Barn saving
Play ball
Clemmons Farm purchase celebrated
CVU starts winter sports season well-positioned
Page 8
Page 12
December 14, 2023
POSTAL CUSTOMER
PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT #217 CONCORD, NH ECRWSSEDDM
Weekly news coverage for Charlotte and Hinesburg
thecitizenvt.com
Charlotte Selectboard targets employee benefits
Good resources
LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
COURTESY PHOTO
Hinesburg Food Shelf volunteers delivered meals to more than 100 families on Thanksgiving. See related story, page 3.
To find cost savings the Charlotte Selectboard has adjusted the town’s salary administration policy to give itself more power in determining cost-of-living adjustments for employees. This is the final step in a three-week conversation that led to employee health benefit cuts of around $40,000 next year, a potential reduction in the HRA, and a change to the cost-of-living adjustment and salary administration policy. But some employees are left wondering, what is the point to all of this? “If we do make the change next year to decrease our benefits and then also to take See POLICY on page 13
Gun incident
School district, police apologize for lapse in communication COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
The Champlain Valley School District and the Hinesburg Police Department in a joint statement acknowledged the need for “better communication and collaboration” following a jumbled response to last week’s discovery of a handgun and drugs at the Hinesburg Community School. In the aftermath of the incident on Dec. 1, when Hinesburg Community School students discovered a loaded handgun and, later, more than 30 grams of suspected crack cocaine outside of the school, the district and
police department offered conflicting narratives of events, and some parents expressed concern that information was not relayed to them in a timely manner. (Read the complete statement, page 11) Both parties in their statement apologized to the Hinesburg community for “any distress or confusion this may have caused” and noted that they were “working toward a robust and effective partnership in the future.” The statement, issued Friday, followed several meetings between school and town officials, including the school district Superintendent Rene Sanchez, chief operations
officer Gary Marckres, Hinesburg police chief Anthony Cambridge and Hinesburg town manager Todd Odit. Those meetings were facilitated by the Williston Community Justice Center. “Over the last two days, we came together to build an understanding of the sequence of Friday’s event,” the letter reads. “We reached an agreement for many of Friday’s events and now recognize that misunderstandings in communications and authority impacted the response.” Hinesburg residents Alex and Taylor Goodchild, the parents of the child who picked up the weapon and initially gave it
to a teacher, said during a recent selectboard meeting that the police department was “really open with us and responded quickly and appropriately,” and added that the school contacted them immediately. But, according to reporting from Seven Days, other parents of children among the group that found the handgun expressed frustration that the school never directly notified them of what had happened, aside from a district-wide letter sent on Dec. 3. “We were contacted immediately, and See COMMUNICATION on page 11