Route 4 night work to return; updates on state and school news
Traffic heads through Woodstock Village along Route 4. (Gareth Henderson Photo)
The second round of paving in the ongoing Route 4 project in Woodstock Village will include some night work next week.
Work crews will begin the second layer of paving during the day on Thursday and Friday this week. Then, the night paving will commence on Sunday at 5 p.m. and continue through to morning, with that schedule in place until the morning of Thursday, June 17, as announced by Police Chief Robbie Blish at the Village Trustees meeting on Tuesday.
The state project’s paving component is nearly two months ahead of schedule. Once the paving is done, crews will begin re-striping lines on Routes 4, 12 and 106 in the village limits, and re-creating the parking spaces downtown.
Vermont edges closer to pivotal vaccine milestone
The state of Vermont is on the cusp of removing all its pandemic restrictions, with just over 3,100 people to go until it vaccinates 80% of its eligible population.
When Vermont hits that 80% mark, the state will remove all remaining pandemic restrictions. As of Tuesday, 79.4% of eligible Vermonters have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Vermont still has dozens of free walk-in vaccination opportunities around the state every day, Gov. Phil Scott said at his Tuesday press briefing. He said those pop-up, walk-in clinics are now the leading method in Vermont’s vaccination strategy, as opposed to larger, mass vaccination sites that were the only option much earlier in the year.
“Over the weekend, I went to a few pop-up locations myself, including Thunder Road (in Barre) on Friday and the car show in St. Albans on Saturday,” he said. “So I want to, once again, thank our EMS teams, who have been doing an incredible job at all these locations, all these clinics. We wouldn’t be leading the nation in vaccinations, if not for them.”
This week, Vermont saw its COVID cases fall to the lowest levels seen in eight months, and it still leads the nation in vaccine doses administered per 100,000 people (125,076).
Naming policy update: District board begins its review
A proposed facility naming policy got its first reading before the full board of the Windsor Central Unified Union School District on Monday night.
Board members noted there are still opportunities for the public to weigh in on the policy before any final vote is taken. A Policy Committee meeting is coming up on June 21, and after that, the policy returns to the district board — likely in July — for a second reading and possible approval.
Monday’s discussion on the policy was brief, and the meeting quiet, but this proposal sparked great concern among Woodstock Union High School & Middle School alumni over a month ago. The naming policy is one idea on the table connected to raising money for the proposed $73.3 million new WUHSMS building. But in early May, alumni circulated a petition online to preserve legacy names on fields and facilities, and ensure they aren’t re-named.
In recent meetings, the Policy Committee has revised the proposed policy, and the current proposal contains an approval process for “re-naming of an existing dedication.” Among other elements, the process requires that the superintendent and the Fundraising Work Group submit a recommendation to the board; a public meeting be held with a 30-day warning; and 60% of the board members present must approve the proposal for it to pass. In the absence of a Fundraising Work Group, the superintendent will submit the recommendation. (The overall policy has a different section on honorary facility naming.)
At Monday’s meeting, which was held on Zoom, Louis Piconi, chair of the Policy Committee, said the policy sets “a pretty high bar” for renaming a facility.
“It’s going to be hard for somebody to do a renaming … but at the same time I think this offers significant protections that a lot of the alumni wanted, while being fair to all the different groups that might be at the table at some point,” Piconi said.
Maura McLaughlin Tynes, a WUHS alum who has attended prior meetings, said she appreciated the board’s work on this issue, but still has concerns on how the proposal might play out. The high school football field carries the name of her father, James T. McLaughlin.
“The way the policy is written now, intertwining finances and contribution of your community members, essentially provides a roadmap and an explanation on how to re-name spaces now,” Tynes said. “And I think that’s something that people should be careful about.”
Policy Committee member Sam DiNatale, also an alum of WUHS, reiterated that the renaming process in the proposal sets that high bar Piconi mentioned.
“This is on the same level as the process you’d have to go through to close a school,” she said.
In anticipation of the June 21 Policy Committee meeting, Piconi said any members of the public with questions are welcome to send them to him. Check out these links for committee and board contact information.
— Gareth Henderson
