Williston
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Permit #15 Williston,VT 05495 POSTAL CUSTOMER
AUGUST 21, 2025
Selectboard approves Town Plan The Williston Selectboard unanimously approved a new Comprehensive Town Plan on Tuesday, culminating more than two years of work by town staff, planning commission members and residents. The plan, a guide that underpins local land use regulations and lays out the town’s direction in housing, transportation, recreation and conservation — among other sectors — will be up for renewal again in 2033. “This is about the direction the town wants to move in,” board member Jeanne Jensen said. “It’s a really excellent document, and I appreciate all the hard work that went into it.” After planning commission approval earlier this year, the selectboard first reviewed the document in July, making a few changes that the planning commission ultimately signed off on. One of the changes involved the town’s support for public bus service. The selectboard deleted a directive to fund Green Mountain Transit, the financially struggling transit agency that currently runs buses from Williston to Burlington and receives annual support from several Chittenden County municipalities, including Williston. The selectboard also reworded a section on funding bicycle and pedestrian facilities, removing an idea to ask voters for taxpayer support. Regarding housing, it softened language on providing services to unhoused people — from “provide” to “support the provision of” services for the unhoused. The new Town Plan is available at www.williston2050.com. — Jason Starr
WILLISTON’S NEWSPAPER SINCE 1985
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CVU turf field dreams revived
The athletic field at CVU that hosts soccer and lacrosse games and multi-sport practices is seen Tuesday. The school district has long hoped to install artificial turf on the field, and that effort is renewed this year with the emergence of a private fundraising group. OBSERVER PHOTO BY AL FREY
BY JASON STARR Observer staff A decade-plus after a failed bond vote and a couple years since plans were stalled due to school budget cuts, a community leader has emerged to revive a push to install a turf field at CVU High School in Hinesburg. Eli Lesser-Goldsmith is a resident of Charlotte and parent of three children in the Champlain Valley School District. Professionally, he is the CEO of Healthy Living, the market and café with stores in Williston, South Burlington and Saratoga Springs, N.Y. During the first meeting of the Champlain Valley School Board last Tuesday, he said he’s formed a group of partners to lead a fundraising campaign to build the field. The turf would replace the grass on the school’s “Field B,” a pitch next to the football field that typically hosts soccer and lacrosse practices and games. “Our goal is to deliver this facility to the district for zero cost,” Lesser-Goldsmith told the board. “Everything will be handled with private fundraising from my group … We
understand how challenging school funding is right now.” In the outline of an agreement with the school district, the fundraising group (under the nonprofit name “Friends of CVU”) will be responsible for obtaining governmental
“Our goal is to deliver this facility to the district for zero cost.” Eli Lesser-Goldsmith Friends of CVU
permits and approvals and overseeing construction contracts. The district will retain approval authority over all permit applications and construction activity. Lesser-Goldsmith said he will have architectural drawings of the proposal to share in the coming weeks. “I’m really excited and our group is really excited too,” he said.
Superintendent Adam Bunting described the need for the turf, recalling the excessive rainfall in 2023 that wreaked havoc with high school sports practice and game schedules. There were “a series of cancelled events and interrupted practices,” he said. That same year was the beginning of a cycle of budget austerity for the district that it is still in the throes of. “We know how important it is that this is something that does not use taxpayer funds at this point,” said board chair Meghan Metzler. While the cost of ongoing maintenance of the turf will fall on the district, it’s unclear if that will be more or less annually than upkeep of the existing grass field. It’s something that the fundraising group plans to analyze, Lesser-Goldsmith said. An optimistic timeline would put groundbreaking at sometime next year, Lesser-Goldsmith said, but a more realistic goal is sometime in 2027. To break ground in 2026 “a lot of things would have to go perfectly,” he said. “As we know, building anything in Vermont is permit-heavy and it can be very complex.”
Pizza is Back!
Dinner Starts at 4:00 Nightly, on the Church Street Marketplace
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