The Town of Brattleboro is looking for citizens to serve on the following committees and boards:
Agricultural Advisory Board
Arts Committee
Citizen Police Communications Committee (CPCC)
Conservation Commission
Development Review Board
Development Review Board (Alternate)
Energy Committee
Fence Viewers (by statute, must be legal voters of the Town)
Honor Roll
Planning Commission
Senior Solutions Advisory Council
SEVCA Board
The Brattleboro Selectboard approved a guaranteed maximum price for the police station at their last regular meeting of 2016 Tuesday night. With all three facility project prices locked in, the total project remains very close to the estimated cost originally anticipated, even with some additions of new work.
Westgate received funding to move forward with restructuring, the board reviewed a number of FY18 budget loose ends, and parking, parking, parking!
Maybe I just don’t get out enough but today I noticed the name “Mary Shiminski” in white letters back up on the rusty Bratt-Chesterfield border railroad overpass. I thought, we have such literate, history-loving grafitti artists. For background:
In observance of the Christmas holiday:
All Brattleboro Town offices will close at 12:00 noon on Friday, December 23, and will be closed through Monday, December 26, 2016, with the exception of emergency services.
Brooks Memorial Library will be open for regular hours on Friday, December 23. It will be closed Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, December 24 through December 26.
Parking is free at all metered spaces and in the pay-and-display lots on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, December 24 through December 26. All other violations will be enforced.
Trash, recycling and composting will be delayed one day all week.
In observance of the New Year holiday:
From Today’s Local History, 1879:
On Tuesday night at 11 o’clock it was discovered that fire was working under the flooring of the fourth floor of the Brooks House, about midway of the house. Lines of hose were carried up to the third and fourth stories, holes cut in floors and partitions, the house thoroughly drenched, and after upward of an hour’s work the fire was soaked out.
Brattleboro Town Clerk Annette Cappy will retire after 28 years of exemplary service to the Town of Brattleboro. An open house is scheduled on Thursday, December 29, 2016 from 1:00pm to 4:00pm in the Town Clerk’s Office. Light refreshments will be served. All are invited to attend and extend their best wishes and gratitude for all of Annette’s contributions and accomplishments throughout her career.
Incoming Town Clerk Hilary Francis will be officially sworn in on Friday, December 30, 2016, at 1:00pm in the Town Clerk’s Office. The public is invited to attend. She will be formally appointed as Town Clerk by the Selectboard at its meeting on Tuesday, January 3, 2017, subject to ratification by Representative Town Meeting on Saturday, March 25, 2017.
The Town of Brattleboro would like to remind everyone that the snow emergency ban is in effect.
Snow and ice will be removed from the streets in the downtown area this evening.
Parked vehicles in the downtown district must be removed by 10:30pm or they will be towed at the owner’s expense.
If vehicles are going to remain in Town overnight they should park in the Brattleboro Transportation Center. If you use the Transportation Center, do not park in a Reserved Permit space without a permit. Pay and Display is in effect after 9:00 a.m.
Contact the Brattleboro Police Department at 257-7950 for any questions.
BCTV channel 8 schedule for the week of 12/19/16
Monday, December 19, 2016
12:00 am The Endangered Species Act: Putting the Bite Back Into the Law Pt1
1:38 am Express Fluency: Spanish with Elissa McLean Part 1 of 3
3:00 am Burning Books – Leslie James Pickering on Resistance to 20 Years of FBI Surveillance
5:00 am GMMT: Friday News Show
5:30 am First Wednesdays: America in a New More Dangerous World
Brattleboro Senior Meals Menu December 19 to December 23
December 19 – Chicken Pot Pie
Green Beans
Butternut Squash
Cranberry Mousse
The Town of Brattleboro would like to remind everyone that the snow emergency ban is in effect.
Snow and ice will be removed from the parking lots in the downtown area this evening.
Parked vehicles in the downtown parking lots must be removed by 10:30pm or they will be towed at the owner’s expense.
If vehicles are going to remain in Town overnight they should park in the Brattleboro Transportation Center. If you use the Transportation Center, do not park in a Reserved Permit space without a permit. Pay and Display is in effect after 9:00 a.m.
Contact the Brattleboro Police Department at 257-7950 for any questions.
Hello Market Fans,
Yes, we are a hardy bunch! The Brattleboro Winter Farmers’ Market is NOT cancelling today!
The Market will open as scheduled at 10 AM. However, weather conditions may warrant closing ahead of schedule so best to get there before 1 pm.
Be safe out there…but we hope to see you at the market!
The Brattleboro VFW at 40 Black Mountain Road is open to the public for lunch. Lunch is served Mon-Fri from 11:30 am – 1:30 pm. Specials are only $5.50 a plate. Burgers, fries, onion rings, chicken wings, soups and sandwiches are also available.
Mon – creamed chipped beef over biscuits w/ veg.
Tues – beef stroganoff
Wed – stuffed peppers w/ mashed potatoes
Thur – turkey with all the fixin’s
Fri – seafood alfredo w/ salad & garlic bread
If you have more than 4 people in your group, please call ahead of time at 257-0438. Take out orders are available, and some specials sell out fast.
While the exact origin of consciousness is debatable, and polarized on a mammalian time-chart, the fact that all mammalian creatures acquired consciousness as a datum, that is, as a fixed starting point in our brains, is not.The history of these living, yet mortal, creatures is documented by their fossils that are preserved in sedimentary layers over geologic time, where we can see (read) the small patterns to help understand the big picture, and that, is the progression of evolution. Yet, there are at least two types of mammalian evolution.
The first and most obvious is the aforesaid fossil record. That record, despite gaps, is of such an exacting nature that it is no longer considered a theory of evolution, but the established fact of evolution.
I need some advice. VTel has sent around a holiday offer. One level of their service, the lowest, is 2GB of data per month for $10. They say that is equal to about 10 hours of internet usage after which download speed keeps diminishing. They didn’t want to tell me how much it diminishes. They’re answer was, ‘well, that’s when people usually upgrade.” My Fairpoint deal is $15/month, at a slow speed (750 kb/sec), but I can spend 100 hours a month on the net and notice nothing in terms of speed diminishing. In fact it seems that I can spend 24 hours a day on the net, or streaming, and the speed seems the same on the last day of the month as it was on the first.
Following on the thread here at iBratt concerning energy efficiency at the West Brattleboro fire station, this article is on life-cycle cost analysis as an alternative, many would say better, decision making tool for major capital expenses like fire stations. Versions of this should appear in the Reformer and Commons soon as well. Info on assumptions, modeling tools, etc. will be added in the comments section.
The (truer) Cost of Things (like buildings)
When a large building is built the owner usually bends over backwards to keep construction costs as low as possible. What would happen if the primary objective were not to minimize up-front costs but rather to keep the cost of operating the building over its lifetime as low as possible? This is called a life-cycle cost analysis. Let’s apply it to the West Brattleboro fire station that is currently under construction, in particular its heating energy use.
At their next Tuesday meeting at the Municipal Center, the Brattleboro Selectboard will likely approve of the $2,773,336 guaranteed maximum price for the work to be done for the new police station.
Ten more areas of the FY18 budget will be reviewed, a downtown parking study will get underway, parking lots will be discussed, and single stream transition issues will be reviewed.
All this and more, and you can attend and participate! Bring up anything else not already on the agenda during Public Participation.
I found an easy way for Brattleboro to rake in some extra cash.
Everyday, numerous trucks carrying homes come through town. If we charged them each, say $500, to come through, we could make quite a bit of cash.
Just the other day I passed four of these things. Each was wide enought to cause normal traffic to be altered, with people pulling off to the side, stopping in funny places, and even blocking intersections to let them through.
(You may now explain all the reasons why this is un-possible.)
I-91
Northbound I-91 traffic has been relocated onto the southbound bridge. Traffic will remain reduced to one lane in each direction on I-91 until completion of the new bridge. The new bridge will be 104’ wide and is designed to carry all four lanes of traffic –two northbound and two southbound.
Route 30
The speed limit on Route 30 near the work zone has been reduced to 40 mph. Project-related truck activity on Route 30 will continue. Route 30 may be reduced to a single lane intermittently, with flaggers regulating traffic within the work zone.
In a quest for profit and automation, big tech companies are making mistakes that matter to people using their services. Some are small and annoying; others are more significant.
Some examples:
Turn on the Weather Channel in Brattleboro and you’ll be welcomed to Putney. Yes, Putney. The Weather Channel made a switch a year or so ago and decided that the big city in our region, right up there with Albany and Burlington, is Putney.
LinkedIn makes sure to tell everyone that employees in Brattleboro work in the Springfield area. Springfield, MA, that is. So helpful!
Deleted as I no longer wish to participate on Ibrattleboro due to invisible censorship by its moderators.
