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August 31, 2023
Weekly news coverage for Charlotte and Hinesburg
thecitizenvt.com
Town considers noise rules as complaints return
Biggest butterfly?
Selectboard chair warns of legal implications LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
PHOTO BY PHILIP GALIGA
Philip Galiga spotted this winged wonder in Hinesburg. He thinks it is a giant swallowtail, the continent’s largest butterfly.
The years-long battle over noise complaints at the Laberge Shooting Range, a private, openair shooting range located on a 287-acre family farm on Lime Kiln Road, has again resurfaced in Charlotte, this time with some members of the town selectboard considering the creation of a noise ordinance to avoid the onslaught of an “expensive legal issue” with neighboring residents. “We understand that there have been some changes in the amount of noise and the guns that are being used and that brings it back in front of us,” selectboard chair Jim Faulkner said Monday. “This issue has been in front of the selectboard in the past, and it’s ramping up a little bit again. There’s a concern for a lot of the neighbors about the noise and there might be some legal suits in process that will affect the town considerably.” Since as far back as 1994, the
shooting range, part of a large parcel of land owned by Laberge and Sons, Inc., has been the recipient of a slew of resident-led backlash over noise complaints, with the most recent court battle taking place in 2015, when a group of anonymous neighbors formed the Firing Range Neighborhood Group and filed a request with the District 4 Environmental Commission to determine whether or not the firing range is a development that should come under Act 250 jurisdiction. The Vermont Supreme Court ruled three years later, in August 2018, that the range was not subject to Act 250 jurisdiction and therefore could continue to operate without state regulation. But, Faulkner said at Monday’s meeting, “This group is not willing to just accept that.” Last year, the selectboard authorized Faulkner and selectSee NOISE on page 3
Champlain school district works to address aging buildings COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
As kids in the Champlain Valley School District begin their academic year this week, the school district’s administrators and board members are staring down what will be a challenging five years. The district’s school buildings are aging and will need millions
of dollars in renovations. Federal Covid-19 relief funds are soon ending — funding that has paid for more than a dozen school counselors, social workers, interventionists, and other positions within the district. And updates to Vermont’s education formula means the district will have to adjust to these factors while raising taxes or cutting programs. Those three converging factors
bearing down on the district were laid out during a school board meeting last week, where officials said the district will be implementing new measures to try and limit any new spending — including requiring offsetting reductions for any new proposed expenses. “We’re going to have to make some really difficult decisions together,” chief operations officer Gary Marckres said.
Vermont’s new education formula, signed into law last year, corrects what researchers at University of Vermont and Rutgers University showed was an insufficient pupil weighting system for low-income students or non-English speaking students. The new formula tries to correct that, but because of the shift, several districts that have historically benefitted from the weighting —
Champlain Valley, South Burlington, Essex, and Mount Mansfield Unified Union among them — are now facing dwindling student counts, meaning those distrcits will eventually have to start raising taxes or cutting spending to fill in the gap. Because of this, the Champlain See SCHOOL on page 9