MONDAY EDITION
ADDISON COUNTY
INDEPENDENT
Vol. 29 No. 50
Middlebury, Vermont
Monday, April 9, 2018
Ferrisburgh dog rescuer faces sanctions Musicians in the groove • Sarah Blacker and friends will perform folk and rock in Brandon. See more local music in Arts Beat on Pages 10-13.
Witness brings rat to selectboard meeting
By ANDY KIRKALDY FERRISBURGH — As voices grew louder and one Sand Road neighbor accused another of lying at the April 3 Ferrisburgh selectboard meeting, Board Chairman Rick Ebel warned that he would call a recess to calm things down. Then another resident held up a
dead rat in a freezer bag. At that point Ebel — and probably many of the 30 residents at the meeting — had seen enough. He called a five-minute recess in the portion of the meeting dedicated to the long-running dispute between Sheila McGregor, the operator of Heidi’s Haven, a dog rescue operation in a small ranch home at 2512 Sand Road, and her neighbors. In the kind of small-town dispute that can fester if not dealt with,
neighbors have complained for years that the 30 or more dogs McGregor has harbored have made their lives miserable by barking at all hours, creating excessive smells, and at times running onto their properties. And now there is a rat infestation that the Ferrisburgh health officer has ordered McGregor to deal with and has spread onto neighboring properties, according to a recent town inspection and neighbors’ complaints. (See Sand Road, Page 32)
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Vt. regulator digging into pipeline project By MIKE POLHAMUS, VTDigger.org MONTPELIER — Last Thursday, the Public Utility Commission ordered a comprehensive investigation of the methods and practices used by Vermont Gas Systems (See Pipeline, Page 1)
Vt. transplant is a special breed
• A Middlebury family loves their dog, who used to pull sleds in Alaska. See Pet of the Week on Page 24.
Lacrosse teams faced challenges • The Tiger girls opened at rival South Burlington, and the Panther women hosted Colby. See Sports, Page 18.
THE MIDDLEBURY UNION High School Scholars Bowl team and the school’s Fab Five math team recently qualified for national academic competitions. Pictured here with their hands on buzzers are Tiger Scholars Bowl team members, from left, front row, Greta Hardy-Mittell, Ken Barkdoll and Silas Conlon; and, back row, MUHS math teacher Perry Lessing, Lucy Groves, Sophie Marks and Nico Brayton.
Independent photo/Trent Campbell
Student play to touch on guns
• North Branch School kids’ performance hits a hot button topic. See Page 2.
MUHS students excel in knowledge battles
Teams ready for national competitions By JOHN FLOWERS MIDDLEBURY — Two groups of Middlebury Union High School students keep piling up the academic accolades both inside and outside of the classroom. Five MUHS students have already guaranteed themselves at
least $5,000 in scholarship money through their stellar performance in a national math challenge, while six of their colleagues finished a very respectable fourth in the statewide Scholars Bowl quiz competition. MUHS math teacher Perry Lessing had a hand in overseeing
both groups of competitors. The MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge, or M3, is an annual contest open to high school juniors and seniors throughout the country. Participants are given 14 hours in a single day to combine their math talents to help solve a real-world problem. This year’s challenge involved food-insecurity in the
United States. Specifically, the teams were asked to develop strategies to quantify, reduce and repurpose the most food for the least cost. MUHS seniors Ezra Marks, Laura Whitley, Julian Schmitt, Bastiaan Phair and Janet Barkdoll accepted the challenge. They were among more than 900 teams (See Scholars, Page 14)