Here's what matters up heyuh

[photo: Montpelier Town Hall]
By Peter Hirschfeld
Vermont Press Bureau

WARREN - Vermont is but one of the few states that can bear claim to five seasons.

Each year, during that mad swirl between winter and spring, mud season reduces the states’ dirt roads to a quagmire of ooze and despair.

Not in Warren, though. Not anymore.

In this resort town on the southwest edge of Washington County, residents voted Tuesday to abolish the annual climatic phenomenon that renders many of their gravel roads impassable.

The vote won’t alter weather patterns and, in the near future at least, won’t do much of anything at all. But in an 81-67 paper ballot vote at Town Meeting Day, residents approved an article that directs their selectboard to adopt a general policy of paving problem gravel roads in the town.

The purpose of the vote, according to the article’s verbiage, is to “eliminate ‘mud season’ on major arteries.”

“There are certain times of the year when roads are impassable for ambulances and fire trucks,” Gene Bifano, a member of the Warren Fire Department and Mad River Valley Ambulance Service, said during town meeting Tuesday. “I know we want to keep trees and preserve scenic beauty, but somewhere along the line a certain amount of common sense has to enter the equation.”

The article proved among the most contentious of the day here. Residents spent the better part of two hours debating the relative merits of dirt roads, paved roads and mud season itself.

And the conversation encapsulated the transportation dilemma facing many of Vermont’s rural towns. As municipalities grow, and once-sparsely traveled roads become major thoroughfares, local governments must decide whether to trade the aesthetic charm of their gritty byways for the convenience and purported safety of pavement.

In Warren, concerns over public safety trumped a desire to preserve a historic transportation infrastructure. Mac Rood, outgoing chair of the Warren selectboard, said the local government had received several requests for pavement from residents of the towns’ most problematic dirt roads. The issue, he said, was consequential enough to warrant a town referendum.


And here's a scene from Montpelier, I believe. Our polls have closed so we'll see anon how Vermont went. Behind the Obama poster are two Clinton posters.

Everything comes from today's Times Argus.

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According to the New York Times, the AP has projected that McCain has won (big suprise) and Obama has won in Vermont.

David Moats, Pulitzer prize-winning editor of the Rutland Herald says that Obama has won here because of Obama's 'tone.' It reminds Vermonters of Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK and appeals to younger voters. The exit polls in Vermont show that he is winning a great amount of support from white women, working class people and reflects a pattern in other states, like Wisconsin. He's also getting support from people over 65, people without college degrees in Vermont. The whitest state in the country has gone so strongly for Obama but that is part of the state's history of civil rights support.

More later? In any event, Vermont is the first state to close its polls.

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Oh, and here's what Brattleboro is up to: voters will consider an article that would instruct the town's attorney to draft indictments allowing President Bush and Vice President Cheney to be arrested by local authorities for crimes against their Constitution. On primary day Tuesday March 4, 2008, its residents will vote on whether to issue warrants for the arrest of Bush and Cheney, should they ever visit.