4
aged to marginalize homosexuals,
declining their expertise and opting
for a gap in competent personnel instead. Yes, we did.
And now we repeat a dark, self-defeating and completely stupid policy
when it comes to personal drug use.
Are we a nation that prioritizes security and stability in our systems or do
we want to just ﬁnger wag at sinners?
It’s puritanical folly that the FBI
doesn’t just consider candidates who
want to serve their country and are
good at what they do; they must also
be candidates for canonization.
back in the 1700’s. He put his hand
on my shoulder and said “don’t
worry young man, THIS is VERMONT, and nothing like that will
happen here”. Now, I am being denied my 2nd Amendment and Vt. Art.
16 rights because I went to a hospital
for “routine surgery” and came out
with an incurable disease and use a
plant (that was legal to grow until
1937) to keep the nausea at bay?
This is NOT about “felons” or “violent criminals” buying/owning
guns, that is ILLEGAL NOW, this is
about “enlarging the pool” of people
THEY can deny gun ownership to as
the economy further sends more into
poverty, police becoming more “militarized” and beat down citizens with
impunity and immunity while the
rich watch from their gated communities. Just Google the powers they
have granted our Prez with the
NDAA, how anyone can be
“deemed” a “UBE” (unprivileged
enemy belligerent) and held indeﬁnitely without charge or Habeas Corpus, which shreds the Posse
Comitatus Act over 150 YEARS old,
look at what happened after hurricane
Katrina? While at it, Google “US
Patent 6630507” and see how our
Govt.’s HHS granted a patent for all
the compounds in Cannabis, and
see/link to all the peer reviewed studies at the end of the application.
The only power a bureaucrat has
is the power of “no” and they operate
in a climate of fear, that and self-aggrandizement to make more money
for them or their friends. Like former
Sen. Leddy said to me “this is Vermont”, and we have the lowest crime
of most of the states in the Union, in
which crime rates are the lowest in
over 50 years, yet this unbridled
“fear” ﬁnds itself at OUR doorstep
because of a few high-proﬁle shootings in other states? Lets join together
to keep our rights, to say NO to them,
not here, not in Vermont, not now, not
ever. If they feel the need for “sensible gun control” let them move back
to where it’s law now and see exactly
how more laws are presently “making sense” while we live as free men
in a free state, one with the fewest
laws and even fewer crimes.
Sincerely,
Steve Merrill
North Troy, Vt.
Love it or hate it, the war against pot
has been lost. It’s mostly decriminalized and now in four state people can
buy it without even claiming it’s medicine. It’s taxed and regulated in those
states. It’s out in the open. Americans
can now admit to smoking marijuana
for fun, just like they can drink alcohol
for fun. They just can’t work at the FBI
(among many other employers).
The irony is Seth Rogan and James
Franco movies would have no audience whatsoever if not for the consumption of marijuana. So shouldn’t
the people who could protect their interests be allowed to toke if they
choose?
Yes.
©2015 TinADUPUY.COm
REGION
Fireﬁghters battle auto salvage yard ﬁre
LONDONDERRY, N.H. (AP) — Fireﬁghters are at the scene of an auto
salvage yard in Londonderry, New Hampshire, that’s destroyed a garage.
Fireﬁghters responded to Murray’s Auto Recycling at about midnight
Wednesday.
Fire Chief Darren O’Brien tells WMUR-TV (http://bit.ly/1yQ2a7F) the
garage contained chemicals, gasoline, tires, autos, and machinery. It is used
to dismantle salvage vehicles.
No one was hurt. Frozen hydrants made ﬁghting the ﬁre more difﬁcult.
Tankers from other towns got water from a nearby brook.
The cause of the ﬁre is under investigation.
Butcher shop owner has
to pay nearly $14K to charity
BRIEFS
the cost estimate for the second phase of the Vermont Gas natural gas pipeline
project.
The Rutland Herald reports (http://bit.ly/1uF3Sn9 ) that the Vermont Public Service Board has ordered Vermont Gas to provide the update by Feb.
17.
The board decided at the end of December that a second cost increase for
the project was enough to investigate it further.
Vermont Gas announced two cost increases for the project, initially $86
million, now $154 million.
The ﬁrst phase of the pipeline is designed to reach Vergennes, Middlebury
and others. The second would deliver gas to additional communities, with a
spur that would cross underneath Lake Champlain to serve the International
Paper Ticonderoga Mill in New York.
Fire kills two pets in Highgate
SEABROOK, N.H. (AP) — An owner of a butcher shop in New Hampshire has pleaded guilty to not giving money from a fundraiser to a charity.
The Meat House held a charitable event in 2013 for the beneﬁt of the
Chaplain Emergency Relief Fund. The money was going to beneﬁt veterans.
Attorney General Joseph Foster said Justin Rosberg, co-owner of the business, failed to pay the funds. He pleaded guilty Thursday in Seabrook to one
count of misapplication of property.
Rosberg’s one-year sentence was suspended for two years, conditioned
on payment of nearly $14,000 in restitution.
Another co-owner, Jason Parent, was indicted earlier this month on charges
of theft and misapplication of property. He’s scheduled to be arraigned Friday.
HIGHGATE, Vt. (AP) — Fire ofﬁcials say a bathroom ceiling fan is the
suspected cause of a ﬁre that damaged a two-family home and killed two
pets in Highgate.
The ﬁre broke out on the second ﬂoor Wednesday night.
The residents were not home at the time although ofﬁcials say the home
did have working smoke alarms. Fireﬁghters were able to contain the ﬁre to
the second ﬂoor and roof.
The damage is estimated at $200,000.
The American Red Cross is helping the families with housing and clothing.
Vt. police looking for would-be burglars
ORWELL, Vt. (AP) — Vermont state police are asking the public’s help
in identifying two men who attempted to steal goods from a warehouse at
Crescent Orchards in Orwell.
Police say workers at the orchard confronted two men who had piled up
goods both inside and outside the apple warehouse. The men took off on foot
when the workers confronted them.
A state police K9 was brought in to track the men, but police say they were
picked up by a vehicle that had been seen circling the area.
Police ask that anyone with information about the incident contact them
at 802-388-4919. Information can also be submitted online at www.vtips.info
or text “CRIMES” (274637) to Keyword: VTIPS.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The Maine Human Rights Commission
says three women were discriminated against because of their age when
Shaw’s supermarkets laid off hundreds of workers three years ago.
The Portland Press Herald (http://bit.ly/1JMhWnK ) reports the commission ruled on Monday that the supermarket chain’s actions in 2012 unfairly
affected older workers. The commission voted unanimously that the company discriminated against the three workers because a policy decision to
lay off only full-time employees primarily affected older workers.
The commission also says Shaw’s did not engage in age discrimination in
the way it treated the three workers. Maine law says the commission can differentiate between treating someone in a discriminatory way and enacting
policies that result in discrimination. Shaw’s did not respond to a request for
comment.
Police search for man who
robbed credit union
Attorneys for man charged
in teen death want trial moved
SPRINGFIELD, Vt. (AP) — Police are looking for a man who robbed a
credit union in Springﬁeld, Vermont.
The man indicated to a teller at Windsor County Credit Union on Wednesday that he had a weapon and demanded cash. No one was hurt.
Police are looking for the public’s help in ﬁnding a suspect. They said he
is described as white and between 20 and 30 years old. He was wearing a
black hoodie, black pants and shoes and was clean-shaven.
Maine: Shaw’s ﬁrings
discriminated against older workers
BANGOR, Maine (AP) — Attorneys for a man accused of using a phony
Facebook proﬁle to lure a 15-year-old girl to her death want his trial moved
to another county.
Lawyers for Kyle Dube of Orono argued during a hearing in Bangor
Thursday that their client wouldn’t receive a fair trial in Penobscot County
because of the amount of media coverage. They suggested it be held in Kennebec County.
WABI-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1BvuNo2 ) that the judge plans to rule after
the jury is selected. She’s also expected to issue a written decision on the defense’s request to suppress some of Dube’s statements.
Dube is accused of using a fake Facebook proﬁle to set up a meeting with
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The former head of the federal Bureau of Nichole Cable of Glenburn before killing her in May 2013.
The trail is expected to begin next month.
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Vermont has pleaded not
guilty to domestic and simple assault charges.
The Burlington Free Press reports (http://bfpne.ws/15KTwff) 44-year-old
James Mostyn was released on conditions from superior court in Rutland
following his arraignment this month.
Mostyn is scheduled to be back in court March 4 on the misdemeanors.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A new study has found hemlock trees in the
One stems from a November confrontation with a co-worker. Mostyn said Catskill region declining in health amid an invasive pest infestation.
there was no assault. The other arises from an incident with his girlfriend’s
U.S. Forest Service and University of Vermont researchers found the person.
centage of healthy hemlocks in the region dropping from 59 percent in 2001
Mostyn was one of the investigators who helped secure confessions from to 16 percent in 2012.
one of the three Shefﬁeld-area men charged with murder in the slaying of
Forest Service Forest Entomologist Ryan Hanavan said Thursday the de78-year-old Mary “Pat” O’Hagan. She was shot in the back of the head dur- cline in the 274-square-mile area is due almost exclusively to the hemlock
ing a home invasion in 2010.
woolly adelgid. The pervasive invasive insect originally from Japan can cause
trees to lose needles and branches and eventually die.
The Forest Service is working with other agencies to control the infestation. The study was published this week in the Journal of Economic EntoMONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont state regulators want an update on mology.
Former ATF head pleads not guilty
to assault charges
Study: Hemlocks ailing in
Catskills amid pest infestation
Vt. Gas ordered to submit cost estimate
Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
CALEDONIAN Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
THE CALEDONIAN-RECORD
A6
FRiDAy, JANUARy 30, 2015
NEWPORT CITY
FIRE CHIEFS SEE SAFETY RISK IN 911 CONSOLIDATION
Petitions Circulate As Mutual Aid,
Dispatchers Oppose Closure Of Derby PSAP
By roBin smiTH
Staff Writer
DERBY — Fire chiefs in
northeastern Vermont are joining
their counterparts in Rutland
County to oppose the budget cuts
that will close the Derby and Rutland 911 call centers and eliminate dispatcher jobs.
Petitions are circulating across
the Newport-Derby area, asking
lawmakers not to close what’s
called the public safety answering point (PSAP) in the Derby
state police barracks on Route 5.
Opponents ask the Legislature
not to eliminate the 15 to 20 dispatching positions and two 911
call centers that would save $1.7
million in the state budget.
Charleston Fire Chief Duane
Moulton, head of the Northeast
International Mutual Aid Association, said this week that fire
chiefs have contacted legislators
and Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn.
“There’s a lot of places in the
state that could be cut without
putting our citizens at risk,”
Moulton said.
Derby dispatcher Patricia Bennett says the state would lose
years of experience of local dispatchers, who have the knowledge of local roadways and
people that is indispensable.
“We are scared for public
safety,” Bennett said.
But Flynn, who approved the
consolidation plans, said public
safety is not at risk.
“I am not going to go ahead
and and do anything that would
jeopardize the safety of troopers,
firefighters and EMS crews,”
said Flynn, a former Orleans
County state’s attorney.
“I will absolutely not do that.”
Gov. Peter Shumlin has ordered his administration to find
budget cuts across state agencies
to help solve a $112 million
budget shortfall.
Flynn says he will save $1.7
million in salaries, benefits, overtime and infrastructure expenses
by closing the two PSAPs. The
Derby PSAP would be folded
into the larger PSAP in Williston,
which will cover northern Vermont.
Likewise, the Rutland PSAP
would close and fold into the
Rockingham PSAP to cover
southern Vermont. Eventually,
Rockingham PSAP will move to
a new location in Westminster.
This is the second stage of a
911 consolidation in Vermont
that began 15 years ago. These
four PSAPs were formed when
12 regional dispatch centers at
state police stations were consolidated.
The PSAPs handle 77 percent
of all 911 calls in Vermont. There
are four private dispatching centers serving local police and sheriff’s departments.
Technology has expanded the
information available to public
safety officers in the field,
through smart phone and other
services. The troopers in the field
each have a mobile computer in
defraud
Continued from Page A1
a Carl Goya at Wells Fargo Bank
in California and went to the CNB
Derby branch and made a cash
withdrawal of $15,000, according
to Field’s afﬁdavit.
The next day, Jan. 13, she went
to the Barre branch and withdrew
another $7,000 in cash.
On Jan. 14, the check was returned to Community National
Bank for having been drawn on a
closed account. St. Onge said repeated calls to Kelley-Johnson had
not been returned and that the bank
had placed a hold on the remaining
$3,000.
The IRS was informed of the
distribution since normally people
can’t withdraw money from an
IRA until they are 59½ years old,
St. Onge told Field. Normally
there is a seven-day hold on checks
for IRA accounts, but that did not
happen with this check, St. Onge
said.
Det. Sgt. Darren Annis and
Field went online to check out the
banks and businesses involved,
ﬁnding that there is no American
State Bank located in Maryland -
PHOTO BY ROBin SmiTH
PHOTO BY TAYlOR REED
Vermont State Police Dispatcher Patricia Bennett works Thursday morning at the Derby public safety answering point han- Home-schooler Niall LeFoll, 11, Maidstone, a participant in Northeast Kingdom Classical Condling 911 calls, surrounding by a console of computer screens. versations for area home-schoolers, experiments with science Thursday at Union Baptist
The answering point is in the Derby VSP barracks on Route 5. Church in Waterford.
their cruiser, linked to information available at the barracks,
Flynn said. They aren’t as dependent on the dispatchers as
they once were.
Each PSAP can and does handle calls from anywhere in Vermont. The 911 calls go into the
system, and then are routed to
different PSAPs depending on location.
During the recent storm, Derby
dispatchers fielded overflow calls
from Rockingham to assist.
Dispatchers sit at a console of
four large monitors, using the latest technology to identify where
a 911 call is coming from, find it
on a map, draw up Google maps
that show what the house and
neighborhood looks like, and
other details.
Flynn said that kind of technology makes it less necessary
for a dispatcher to know that a
private road is a right turn at the
big tree by someone’s barn.
The quality of service will not
be compromised, Flynn said.
“Bull sh—,” Moulton said,
worried that his firefighters “will
be stuck out there in oblivion”
without dispatch help and without working radio communications.
Fire departments and EMS
crews are already dealing with an
emergency radio frequency that
is not working as well as the one
used in the past – a government
directive that has worsened local
emergency
communications,
Moulton said.
He did not trust that another
government change would not
harm services.
And firefighters and EMS
crews feel betrayed, he said.
They were asked to support the
consolidation of dispatching centers into the PSAP in Derby, and
they did, and it worked well after
a bit of a rough start, he said.
Now, they will lose that too, he
said.
Google maps don’t include all
the private drives and new builds
out there, Moulton and Bennett
said.
Bennett also disagreed with
Flynn, saying that local knowledge is indispensable.
“We’ve committed to the areas
we serve. We know the streets.
We drive them,” Bennett said.
Too many motorists depend on
GPS services for traveling. Recently, she said she handled a 911
call from a motorist who tried to
take what looked like a road on
GPS but what was a snowmobile
trail, and got stuck.
She said she knew the name of
the local farmer who state police
called to ask to help dig out the
motorist.
Who in Williston would know
that? she asked.
Dispatchers are also volunteers
on the local ambulance and fire
departments in their spare time,
Bennett said, adding to the community benefit.
Dispatchers in Derby can and
do field calls from other parts of
Vermont, Bennett said. But that
local knowledge, she believes,
cannot be replaced.
“We all think this is a very bad
idea,” Bennett said.
“They are putting personnel at
risk,” Moulton said.
There are campaigns online
and petitions circulating they
hope to take to Montpelier to
save the Derby PSAP.
Some dispatchers in Derby
may be able to move to jobs in
Williston, depending on the
union contract agreement, Flynn
said.
Some positions will just be
eliminated, cutting the state dispatcher workforce from 104 employees.
The loss of good-paying jobs
will hurt in Orleans County,
Flynn said.
“I’m from Orleans County. I
was born and raised in Orleans
County. I am very much aware
that the employment is not
enough,” Flynn said.
But the governor directed all
commissioners and secretaries to
look at business structures to find
savings, Flynn said, and that’s
what he did.
Flynn said he has approached
the need for cuts pragmatically,
because the government has to
make sure that Vermont is not
spending more than the taxpayers
can afford.
He promised to be as transparent as possible about the consolidation if the Legislature does
agree with the proposal.
where the MJ’s Sinclair check was
supposedly drawn from. Although
MJ’s Sinclair is a real business in
Sioux Center, Iowa, the company
has no Maryland locations.
MJ’s Sinclair did have an account with American State Bank at
one time, but closed it in October
2014 due to the numerous fraudulent checks being deposited.
Police executed a search warrant at Kelley-Johnson’s Main
Street apartment Jan. 26, and took
her into custody the next day.
Kelley-Johnson waived her Miranda rights and told Field that she
had been depositing and sending
money all over the world after
meeting a “Jeffrey Raymond” online in 2012.
Raymond claims to be overseas
in the military, but somehow unable to come home because of
medical and money problems. Kelley-Johnson said she was helping
him return home. She said she
wired thousands of dollars to him
until an agent with the wire company told her to stop doing that.
Kelley-Johnson said she gets
very little in return – just the promise of a better life with a house and
vehicle. A man named Michael
Hutchson had sent her gifts, how-
ever, she said, like jewelry, clothes
and a television.
It was Hutchson who told her to
open the IRA at Community National Bank, Kelley-Johnson said.
Another man named Alex
Thomas would contact her via cell
phone or computer about where
and to whom she should send
money.
Kelley-Johnson admitted she
sent $25,000 to Goya and said she
mailed $14,000 in cash in a box of
books as instructed by Thomas,
keeping $500 for gas, food and
bills.
Then Kelley-Johnson said she
sent $45,500 to a New Hampshire
bank at the request of Detectives
Gomez and Smith of Florida –
who she’d never actually met.
“This, she stated, was a trap for the
police to catch ‘Michael Hutchson’
and ‘Alex Thomas,’” Field wrote.
Field called the number for
Gomez, which led to an answering
machine with a voice message, and
no indication whatsoever that the
number belonged to a police ofﬁcer.
Field noted that at no time did
Kelley-Johnson show remorse or
offer to repay the bank its money.
Choice
Continued from Page A1
great. It is both a privilege and an
opportunity to be able to choose
how to educate our children.”
Van Der Eems founded the local
CC community three years ago. It
spans prekindergarten through 7th
grade and will grow to upper
grades if demand arises.
Community meetings occur
every Thursday for 24 weeks, excluding 7th graders who meet for
30 weeks. Home-schoolers review
the week’s curriculum and assignments for the following week.
Students convene in classrooms
that formerly housed the defunct
Union Baptist School. Parents are
approve
Continued from Page A1
Management District. Recyclables
are accepted at the Waste District
on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
There will be no fees for mandated
recyclables. Another option available to residents is to place mandated recyclables at the roadside
for semi-monthly pickup. The select board will contract with one or
more commercial ﬁrms to pick up
mandated recyclables. Recyclables
placed at the roadside shall be separated into bags or containers by
speciﬁc waste type.
A third option for recyclables allows a resident to contract with an
independent hauler for the pickup
of unsorted recyclables. However,
a resident who chooses this option
life
Continued from Page A1
sentenced to the minimum
mandatory term of 10 years imprisonment. The RSA also states
no part of the minimum mandatory sentence shall be served
concurrently with any other term,
nor shall any part of an additional term of imprisonment be
suspended or deferred.
In the appeal, Balch’s defense
attorney argued the trial court
erred by permitting a conviction
and sentence for each individual
firearm Balch possessed on a single occasion and erred by requiring that each sentence be served
consecutively and not concurrently.
The N.H. Supreme Court justices rejected that argument and
concluded the language in the
statute speaks for itself.
“Deciding whether to impose a
mandatory penalty for a criminal
act is a policy decision that the
N.H. Constitution empowers the
Legislature to make,” wrote the
justices. “The wisdom and reasonableness of the legislative
uncontested
Continued from Page A1
dates are all running unopposed.
Murphy is running for the term
held by Alan Ruggles, who is
stepping down in March after
four years on the board. Angell,
who formerly worked for the St.
Johnsbury Fire Department and
currently works for the state of
Vermont, is seeking the term that
Murphy leaves.
The select board’s other members not up for re-election are Jeff
Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
the teachers or “tutors.”
“The parents come and they are
completely involved,” Van Der
Eems said.
Curriculum includes the arts,
English, geography, Latin, mathematics, and science.
Rote memorization is the name
of the game for young students
who focus on learning a timeline
of the world’s signiﬁcant historic
events, including Biblical references. The instruction is accomplished
largely
through
memorization of a 15-minute song
of history starting with “creation”
and proceeding to modern times.
When students demonstrate
timeline mastery, they move to
logic and rhetoric. For example,
7th graders Thursday were learn-
ing about the “slippery slope fallacy” through a story from “The
Book of Fables” called the “The
Arab and His Camel.”
“They’re learning to present
their arguments and be persuasive
in their speech,” Van Der Eems
said. “We train the brain to inquire.”
Home-schooler Mercy Simpson, 12, said, “I enjoy everything
about CC.”
More information is available at
the Community Conversations
website. It is an international organization.
In Vermont, there are CC communities in Burlington, Waterford
and White River Jct.
must still pay the municipal sanitation fee.
A multi-family or commercial
business property owner may request in writing to not be included
in the sanitation program on the
basis of providing self-service, but
the owner will be required to pay
an annual administration fee of
$10 per household or business
unit.
The new ordinance will enable
Lyndon to comply with Act 148, a
new state waste management law
that requires collection of mandated recyclables and requires fees
for the collection be charged on the
basis of weight or volume. At present, Lyndon simply allows a
household to put out as much
household waste at curbside as the
homeowner wishes. The annual
sanitation fee collected by the
town is not based on either the volume or the weight of a household’s
trash. At present, residents do not
have an option to self-haul ordinary household waste to a collection point.
Currently, household pickup of
recyclables in Lyndon is very limited. The new ordinance expands
opportunities for roadside pickup
of recyclables, however, the roadside pickup will no longer be free
and roadside pickup will be semimonthly.
The new solid waste ordinance
drafted by selectmen also addresses laws regarding illegal disposal, open ﬁres and incineration,
accumulation of discarded household waste, burning leaves and illegal dumping.
scheme are for the Legislature,
not the courts, to determine, and
disputes regarding such should
be addressed to the General
Court.
“Accordingly, we conclude
that the plain language of RSA
159:3-a demonstrates that the
Legislature intended to adopt
each individual firearm possessed as the unit of prosecution
under RSA 159:3-a,” the justices
wrote.
They added, “The doctrine of
[legal precedent] demands respect in a society governed by
the rule of law, for when governing legal standards are open to
revision in every case, deciding
cases becomes a mere exercise of
judicial will with arbitrary and
unpredictable results.”
Citing a previous N.H.
Supreme Court case, the justices
said the unit of prosecution in the
statute is each individual firearm
possessed by a felon, “which is a
simple rule to apply and easy to
understand … We conclude that
the trial court properly applied
the sentencing requirements …”
Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling, however, came with a caveat
as the justices pointed to what
they called the “severe” penalty
of Balch’s sentence.
“Despite our conclusion, we
are concerned the defendant will
effectively serve a lifetime prison
sentence,” they said. “Nevertheless, the judiciary cannot act as a
super-Legislature; nor can it impose its will in place of those
elected by the people of New
Hampshire to define criminal
penalties, based upon policy considerations. Accordingly, we invite the Legislature to reexamine
the severe penalties established
by RSA 159:3-a.”
Balch’s criminal history includes being a fugitive from justice for a time, beginning in
2007, after being paroled.
At Balch’s May 2013 sentencing, assistant Grafton County Attorney Melissa Pierce spoke of
jewelry and other family heirlooms Balch stole that were
priceless and had been handed
down through generations.
“It’s very clear from the record
that Mr. Balch is a career criminal,” Pierce said during sentencing. “Victims have been violated
again and again by Mr. Balch.”
Moore and board Chairman
Kevin Oddy.
Winning school board candidates, barring a successful March
write-in campaign, will be newcomer Patrick Ely for a two-year
term and incumbent Becky Baldauf for a three-year term. Baldauf and Ely are running
unopposed.
Baldauf now holds a two-year
term but seeks the three-year term
that longtime School Director
Bruce Corrette is leaving in
March when it expires. Corrette
has served for 15 years, and he
served another eight years during
a previous stint.
Ely, a former St. Johnsbury
School employee and current
principal at Newark Street
School, seeks Baldauf’s vacated
two-year term.
The school board’s remainder
includes Richard Boisseau, Tony
Greenwood, and Rob Mach.
In other election news, Town
Clerk/Treasurer Stacy Jewell is
running unopposed for clerk and
for treasurer. The positions are
separate.
CALEDONIAN Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
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FRiDAy, JANUARy 30, 2015
VERMONT
A7
MASSACHUSETTS
New Roman Catholic Bishop Installed During Mass Jury Selection Resumes Today In Tsarnaev Trial
By lisa raTHKe
Associated Press
BURLINGTON, Vt. — The
Rev. Christopher Coyne, the
Catholic Church’s ﬁrst blogging
priest to be elevated to a bishop,
was formally installed as Vermont’s new Roman Catholic
bishop during a Mass on Thursday
attended by nearly 1,000 people
including representatives of the
diocese’s 73 parishes.
Bishop Coyne said the church
needs to shift from a “church of the
establishment,” where worshippers
come to it, to a “missionary
church” that goes out and engages
a wider community.
“The ringing of church bells
was once something with which
we Vermonters were very familiar.
Whether it was in the small towns
of the countryside or the competing calls of the churches of the
cities, the Sunday morning call of
the bells ‘to the bath and the table,
to the prayers and the Word’ were
a constant reminder of the presence of God in our midst,” he said
during the Mass.
The bells still ring out — not so
many and not so often — but not
many answer the call. Congregations have grown smaller and
grayer each year, he said.
“And yet, I like many of you, do
not stand here in this cathedral
without hope, without the conviction that this need not be. Now
more than ever, our community
needs to hear the call of the ‘Good
News’ proclaimed to a culture that
seems to hear so many other
voices,” he said.
Vermont has about 118,000
Catholics, with about 28,000 attending Mass regularly. The
church faces the same challenges
in Vermont as it does across the
country: declining membership, a
shortage of priests and the aftermath a priest sex abuse scandal
that forced the diocese to sell off
some of its most valuable real estate to pay legal settlements.
The 56-year-old Coyne served
three years as auxiliary bishop in
Indianapolis before coming to Vermont. He is a native of Woburn,
Massachusetts, and served as the
spokesman for the Diocese of
Boston during the priest sex abuse
scandal. In Vermont, he replaces
Bishop Salvatore Matano, who became the bishop of Rochester,
New York, in 2013.
Anne Buley, 63, of Burlington,
who attended the Mass, got choked
up when asked about Coyne.
He’s really down to earth and
very humorous, but I mean serious
in the religious aspect,” said Buley,
who said she’s seen his posts on
Facebook.
Gail O’Brien, 63, of Shaftsbury
also attended the Mass and heard
him speak the night before at
evening prayer. “He seemed very
welcoming of the whole ecumenical group that was there last night.
His ﬁnal words were about what
we can all do together is pray for
peace. He just seemed to have a
good message,” she said.
During the Mass, Coyne’s appointment letter from Pope Francis
was read before he was escorted to
the cathedra by Cardinal Sean
O’Malley of Boston, and Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the
pope’s ambassador to the U.S.
He used the crozier, or bishop’s
staff, of the ﬁrst bishop of Burlington, Louis Joseph Mary Theodore
De Goesbriand, and wore the pectoral cross of the second bishop of
Burlington,
John
Stephen
Michaud.
Therapy Adocate Charged With Sexually Abusing 13-year-old
RUTLAND, Vt. (AP) — Vermont state police say a Rutland man
who worked as a therapy advocate
sexually abused a 13-year-old autistic student.
Police say 48-year-old Jon
Gilbert is due to appear in Rutland
Superior Court on Feb. 16. He’s
charged with lewd and lascivious
conduct with a child.
Authorities say they were notiﬁed
by the Vermont Department of Children and Family Service in October
about concerns involving inappropriate sexual conduct between
Gilbert and the 13-year-old girl at
the Vermont Achievement Center
where Gilbert worked.
Police say Gilbert sexually
abused the child during a summer
school trip in 2014 and had sexually
explicit exchanges with her on
Facebook.
A phone number listed in
Gilbert’s name was not in service. It
was not immediately known if he
has a lawyer.
Gilbert has been on administrative leave from his most recent job
with the Rutland school system
since Oct. 8, when school ofﬁcials
say they learned of the investigation.
Rutland School Superintendent
Mary Moran said Thursday that
Gilbert was hired as a para-educator
on Aug. 27, 2014 at the Allen Street
Campus, “after we received positive
reference checks from VAC.”
“Mr. Gilbert has had no contact
with Rutland city school students
since Oct. 8, 2014,” Moran said.
By Denise lavoie
AP legal Affairs Writer
BOSTON (AP) — As jury selection resumed Thursday in the
federal death penalty trial of
Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a prosecutor accused one of Tsarnaev’s
lawyers of trying to “encourage”
a hung jury.
Assistant U.S. Attorney
William Weinreb said attorney
David Bruck asked a “wholly inappropriate” question when he
probed a man with a supervisory
job about whether he would listen
to the opinions of other jurors.
Weinreb told Judge George
O’Toole Jr. he viewed Bruck’s
question as an “instruction” that
no juror could change another
juror’s view about whether the
death penalty would be an appropriate punishment.
Bruck said he was merely asking the juror if he understood that
in the end, all jurors have to make
their own decisions. Bruck said it
was appropriate to ask if the juror
could respect the fact that other
jurors might have different moral
views.
Judge George O’Toole Jr. said
the questions asked by lawyers in
the case should be aimed at discovering bias or some other issue
that would disqualify them as
serving as jurors in Tsarnaev’s
trial.
Tsarnaev, 21, is accused in the
2013 bombing that killed three
people and injured more than 260.
He has pleaded not guilty.
The testiness between the two
sides came on the eighth day of
questioning prospective jurors.
O’Toole has questioned 105 people so far, but has not revealed
how many of those people have
been excused.
Many have said they can’t be
impartial because they already believe Tsarnaev is guilty or have
said they would be unwilling to
impose the death penalty under
any circumstance. In order to be
seated on the jury, jurors must express a willingness to consider
both the death penalty and life in
prison as possible punishments.
Jury selection was suspended
for two days this week as a blizzard dumped two feet of snow in
Boston.
On Thursday, O’Toole, prosecutors and Tsarnaev’s lawyers
questioned seven prospective jurors, including an events planner
and former social worker who
said she could keep an open mind
about Tsarnaev and had not yet
formed an opinion on whether he
should receive the death penalty
if he is convicted.
“If it was myself or someone I
knew who was in this situation …
I would want that fair trial,” she
said.
Jury selection is set to resume
Friday.
John Kerry Fined $50 For Failing To Shovel Snow Outside Home
BOSTON (AP) — John Kerry
has many titles — secretary of
state, former senator, one-time
Democratic candidate for president.
The globe-spanning diplomat
can add one more: snow shoveling scofﬂaw.
After a blizzard dumped two
feet of snow on his city this week,
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh
vowed to crack down on anyone
who left the sidewalks in front of
their homes and businesses buried
in snow.
He wasn’t kidding.
On Thursday, ofﬁcials tagged
Kerry with a $50 ﬁne at 9:45 a.m.
for failing to clear the snow from
the side of his Beacon Hill man-
sion.
Kerry was in Saudi Arabia attending the funeral of King Abdullah with President Obama.
Kerry spokesman Glen Johnson told the Boston Globe Kerry
will promptly pay the ﬁne. He
said shovelers ﬁnished clearing
the sidewalk late Thursday morning.
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A8
THE RECORD • fRiDAY, JAnUARY 30, 2015
NATION & WORLD
Feds: Treasure Hunter Eluded Police With Cash, Tradecraft
By amanDa lee myers
anD maTT seDensKy
Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. —
A deep-sea treasure hunter who vanished during a court ﬁght over his
$50 million haul of gold bars and
coins eluded capture by hiding in a
two-room hotel suite under a fake
name, paying for everything in cash
and keeping a low-proﬁle, authorities
said Thursday.
When Tommy Thompson and his
longtime companion did leave the
hotel room, usually alone and her
more than him, they would use a
combination of buses, taxis and
walking around to shake anyone who
might be tailing them.
“That’s all part of the whole tradecraft — trying to ﬂy under the radar
of law enforcement,” said Barry
Golden of the U.S. Marshals Service
in Miami.
Thompson, 62, was wanted after
he failed to appear in an Ohio courtroom in 2012 in a lawsuit about the
gold he brought up in 1988 from a
19th century shipwreck. Two investors who had funded Thompson’s
dream to ﬁnd the shipwreck sued, as
did some of his crew members, who
said they also had been cheated out
of their share.
For more than two years, U.S.
marshals in Ohio and Florida worked
to track down Thompson. They did
meticulous research, splashed his
face on electronic billboards and ran
down hundreds of tips from the public. They believed Thompson was
highly intelligent and had been planning to disappear for some time.
On Sept. 12, 2008, he was arrested
at a Jacksonville, Florida, gas station,
carrying nine identiﬁcation cards —
eight of which police said were fake,
according to an incident report. He
was charged with possession of
drugs without a prescription with the
intent to sell, holding a fake ID, false
personation and resisting an ofﬁcer
without violence. Court records
show prosecutors later dropped all
the counts, but it’s not immediately
clear why.
After his disappearance four years
later, authorities found more evidence at a Vero Beach mansion he
rented between 2006 and 2012, paying the monthly $3,000 rent with
cash and putting the utilities in the
landlord’s name.
Among the clues: A book called
“How to Live Your Life Invisible”
describing how to get by on a cash-
only basis; bank wraps for $10,000;
metal pipes that authorities believed
were used to store money underground; and 12 active cellphones,
each used for speciﬁc attorneys or
family members.
“Thompson was smart — perhaps
one of the smartest fugitives ever
sought by the U.S. Marshals, along
with almost limitless resources and
approximately a 10-year head start,”
U.S. Marshal Michael Tobin said in
a statement.
But there was a trail.
Based on an unspeciﬁed lead developed by Ohio agents in December, Florida authorities started
focusing on Thompson’s companion
and longtime assistant, Alison Anteiker.
On Tuesday, agents spotted Anteiker after fanning out over an area
of Palm Beach County, Golden said.
They tailed her for the next seven
hours, watching her use buses and
taxes to get to various destinations,
an obvious attempt to lose anyone,
Golden said.
Eventually, Anteiker unknowingly
led agents to a Hilton Hotel in suburban Boca Raton area surrounded by
golf courses, country clubs and gated
communities.
Authorities believe Thompson
and Anteiker were living there for up
to two years. The room was under
one of three fake names being used
by Anteiker.
Based on statements from hotel
staff, they believe Anteiker left the
hotel room much more often than
Thompson.
Thompson and Anteiker were
held without bond in Florida — she
on a civil contempt charge, he on a
criminal contempt charge. He hasn’t
been charged with a crime over his
handling of proceeds from the gold.
Much of it was sold to a gold marketing group in 2000 for about $50
million. The 161 investors who paid
Thompson $12.7 million to ﬁnd the
ship said they never saw returns from
the sale.
During a brief federal court hearing Thursday, a shackled and bearded
Thompson suggested a willingness
to ﬁght extradition to Ohio, where he
grew up and was based before he
moved to Florida in the mid-2000s.
Thompson told U.S. Magistrate
Dave Lee Brannon he has “been very
ill for a number of years” with a type
of encephalitis, an overactive immune system and allergies that
would be exacerbated if he is taken
north.
See Treasure, Page A10
Ukraine: Russia-backed Rebels Overrun Another Town In East
By PeTer leonarD
Associated Press
ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine —
Ukraine’s military conceded Thursday that its forces had been overrun
by Russian-backed separatist forces
in another town in their battle to hold
onto a strategically valuable railway
hub.
A soldier wounded in combat for
the town, Vuhlehirsk, said armored
vehicles and tanks were used in the
attack on government positions, forcing a hasty retreat.
Defense Ministry spokesman
Vladislav Seleznyov said ﬁghting is
now under way to expel the rebels
from Vuhlehirsk.
“We are trying to push the enemy
out of the town,” he said.
The loss of full control over town
will further complicate efforts to resist the onslaught on Debaltseve, a
nearby railway hub that sits between
the two main rebel-held cities of
Donetsk and Luhansk.
While clashes in east Ukraine
rage, hopes are still being invested in
reviving a peace process that has
been undermined with every new
day of ﬁghting.
The leader of the separatists in the
Luhansk region, Igor Plotnitsky, told
a rebel news agency that the success
NOTICE OF TAX SALE
The resident and non-resident owners, lien holders and mortgagees of lands in the
Town of Westfield, in the County of Orleans and State of Vermont, are hereby notified
that the taxes assessed by the said Town of Westfield for the year 2014, remain either
in whole or in part unpaid on the following described land and premises in said town,
to wit:
PARCEL NO. 1:
Name of Taxpayer: RONALD GOFF
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Warranty Deed dated October 15, 2010 and recorded in Book 46, Pages
648-654 of the Town of Westfield Land Records from James Snee and Deidre Snee to
Ronald H. Goff.
Amount of Taxes, Collector's Fees, Interest & Costs: $5,771.39
PARCEL NO. 2:
Name of Taxpayer: GREEN MOUNTAIN CHIPPING INC.
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Warranty Deed dated November 1, 1991 and recorded in Book 26, Pages
104-105 of the Town of Westfield Land Records from David L. Villeneuve to Green
Mountain Chipping Inc., together with such interest therein as was conveyed by Quit
Claim Deed dated December 20, 1996 and recorded in Book 29, Pages 340-341 of
the Town of Westfield Land Records from Yankee Farm Credit ACA to Green Mountain
Chipping Inc., with the exception of those portions thereof conveyed by Warranty Deed
dated December 23, 1996 and recorded in Book 29, Pages 357-363 of the Town of
Westfield Land Records from Green Mountain Chipping Inc. to Stuart J. McCampbell
and Thomas R. Morrow, Co-Trustees, and by Warranty Deed dated October 17, 1997
and recorded in Book 30, Page 136a of the Town of Westfield Land Records from Green
Mountain Chipping Inc. to Lawrence Moffatt.
Amount of Taxes, Collector's Fees, Interest & Costs: $2,131.72
PARCEL NO. 3:
Name of Taxpayer: MARGARET KEARNEY
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises designated as Parcel 1 in the Warranty Deed dated June 7, 1991 and recorded in Book
25, Pages 317-319 of the Town of Westfield Land Records from Roland L. Daigle and
Suzanne B. Daigle to Margaret Kearney, with the exception of that certain Right of Way
Easement granted by instrument dated July 16, 1992 and recorded in Book 26, Page
192 of the Town of Westfield Land Records from Margaret Kearney to Vermont Electric
Cooperative, Inc.
Amount of Taxes, Collector's Fees, Interest & Costs: $2,419.03
PARCEL NO. 4:
Name of Taxpayer: MARGARET KEARNEY
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises designated as Parcel 2 in the Warranty Deed dated June 7, 1991 and recorded in Book
25, Pages 317-319 of the Town of Westfield Land Records from Roland L. Daigle and
Suzanne B. Daigle to Margaret Kearney, with the exception of that certain Right of Way
Easement granted by instrument dated July 16, 1992 and recorded in Book 26, Page
192 of the Town of Westfield Land Records from Margaret Kearney to Vermont Electric
Cooperative, Inc., and with the exception of those certain rights conveyed by River
Corridor Conservation Easement dated January 17, 2014 and recorded in Book 50,
Pages 582-594 of the Town of Westfield Land Records from Margaret Kearney to Vermont River Conservancy, Inc.
Amount of Taxes, Collector's Fees, Interest & Costs: $1,421.19
PARCEL NO. 5:
Name of Taxpayer: KENNETH NISSON
Description of Property:
It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Quit Claim
Deed dated May 20, 1983 and recorded in Book 22, Page 42 of the Town of Westfield
Land Records from Toni Hoffman to Kenneth Nisson.
Amount of Taxes, Collector's Fees, Interest & Costs: $1,135.76
And such lands and premises will be sold at public auction at the Westfield Town Clerk's
Office, 38 School Street in the Town of Westfield, Vermont, a public place within said
municipality, on the 17th day of February, 2015, as per the following schedule:
PARCEL NO. 1 - 9:00 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 2 - 9:05 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 3 - 9:10 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 4 - 9:15 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 5 - 9:20 A.M.
unless such taxes respectively assessed against the aforesaid properties, together with
costs, interest and fees, shall have been previously paid.
Pursuant to Title 32, Section 5254 (b), Vermont Statutes Annotated, an owner of property being sold for taxes may request in writing, not less than twenty-four (24) hours
prior to the tax sale, that only a portion of the property be sold. Such request must
clearly identify the portion of the property to be sold, and must be accompanied by a
certification from the district environmental commission and the Westfield Town Zoning
Administrative Officer that the portion identified may be subdivided and meets the
minimum lot size requirements. In the event that the portion so identified by the taxpayer cannot be sold for the amount of the unpaid tax and costs, then the entire property will be sold to pay such unpaid tax and costs.
Taxpayers are further advised of their right to have a hearing before the Westfield Town
Board for the Abatement of Taxes in accordance with the provisions of Title 24, Section
1535, Vermont Statutes Annotated. Taxpayers wishing to have such a hearing must
contact the Westfield Town Clerk to request such a hearing.
Dated at the Town of Westfield, Vermont, this 15th day of January, 2015.
ATTEST: s/JOYCE CRAWFORD
Tax Collector for the Town of Westfield, Vermont
of negotiations planned for Friday
will hinge on lifting what he described as Ukraine’s economic
blockade of breakaway regions.
Ukraine last year ordered the suspension of banking services in rebel territories, and stopped paying beneﬁts
to people not registered in government-controlled areas.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington
strongly condemns the attacks on
Debaltseve and underlined that the
town is about 13 kilometers (8 miles)
beyond a cease-ﬁre line agreed at
September’s peace talks in Minsk.
“There can also be no mistake
about Russia’s role in the escalation
of violence, which is causing suffering and death among those Russia
has claimed it wants to protect,” she
said.
Multiple ﬂashpoints have ﬂared
up across eastern Ukraine since the
start of the month, when full-blown
ﬁghting between Russian-backed
rebels and government forces
erupted anew following a month of
relative tranquility. Since the conﬂict
started in April, it has claimed more
than 5,100 lives and displaced more
than 900,000 people across the country, according to U.N. estimates.
NOTICE
KIRBY VOTERS
Town Reports may be
picked up at:
Town Clerk’s Office
Transfer Station (Saturdays)
Fighting also continued to rage
Thursday near the main rebel-held
city of Donetsk, where at least ﬁve
civilians were killed by artillery
shelling. Scared residents were huddling from the barrage in frigid basements, relying on humanitarian aid to
survive.
“Our house is still OK, but it’s really frightening to stay there, the
walls are shaking,” said Natasha
Domyanova, who lives in the city’s
Petrovsky district. “It’s damp and
cold here. We call ourselves the children of the dungeon.”
As Ukraine’s military fortunes falter, the plight of civilians pinned
down by ﬁghting around Debaltseve
is looking bleak.
Residents say the town has been
without power, water and gas supplies for more than a week. Several
hospitals in and around Debaltseve
have been hit by rebel shelling in recent days, forcing the grievously sick
and wounded to embark on trips of
more than an hour along roads targeted by artillery.
Speaking in a hospital bed in the
city of Artemivsk, 21-year-old
Ukrainian army soldier Vadim Pugovetsa said the attack on Vuhlehirsk
began with an apparent tactical feint.
“Some tanks tried to break
through, but we repelled the ﬁrst attack. But that was clearly a probing
move,” Pugovetsa said.
Armored vehicles and tanks
charged toward the town through
ﬁelds in a fresh assault two hours
later, he said.
Pugovetsa said he managed to
shoot two attacking infantrymen who
emerged from their armored vehicles
before being wounded by incoming
See Ukraine, Page A10
WARNING
ANNUAL MEETING OF BURKE TOWN SCHOOL DISTRICT
Notice to Voters:
1) Residents, who are not already on the voter checklist, may register to vote no
later than 5:00 on Wednesday, February 25, 2015, at the Burke Town Clerk’s
Office.
2) Registered voters may apply at the Town Clerk’s Office for an early voter ballot for Australian ballot issues until 4:00 p.m. the day before the election.
Warning Notice:
The legal voters of the Burke Town School District are hereby duly warned and
notified to meet in the Community Building in said town on Monday, March 2,
2015, at approximately 7:00 P.M. (immediately following the Town Annual
Meeting which starts at 6:00 P.M.) to hold an informational meeting on Articles
One and Two (1 & 2). Voting for Articles One and Two (1 & 2) will be by Australian
Ballot on Tuesday, March 3, 2015, at the Community Building in said town, with
the polls open between the hours of 8:00 A.M. and 7:00 P.M.
The legal voters of the Burke Town School District are hereby duly warned and
notified to meet in the Community Building of said town on Monday, March 2,
2015, immediately following the informational meeting for the Australian Ballot
articles to transact the following business in Article 3 through Article 5.
Article 1. To elect all necessary School District officers as required by law
(Australian Ballot):
a) School District Moderator
b) School Director for 2 years, term to expire in 2017
c) School Director for 3 years, term to expire in 2018
Article 2. Shall the voters of the Burke Town School District appropriate
$5,270,917 necessary for the support of its schools for the year beginning July 1, 2015? (Australian Ballot)
Article 3. Shall the voters of the Burke Town School District authorize the school
directors to transfer to the Capital Reserve Fund surplus funds from the
school year ending June 30, 2015, if any?
Article 4. Shall the voters of the Burke Town School District authorize and empower the School Directors to borrow money in anticipation of receipts and
to give a note or notes in the name of the District to secure payment
thereof?
Article 5. Shall the voters of the Burke Town School District authorize the School
Directors to accept and to expend such grant monies as may from time
to time become available to the school district?
Article 6. To transact any other business that may legally come before said meeting.
Article 7. To adjourn.
Anthony DeMasi, Chairman – Jon Rice – Dean Shatney
School Directors, Town of Burke School District
Dated this 28th day of January 2015.
Attest: Priscilla Aldrich, Town Clerk and Treasurer
Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
WORLD BRIEFS
Obama calls for spending surge to burst past
‘sequester’ limits, buoyed by rising economy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Declaring an end to “mindless austerity,” President Barack Obama called for a surge in government spending Thursday,
and asked Congress to throw out the sweeping spending cuts both parties
agreed to four years ago when deﬁcits were spiraling out of control.
Obama’s proposed $74 billion in added spending — about 7 percent —
would be split about evenly between defense programs and the domestic side
of the budget. Although he’s sought before to reverse the “sequester” “spending cuts, Obama’s pitch in this year’s budget comes with the added oomph
of an improving economy and big recent declines in federal deﬁcits.
“If Congress rejects my plan and refuses to undo these arbitrary cuts, it
will threaten our economy and our military,” Obama warned in an op-ed article Thursday in The Hufﬁngton Post. He said the nation’s debt still would
decline as a share of the overall economy.
The ﬁgures represent Obama’s opening offer as he gears up for an inevitable budget battle with the new Republican-run Congress. He was to brief
House Democrats on the plan Thursday evening in Philadelphia at their annual retreat.
Republicans immediately balked — Texas Sen. John Cornyn dismissed
the plan as “happy talk” — although it was unclear just how much of
Obama’s proposal they would oppose.
Republican-led Senate passes bill approving
Keystone XL oil pipeline, defying White House
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled Senate on Thursday
approved a bipartisan bill to construct the Keystone XL oil pipeline, defying
a presidential veto threat and setting up the ﬁrst of many battles with the
White House over energy and the environment.
The 62-36 vote advanced a top priority of the newly empowered GOP,
and marked the ﬁrst time the Senate passed a bill authorizing the pipeline,
despite numerous attempts to force President Barack Obama’s hand on the
issue. Nine Democrats joined with 53 Republicans to back the measure.
This bill “is an important accomplishment for the country,” said Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “We are hoping the president upon
reﬂection will agree to sign on to a bill that the State Department said could
create up to 42,000 jobs and the State Department said creates little to no impact on the environment.”
Still the vote was short of the threshold needed to override a veto, and the
legislation still must be reconciled with the version the House passed.
“We hope President Obama will now drop his threat to veto this commonsense bill that would strengthen our energy security and create thousands and
thousands of new, good-paying American jobs,” said House Speaker John
Boehner.
Jordanian, Japanese families of Islamic State
hostages plead for their lives as swap hopes dim
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — The father of a Jordanian ﬁghter pilot and the
wife of a Japanese journalist held by the Islamic State group pleaded for their
loved ones’ lives after a possible prisoner swap wasn’t carried out by a deadline of sunset Thursday.
The extremists had demanded that Jordan release a female al-Qaida prisoner from death row, and they purportedly threatened in an audio message
to kill the airman if she was not freed by the deadline.
After sundown in the Middle East, there was no word on the fate of Lt.
Muath al-Kaseasbeh and journalist Kenji Goto, and the families’ agonizing
wait dragged on.
“We received no assurances from anyone that he is alive,” Jawdat alKaseasbeh, a brother of the pilot, told The Associated Press. “We have no
clue about where the negotiations stand now. We are waiting, just waiting.”
The possibility of a swap was raised Wednesday when Jordan said it was
willing to trade Sajida al-Rishawi, the al-Qaida prisoner, for the pilot.
With his old team headed for the Super bowl,
ex-NFL star Aaron Hernandez goes on trial
FALL RIVER, Mass. (AP) — With his ex-teammates about to play in the
Super Bowl, former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez went on
trial on murder charges Thursday, watching from the defense table as prosecutors said DNA on a shell casing and security-camera video from his own
home connect him to the crime.
Hernandez’s lawyer countered that the NFL player had “the world at his
feet” and had no reason to kill. He repeatedly told jurors that the athlete is
innocent and said authorities “locked” in on him as a suspect early on, ignored
evidence and conducted a “sloppy and unprofessional” investigation.
Hernandez, 25, is charged in the 2013 shooting death of Odin Lloyd, a
27-year-old semipro football player who was dating the sister of Hernandez’s
ﬁancee. Lloyd’s bullet-riddled body was found in an industrial park near Hernandez’s North Attleborough home, not far from Gillette Stadium.
Hernandez — who had a $40 million contract as a tight end but was cut
by the Patriots just hours after his 2013 arrest — could get life in prison if
convicted. On Sunday, the Patriots will meet the Seattle Seahawks in the
Super Bowl.
In a separate murder case that has yet to come to trial, Hernandez was
charged last year in Boston with killing two men in 2012 after someone
spilled a drink on him at a nightclub.
See Briefs, Page A9
Newspapers In Education (NIE) sponsorships/
partnerships make good sense to businesses,
professionals, organizations, families and schools.
Newspaper use has documented benefits for
education... and a good education benefits all of us.
But without your support, many students will not be
able to take advantage of this “living textbook.”
To find out more about the NIE program
at The Caledonian-Record,
to sponsor a classroom,
or helping with support efforts, contact:
Rosie Smith, NIE Director
The Caledonian-Record
190 Federal St., P.O. Box 8, St. Johnsbury, VT 05819
802-748-8121 • 800-523-6397
[email protected]
CALEDONIAN Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
NATION & WORLD
FRiDAy, JANUARy 30, 2015
Poll Shows Giant Gap Between What Public, Scientists Think
By seTH BorensTein
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON — The American public and U.S. scientists are
light-years apart on science issues.
And 98 percent of surveyed scientists
say it’s a problem that we don’t know
what they’re talking about.
Scientists are far less worried
about genetically modiﬁed food, pesticide use, and nuclear power than is
the general public, according to
matching polls of both the general
public and the country’s largest general science organization. Scientists
were more certain that global warming is caused by man, evolution is
real, overpopulation is a danger and
mandatory vaccination against childhood diseases is needed.
In eight of 13 science-oriented issues, there was a 20 percentage point
or higher gap separating the opinions
of the public and members of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, according to
survey work by the Pew Research
Center. The gaps didn’t correlate to
any liberal-conservative split; the scientists at times take more traditionally conservative views and at times
more liberal.
“These are big and notable gaps,”
said Lee Rainie, director of Pew’s in-
ternet, science and technology research. He said they are “pretty powerful indicators of the public and the
scientiﬁc community seeing the
world differently.”
In the most dramatic split, 88 percent of the scientists surveyed said it
is safe to eat genetically modiﬁed
foods, while only 37 percent of the
public say it is safe and 57 percent
say it is unsafe. And 68 percent of
scientists said it is safe to eat foods
grown with pesticides, compared
with only 28 percent of the general
public.
Ninety-eight percent of scientists
say humans evolved over time, compared with 65 percent of the public.
The gap wasn’t quite as large for vaccines, with 86 percent of the scientists favoring mandatory childhood
shots while 68 percent of the public
did.
Eighty-seven percent of scientists
said global warming is mostly due to
human activity, while only half of the
public did. The ﬁgures for scientists
are slightly different than past academic studies because of wording of
the question and the fact that AAAS
members include many specialties,
but they tell the same essential story,
said Pew associate director Cary
Funk.
What to do about climate change
is another issue. Nearly two-thirds of
scientists favored building more nuclear power plants, but only 45 percent of the public did. But more of
the public favored offshore drilling
for oil and fracking than scientists
did.
More than four out of ﬁve scientists thought the growing world population will be a major problem, but
just less than three out of ﬁve members of the public did.
Pew polled 2,002 adults in August
and did an online survey of 3,748
AAAS members in the fall. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the public and 1.7
percentage points for the scientists.
In 2009, Pew has asked only a
handful of questions like these to
both scientists and the public and the
gap hasn’t changed much since,
Funk said.
“On the whole, as compared to
most members of the public, scientists are likely drawing from a larger
scientiﬁc knowledge base — and
thinking more scientiﬁcally — about
each of these issues,” George Mason
University communications professor Edward Maibach said in an
email. “Therefore, their views appear
to be more in line with a completely
dispassionate reading of the risks
versus the beneﬁts.”
Alan Leshner, chief executive ofﬁcer of AAAS, said the gap between
the way the public and scientists look
at issue is a cause for concern.
“Science is about facts; science is
not about values,” Leshner said.
“Policies are made on facts and values and we want to make sure that
the accurate, non-distorted facts are
brought in to any kind of discussion.”
The trouble is that scientists don’t
think the public knows the facts. The
survey said that 84 percent of the scientists said it is a major problem that
“the public does not know very much
about science” and another 14 percent said it is a minor problem.
And 97 percent of the scientists
criticized the educational system.
Three-quarters of the scientists said
not enough science and math education is a major problem and another
22 percent said it was a minor one.
“It’s not about being smart or
dumb,” Leshner said. “It’s about
whether, in fact, you understand the
source of the fact and what the facts
are.”
––––––
Online:
Pew
Research
Center:
www.pewresearch.org/
American Association for the Advancement
of
Science:
www.aaas.org/
Journal Science: www.sciencemag.org
A9
NOTICE OF TAX SALE
The resident and non-resident owners, lien holders and mortgagees of lands in the
Incorporated Village of Orleans, Town of Barton, in the County of Orleans and State of
Vermont and the Orleans Incorporated School District, are hereby notified that the
taxes assessed by the said Incorporated Village of Orleans and the Orleans Incorporated
School District in the Town of Barton, Vermont, for the year 2014, and delinquent
electric and water and sewer charges remain either in whole or in part unpaid on the
following described land and premises in said town, to wit:
PARCEL NO. 1:
Name of Taxpayer: GREGORY J. ABBOTT, SR.
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Warranty Deed dated April 13, 1998 and recorded in Book 101, Pages 226228 of the Town of Barton Land Records from Penny D. Carter to Gregory J. Abbott, Sr.
TAX OR DELINQUENCY
VILLAGE TAX
SCHOOL TAX
AMOUNT OF TAXES
COLLECTOR’S FEES, INTEREST AND COSTS
$1,067.50
1,128.00
PARCEL NO. 2:
Name of Taxpayer: GEORGE GREENWOOD, SR.
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises decreed unto George Greenwood, Sr. by Decree of Distribution issued by the Orleans District Probate Court in the Estate of Elsie L. Greenwood, said Decree being dated
February 3, 2000 and recorded in Book 106, Pages 532-533 of the Town of Barton
Land Records.
TAX OR DELINQUENCY
VILLAGE TAX
SCHOOL TAX
AMOUNT OF TAXES
COLLECTOR’S FEES, INTEREST AND COSTS
$1,069.00
1,129.90
PARCEL NO. 3:
Name of Taxpayer: LRKC PROPERTIES LLC
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Warranty Deed dated August 12, 2008 and recorded in Book 149, Pages 7678 of the Town of Barton Land Records from Luc Quirion, Rhonda Quirion, Karl Chaffee
and Cindy Chaffee to LRKC Properties LLC.
TAX OR DELINQUENCY
VILLAGE TAX
SCHOOL TAX
WATER & SEWER
AMOUNT OF TAXES
COLLECTOR’S FEES, INTEREST AND COSTS
$1,881.16
2,146.22
1,410.97
PARCEL NO. 4:
briefs
Continued from Page A8
Gas truck explosion wrecks Mexico City
children’s hospital, at least 2 dead
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Injured and bleeding, mothers carrying infants
ﬂed from a maternity hospital shattered by a powerful gas explosion Thursday, and rescuers swung sledgehammers to break through fallen concrete
hunting for others who might be trapped.
At least two people were killed and more than 60 injured, Mexico City
Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said at a news conference. The known dead
were a woman and a child. Ofﬁcials earlier said at least four people had been
killed.
Mancera said 70 percent of the hospital had collapsed and the priority was
to continue digging in search of any trapped survivors. Authorities said they
had conﬁrmed that none of the children registered in the hospital were
trapped, but said it was possible that others who had come for appointments
could be.
The city’s health secretary, Armando Ahued, said the adult victim was a
25-year-old woman and the child was a newborn, between 2 and 3 weeks
old. He said seven infants and seven adults were in serious condition at area
hospitals.
Thirty-ﬁve-year-old Felicitas Hernandez wept as she frantically questioned
people outside the mostly collapsed building, hoping for word of her monthold baby, who had been hospitalized since birth with respiratory problems.
Boy Scouts settle California lawsuit over
sex abuse by volunteer Scout leader
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America settled a sex abuse
case Thursday involving a 20-year-old California man who was molested by
a Scout volunteer in 2007 — a decision that will keep years’ worth of “perversion” ﬁles detailing sex abuse allegations secret from the public.
The announcement of the settlement in the Santa Barbara case came after
three days of trial. The terms were conﬁdential at the Boy Scouts’ request,
said Tim Hale, the plaintiff’s attorney.
“I can’t go into details about the number, but it was a great result,” Hale
said.
Hale had won the right to use the “perversion” ﬁles to try to show the Boy
Scouts were negligent by not properly training, educating and warning parents, Scouts and volunteers about sexual abuse.
He told jurors in his opening statement that they would receive a CD with
100,000 pages of internal documents from 1971 to 2007 during their deliberations. Many of the documents have not been seen outside the Scouts.
As Romney weighs 2016 bid, several key donors
and fundraisers are committing to Jeb Bush
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Closing in on a decision about whether to
again run for president, Mitt Romney is ﬁnding that several past major
fundraisers and donors in key states have defected to former Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush.
The donors, in interviews with The Associated Press, said they see in Bush
what they liked about Romney in 2012, namely what they believe it takes to
serve successfully as president, but also something Romney could not muster
in his two previous campaigns: what it takes, both in personality as a candidate and in a supporting staff, to win the White House for the GOP.
Also, the donors said, they took the former Massachusetts governor at his
word when he said he would not run for president a third time.
“I’ve got great respect for Gov. Romney, and I busted my buns for him,”
said Chicago investor Craig Duchossois, whose wife contributed $250,000
to a pro-Romney super PAC while he collected tens of thousands more for
Romney’s last campaign. “But I have turned the page.”
And beyond donors, Romney lost one of his most trusted political advisers
on Thursday when veteran Iowa operative David Kochel formally joined
Bush’s team.
The doctor won’t see you now: Some physicians
opting to drop patients with anti-vaccine views
LOS ANGELES (AP) — With California gripped by a measles outbreak,
Dr. Charles Goodman posted a clear notice in his waiting room and on Facebook: His practice will no longer see children whose parents won’t get them
vaccinated.
“Parents who choose not to give measles shots, they’re not just putting
their kids at risk, but they’re also putting other kids at risk — especially kids
in my waiting room,” the Los Angeles pediatrician said.
It’s a sentiment echoed by a small number of doctors who in recent years
have “ﬁred” patients who continue to believe debunked research linking vaccines to autism. They hope the strategy will lead parents to change their
minds; if that fails, they hope it will at least reduce the risk to other children
in the ofﬁce.
The tough-love approach — which comes amid the nation’s secondbiggest measles outbreak in at least 15 years, with at least 98 cases reported
since last month — raises questions about doctors’ ethical responsibilities.
Most of the measles cases have been traced directly or indirectly to Disneyland in Southern California.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says doctors should bring up the
importance of vaccinations during visits but should respect a parent’s wishes
unless there’s a signiﬁcant risk to the child.
Name of Taxpayer: STEPHEN B. McKINNON
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Warranty Deed dated September 1, 2000 and recorded in Book 108, Pages
432-433 of the Town of Barton Land Records from Sheila Cowles to Stephen B. MacKinnon.
TAX OR DELINQUENCY
WATER & SEWER
ELECTRIC
AMOUNT OF TAXES
COLLECTOR’S FEES, INTEREST AND COSTS
$1,704.87
1,607.28
PARCEL NO. 5:
Name of Taxpayer: HSBC BANK USA, N.A., AS TRUSTEE FOR THE REGISTERED HOLDERS OF NOMURA HOME EQUITY LOAN, INC. ASSET-BACKED
CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2006-HE3
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises the
subject of an Order Confirming Sale issued by the Vermont Superior Court, Orleans
Unit in the matter entitled HSBC Bank USA, N.A., as Trustee for the Registered Holders
of Nomura Home Equity Loan, Inc. Asset-backed Certificates, Series 2006-HE3 v. Adam
P. Wheeler, Docket No. 397-11-12 Oscv, said Order being dated January 24, 2014 and
recorded in Book 168, Pages 277-279 of the Town of Barton Land Records.
TAX OR DELINQUENCY
VILLAGE TAX
SCHOOL TAX
AMOUNT OF TAXES
COLLECTOR’S FEES, INTEREST AND COSTS
$ 988.84
1,029.58
PARCEL NO. 6:
Name of Taxpayer: HARRY J. SMITH
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Warranty Deed dated March 12, 1953 and recorded in Book 48, Page 241 of
the Town of Barton Land Records from Bernard R. Gray and Eleanor L. Gray to Harry
J. Smith.
TAX OR DELINQUENCY
VILLAGE
SCHOOL
AMOUNT OF TAXES
COLLECTOR’S FEES, INTEREST AND COSTS
$521.51
444.76
PARCEL NO. 7:
Name of Taxpayer: TELEPHONE OPERATING COMPANY OF VERMONT LLC
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Quit Claim Deed dated October 13, 2009 and recorded in Book 155, Pages
7-10 of the Town of Barton Land Records from Verizon New England, Inc., formerly
known as New England Telephone and Telegraph Company to Telephone Operating
Company of Vermont LLC.
TAX OR DELINQUENCY
VILLAGE
SCHOOL
AMOUNT OF TAXES
COLLECTOR’S FEES, INTEREST AND COSTS
$447.44
314.17
PARCEL NO. 8:
Name of Taxpayer: DAVID L. YOUNG & AMANDA B. YOUNG
TOWN OF LISBON ZONING BOARD
NOTICE OF DECISION
SPECIAL EXCEPTION REGARDING
James Raia – 135 Atwood Street
5.04-1 Animal Husbandry – GRANTED
DANVILLE TAX COLLECTOR
NOTICE OF TAX SALE
[32 V.S.A. §5252(2)]
TOWN OF DANVILLE
The resident and nonresident owners, lien holders and mortgagees of lands in the Town
of Danville, Caledonia County, are hereby notified that the taxes assessed by the Town
of Danville owed for the years 2012 through 2014 remain, either in whole or in part,
unpaid on the following described lands in the Town, to wit:
1. Being premises described as 19.76± acres on Brook Road, being the remaining lands and premises conveyed to Jared P. Minshull by the following deeds: a) warranty deed of Timothy P. Minshull dated June 29, 2005
and recorded in Book 119, Page 41 of the Danville Land Records; and b)
warranty deed of Joan B. Klappert dated March 8, 2011 and recorded in
Book 143, Page 37 of the Danville Land Records. Parcel #TH056-006.001,
SPAN#174-055-11636.
2. Being premises described as 0.23± acres on Route 15, being the same
lands and premises conveyed to Telephone Operating Company of Vermont LLC by quitclaim deed of Verizon New England Inc. dated March 31,
2008 and recorded in Book 30, Page 650 of the Danville Land Records.
Parcel #VT015-022.001, SPAN#174-055-11609.
So much of such lands will be sold at public auction at the Danville Town Clerk’s office on March 10, 2015 at 10 o’clock a.m. as shall be requisite to discharge such taxes
with costs and fees, unless previously paid.
Dated at Danville, Vermont, this January 21, 2015.
Edward Ledo
Collector of Delinquent Taxes
Danville, Vermont
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
TOWN OF BROWNINGTON
The Town of Brownington anticipates having an opening
for a full time, year around, position of road foreman or
road crew member on or about March 3, 2015. Employment will require weekend and overtime hours during adverse weather. Applicants must possess a current Class
B CDL, and agree to pre-employment drug testing.
Please contact the Brownington Town Clerk at (802) 7548401 for an application.
Applications must be received no later than 4:00 P.M. on
February 10, 2015.
HEARING NOTICE
LITTLETON ZONING BOARD OF ADJUSTMENT
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2015 • 6:00 PM
COMMUNITY HOUSE HEALD ROOM – 120 MAIN STREET
REVIEW OF MINUTES:
January 14, 2014 – November 25, 2014 – December 9, 2014 – January 27, 2015
Dennis Wagner, co-owner – ZBA15-01 – Special Exception request relating to
Article IV, Section 4.02.05 of the Littleton Zoning Ordinance to allow an Auto Sales
Agency at 240 Main St., tax map 78-27, in the Commercial-1 zone.
REHEARING OF THE FOLLOWING CASES:
Timothy & Tina Reed, Owners / SBA Towers V, LLC, Applicants – ZBA1408 – Special Exception request relating to Article VI, Section 6.10.03 of the
Littleton Zoning Ordinance to allow a Personal Wireless Communication Facility at
1815 Manns Hill Rd., tax map 24-7, in the Rural zone.
Timothy & Tina Reed, Owners / SBA Towers V, LLC, Applicants – ZBA1409 – Variance request relating to Article VI, Section 6.10.04 and 6.10.10 of the
Littleton Zoning Ordinance to allow a Personal Wireless Communication Facility
closer to the property line than 125% of its height and to allow a PWCF within one
mile of another PWCF at 1815 Manns Hill Rd., tax map 24-7, in the Rural zone.
Other Business
The above applications are available for public review at the Planning & Zoning
Office, 125 Main Street, Suite 200.
Any person with a disability who wishes to attend this meeting and needs to be
provided a reasonable accommodation in order to participate, please call the
Planning & Zoning Office (603) 444-3996 X27 at least 3 days in advance so
arrangements can be made.
ONE OR MORE SELECTMEN MAY BE PRESENT AT THIS MEETING
Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
Description of Property: It being all and the whole of the same land and premises conveyed by Warranty Deed dated June 3, 2005 and recorded in Book 133, Pages 66-68
of the Town of Barton Land Records from Marcel A. Cote and Cynthia A. Cote to David
L. Young and Amanda B. Young, said premises having subsequently been the subject
of a Confirmation Order issued by the Vermont Superior Court, Orleans Unit on July
3, 2014 in the matter entitled GMAC Mortgage, llc vs. David L. Young, Amanda B.
Young, United Guaranty Residential Insurance Company of North Carolina and Occupants Residing at 1 High Street, Orleans, Vermont, Docket No. 410-12-12 Oscv, confirming title unto the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs, said Confirmation Order being
recorded in Book 169, Pages 316-317 of the Town of Barton Land Records.
TAX OR DELINQUENCY
VILLAGE TAX
SCHOOL TAX
AMOUNT OF TAXES
COLLECTOR’S FEES, INTEREST AND COSTS
$1,494.00
1,642.79
And such lands and premises will be sold at public auction at the Orleans Municipal
Building, 1 Memorial Square in the Village of Orleans, Town of Barton, Vermont, a
public place within said municipality, on the 27th day of February, 2015, as per the
following schedule:
PARCEL NO. 1 - 9:00 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 3 - 9:10 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 5 - 9:20 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 7 - 9:30 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 2 -9:05 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 4 -9:15 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 6 -9:25 A.M.
PARCEL NO. 8 -9:35 A.M.
unless such taxes and charges respectively assessed against the aforesaid properties,
together with costs, interest and fees, shall have been previously paid.
Pursuant to Title 32, Section 5254 (b), Vermont Statutes Annotated, an owner of property being sold for taxes may request in writing, not less than twenty-four (24) hours
prior to the tax sale, that only a portion of the property be sold. Such request must
clearly identify the portion of the property to be sold, and must be accompanied by a
certification from the district environmental commission and the Town of Barton zoning
administrative officer that the portion identified may be subdivided and meets the
minimum lot size requirements. In the event that the portion so identified by the taxpayer cannot be sold for the amount of the unpaid tax and costs, then the entire property will be sold to pay such unpaid tax and costs.
Taxpayers are further advised of their right to have a hearing before the Incorporated
Village of Orleans Board for the Abatement of Taxes in accordance with the provisions
of Title 24, Section 1535, Vermont Statutes Annotated. Taxpayers wishing to have such
a hearing must contact the Clerk of the Incorporated Village of Orleans to request such
a hearing.
Dated at the Town of Barton, Vermont, this 21st day of January,2015.
ATTEST: s/Shelia R. Martin
Shelia R. Martin, Tax Collector for the
Incorporated Village of Orleans, Vermont
and the Orleans Incorporated School District
CALEDONIAN Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
NATION & WORLD
A10
ukraine
Continued from Page A8
gunﬁre. Regional ofﬁcials loyal
to Kiev said two civilians had
been killed as a result of the
ﬁghting in Vuhlehirsk.
Until earlier this week, Pugovetsa might have been taken for
treatment to the nearby hospital
in the town of Svitlodarsk, but
that was hit by rocket ﬁre, forcing
the evacuation of 48 patients.
National Guard medic Col.
Ihor Ilkiv said multiple civilian
hospitals have been damaged by
what he called an intentional
rebel attempt to strain the government’s ability to provide medical treatment for troops.
Attacks on Ukrainian army
position in Debaltseve have
ticked up sharply since the start
of the week, Ilkiv said.
“Every day, around 40 or 50
wounded guys are brought in.
Two, three or more of them
badly. We also get about 10 or
more civilians,” he said.
Eduard Basurin, the deputy
commander of separatist forces
in the self-styled breakaway
Donetsk People’s Republic, said
rebel ﬁghters were under instructions to refrain from targeting
12
residential areas.
“When there is a war, anything can happen. But the
(Donetsk People’s Republic)
doesn’t ﬁre on towns and villages
on purpose,” he said.
Basurin also claimed rebels
now control the highway leading
north out of Debaltseve and into
government territory.
Despite claiming to rely solely
on military equipment poached
from the Ukrainian army, separatist forces have consistently deployed vast quantities of
powerful weapons, some of
which military experts say is not
even known to be in Ukraine’s
possession.
Pugovetsa said the tanks he
saw entering Vuhlehirsk appeared to be brand new and
showed little sign of wear.
Ukraine and NATO say Russia directly abets rebels with
manpower, arms and ammunition, all passed through the large
section of border that was
wrested from Ukrainian control
last year. Moscow denies those
claims.
On Thursday, the head of
Ukraine’s Joint Staff, Viktor
Muzhenko, said he had intelligence proving that Russian servicemen were involved in
combat alongside rebels, but said
that regular Russian army units
were not engaged in the ﬁghting.
In Brussels, Dutch foreign
minister Bert Koenders said the
European Union had decided to
extend a ﬁrst set of sanctions
against Russian and pro-Russia
separatist ofﬁcials which were
due to expire in March by six
months because of the continued
ﬁghting in eastern Ukraine.
Koenders said Thursday that
all EU foreign ministers agreed
on the decision and called it a
“strong signal toward Russia.”
In March, the EU imposed the
ﬁrst visa bans and asset freezes
against ofﬁcials linked to Russia’s annexation of southern
Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Speaking to reporters in
Washington, U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry urged Russia to
stop providing separatists with
heavy weapons.
“We want to see the Minsk
agreement upheld,” he said. “We
want the violence to end.”
Psaki urged Russia and the
separatists to immediately cease
offensive operations in eastern
Ukraine, warning that “otherwise, U.S. and international pressure on Russia and separatists
will only increase.”
R
E
V
I
TH ANN
FRiDAy, JANUARy 30, 2015
Amy Poehler Feted By Harvard’s Hasty Pudding
By PHiliP marCelo
Associated Press
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Amy
Poehler turned the tables on her roasters, poking fun at Harvard and its famed
Hasty Pudding theater troupe during its
annual Woman of the Year award
Thursday.
The actress joked at the irreverent affair that she never expected to be feted
by the Ivy League school she raised a
“middle ﬁnger” to growing up in
nearby Burlington, Massachusetts.
“I want to thank Hasty Pudding for
reminding us how hard it is to write
funny jokes,” she said after two student
roasters teased her about past roles in
comedies such as “Baby Mama” and
“Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.”
The “Parks and Recreation” star and
“Saturday Night Live” alum also poked
fun at the university’s elitist reputation
and pointed out the lack of female actors in her performance with the nation’s oldest undergraduate drama
troupe.
“It’s unsettling that there will be no
women on stage tonight,” Poehler said
to applause. “You know it’s time for a
GOINGW!
ON NO
Y
R
SA
and trafﬁc. And you get pretty hardy. It
certainly helped.”
Chris Pratt, Poehler’s co-star on
“Parks & Recreation” who starred in
the “Guardians of the Galaxy” ﬁlm, is
Hasty Pudding’s 2015 Man of the Year.
He gets his own parade and roast Feb.
6
The annual award goes to performers
who have made a lasting contribution
to entertainment. Last year’s winners
were Helen Mirren and Neil Patrick
Harris.
Poehler has a 2014 Golden Globe
award and ﬁve Emmy nominations for
her role as Leslie Knope on “Parks and
Recreation,” an NBC comedy series.
She spent seven seasons on “Saturday
Night Live.”
Earlier Thursday, Poehler was paraded from Harvard Square to the theater hall with a boisterous marching
band, costumed marchers and a duck
boat in tow.
Students and fans who lined Massachusetts Avenue for the parade held
signs declaring “Leslie Knope for president” and shouting, “We love you
Amy!” as she made her way down the
road in the back seat of a convertible
Bentley.
change when the Augusta National Golf
Club has lapped you.”
She then quickly quipped: “I haven’t
seen so many smiling white faces since
I took my top off at a mime convention.”
Later, Poehler rapped while wearing
a baseball cap of her alma mater,
Boston College, that her dad tossed on
stage from his seat in the audience.
She also did an improv skit with an
actor dressed as North Korean leader
Kim Jong Un and a dance routine with
male actors dressed as the popular high
school girls clique from her “Mean
Girls” movie.
“Wow, Amy. You can rap, act and
dance. You’re a regular Mark
Wahlberg,” said Jason Hellerstein, president of the student group, who roasted
Poehler along with group vice president
Samuel Clark.
Poehler promised to treat her award
— a golden pudding pot — “with the
respect any fake award deserves.”
After the roast, Poehler said being
raised in the Boston-area shaped her
comedy.
“I think at times I have a very bluecollared approach,” she said. “Bostonians have to go through a lot of weather
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treasure
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His friends have previously told
The Associated Press that he contracted some type of autoimmune
disease from a mosquito in South
America and that warm, humid climates help his condition.
Thompson said he had not yet
hired an attorney. He was ordered
back into custody, and another hearing was set for Wednesday.
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