Ring toss
Clean & Green
Six council candidates view for three seats
We should use road salt with care
Page 2
Page 6
POSTAL CUSTOMER
PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT #217 CONCORD, NH ECRWSSEDDM
South Burlington’s Community Newspaper Since 1977
the FEBRUARY 8, 2024
otherpapersbvt.com
VOLUME 48, NO. 6
VTrans scribes craft puns
First in flight
New federal regs could end the fun COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
inghast says this year’s budget season highlighted some major issues with the state’s current education funding formula known as Act 127 and dealing with the law will be a major role for school board members for months after Town Meeting Day. “This year’s budget season has differed greatly from years past largely by the state change in the education funding formula putting a much bigger tax burden on our community,” she said. “The current tax
Rachel Noyes often laughs at her own jokes, but in her defense, it’s hard not to laugh when you’re driving along I-89 and the traffic sign is telling you to “Camp in the woods / Not in the left lane.” Plenty of signs like that have popped up on Vermont’s interstates in recent years — “If you hate tickets / Raise your right foot,” for example, or “Visiting in laws? / Slow down, be late” — that gently remind you not to drive like a maniac but are also objectively hilarious. Noyes ought to know, she wrote them. “The thing that’s so great about this is I submit a lot of these and when I’m on the highway and I see these, I laugh,” Noyes said. “I think they’re so great.” The outreach manager with the state highway safety office, Noyes is one half of a writer’s room in the Vermont Agency of Transportation. Together with Ryan Knapp, the agency’s Intelligent Transportation System chief, they’re tasked with coming up with messages to flash to drivers as they’re motoring along the interstate. The two have been crafting the puns since at least 2020. The paramount purpose of the message boards is to enhance highway safety in real time, Knapp says. That means alerting drivers that there’s a crash ahead, or that there may be black ice on the road, or that there’s snow on the ground and you don’t want to have to call a wrecker to pull your
See SCHOOL BOARD on page 10
See VTRANS on page 12
South Burlington resident Mike Dean took this photo of the inaugural Breeze Airways flight from Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport in South Burlington to Tampa, Fla., on Jan. 31.
School board candidates talk Act 127
Three seats up for grabs, three seats go uncontested LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
The South Burlington School Board has three uncontested seats up on Town Meeting Day with a new candidate, Elaine Cissi, vying for the two-year seat vacated by the board’s current chair, Kate Bailey. Incumbent Chelsea Tillinghast is running for reelection to her three-year seat, while Tim Warren, who was chosen by the board following the resignation of Bryan Companion in September, is seeking reelection for the one year remaining on the term.
Warren, a resident of South Burlington for 25 years, said he has enjoyed working with his constituents and the school community, but his work is not over yet. “I look forward to continuing my service to South Burlington,” he wrote announcing his candidacy. Tillinghast, who has been on full-time mom duty for the last few months, has still found time to commit to the board even during what many have called one of the hardest budget years South Burlington has ever faced. As board clerk for the last two years, Till-