Digital history
State champs!
Shelburne moves archives to database
Girls’ cross country wins Division I title
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Volume 52 Number 44
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shelburnenews.com
November 2, 2023
Town approves rail crossing agreement
Best dressed
LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
The decade-long battle to create a new town highway rightof-way at a Shelburne railroad crossing has ended. The Shelburne Selectboard Tuesday approved an agreement with Vermont Railway and the Vermont Agency of Transportation to turn an extension of Champlain Drive into a town-owned road. Shelburne’s lakeshore includes several private subdivisions — Champlain Drive, Pine Haven Shores Road and Windmill Bay Road — with narrow areas separated by the railroad that don’t have public railroad crossings or have private crossing agreements between the homeowners’ associations and the railroad.
As reported by The Shelburne News in 2015, the issue surfaced during the 2008 recession when mortgage companies started tightening restrictions and refused to lend money to prospective buyers for these properties because the crossings were considered to be only farm crossings. Without a crossing agreement, title issues arise during home sales about whether there is a legitimate legal access to these properties. “A farm crossing traditionally is just used by tractors and cows, so it needs to get a status change,” town manager Matt Lawless said. “It’s an old, lingering effect of rural history in town.” The town already owns from Route 7 to the train tracks, and the See RAIL CROSSING on page 6
Without aid from state, school buildings suffer LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
PHOTO BY LEE KROHN
Two young ladies help Shelburne celebrate Halloween in style at the annual Charlotte-Shelburne-Hinesburg Rotary parade on Sunday. See the results of the rec department’s costume contest on page 11.
It’s been more than 15 years since the state helped fund school construction projects, and even for schools like the Champlain Valley School District that aren’t facing massive, deferred maintenance costs, staff there is wasting no time in preparing for a troubling next 10 years. In April 2022, the education committees in both the Vermont House and Senate commissioned the independent analysis, “Vermont School Facilities Inventory and Assessment,” that reviewed a broad range of facility-related factors in 54 school districts across the state.
The study utilized a Facility Condition Index to measure the aggregated depletion percentage of facilities for each district. The higher the percentage, the greater the need for infrastructure replacement or upgrades. The average for the districts participating in the study was 71.4 percent, which reflected a considerable amount of concern for the overall condition of school infrastructure across the state. Although Champlain Valley School District’s overall depletion percentage of 48 percent fared better than other districts, staff is still dealing with a slew of issues See INFRASTRUCTURE on page 12