Color swirl
New record
Pierson exhibits canvases, photos through mid June
CVU track team sets state record
Page 2
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Volume 51 Number 23
Congressional candidates talk issues
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shelburnenews.com
June 9, 2022
Power of women
Voters may elect first woman from Vermont to Congress COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
For the first time in 16 years, Vermont voters will send a new candidate to the U.S. House of Representatives. Whoever voters elect to serve will likely be the first women to represent Vermont in Washington. Several of the candidates at a recent debate at Shelburne’s town offices said it couldn’t come at a more critical time. Voting rights are being gutted, children and minorities are now routinely gunned down, states around the country are banning books about racism and antisemitism, women’s rights may soon take a major step backwards, the war in Ukraine continues to rage and the threat of climate change has become an ever-present reality, the candidates said throughout the 90-minute forum, which featured Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint and Sianay Chase Clifford. Vermont Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale dropped out of the race at the last minute. The other Democrat in the race, Louis Meyers, wasn’t invited to participate, he said. “Gun violence is impacting everything we hold dear. Climate change is impacting everything we hold dear. There is a war raging in Ukraine and our democracy is hanging by a thread,” said Gray. “This is an extremely important moment.” “Our democracy is absolutely in peril,” Balint said. “We know what happens when democracies fail, and it doesn’t fail overnight. It happens little bits at a time, from scapegoating to demonizing people to having our rights stripped away. I feel completely and totally drawn to this moment of service.” Balint, Gray and Clifford, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, are all running for the seat to succeed U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, who announced last November that he would be running for a seat in the U.S. Senate that will be vacated by retiring U.S. See CANDIDATES on page 5
PHOTO BY LEE KROHN
Shelburne’s Girls on the Run team at the 5K race held at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction on June 4.
Shelburne makes outdoor dining official Interim law first adopted at outset of COVID-19 COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
Through wave after wave of COVID-19, restaurants and eateries, forced to navigate pandemic regulations, have faced numerous challenges to keep their businesses afloat. Some have not survived. Roughly 17 percent of restaurants in the U.S. were forced to permanently shut down after the first wave of the pandemic, according to a survey by the National Restaurant Association from 2020. To help their ailing business community, Shelburne in 2020 adopted a solution
that appeared simple at first glance, but for restaurant owners proved to be a critical lifeline that made all the difference: Let people eat outside. “It just became something we relied on,” said John Helzer, a co-owner of Shelburne’s Peg and Ter’s, a gastropub on Shelburne Road that utilized its parking lot as a dining area over the last two summers. “It just really made the difference. There was obviously so much lingering fear of eating indoors … to have that extra space, we probably wouldn’t have survived the summer without it, honestly.”
Now, two years after first adopting the interim bylaw, the town has moved to permanently codify the amendment. The selectboard’s unanimous vote on May 24 now allows outdoor dining and outdoor provision of services for all businesses in town. Shelburne town manager Lee Krohn said at the outset of COVID, the board was looking for ways to help local businesses survive when everything was being shut down internally. Making the bylaw permanent was “just another step in promoting vitality in the heart of the community by allowing a little more activity outdoors,” he said. Since it first passed, numerous estabSee OUTDOOR DINING on page 12