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April 25, 2024
Weekly news coverage for Charlotte and Hinesburg
Hinesburg accepts wastewater plant bid LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
The Hinesburg Selectboard last week approved the long-awaited construction bid for its new wastewater treatment facility. The bid, which came in at $12.5 million from Naylor and Breen, was one of four new bids that were returned to the selectboard earlier this month, nearly $2.5 million less than the lowest bid received in April 2023. All three of those bids that the town received and later rejected in May topped $15 million. They were rejected, in part, because the town could not move forward with a proposal to borrow more than what voters approved. “It’s a pretty big deal, but we’ve been working on this for quite a long time now,” selectboard chair Merrily Lovell said. “We had to do some finagling and Aldrich and Elliot went back to the drawing board and figured out how to lower the prices and then we got bids, and they were all too high. So, we’ve just got gotten the second bid, and the lowest
thecitizenvt.com
High school hurler
one is acceptable.” Since 2018, Hinesburg has faced a mandatory order to rebuild its wastewater treatment facility after a state discharge permit was issued that required the town to reduce the amount of phosphorus and ammonia in wastewater discharged into the LaPlatte River. Voters two years later approved a borrowing capacity of $11.7 million for the new facility, 1,810-98. At the time of the vote, officials estimated a new facility could be operational by 2025. At a pre-construction meeting after the selectboard meeting, town manager Todd Odit confirmed that the construction team are set to get started on April 29, since the town has already spent $2 million on site work at the Lagoon Road site. The property has since been tiled and drained in preparation for the new building. “The initial effort is going to be mobilization and modification of Lagoon number one, and PHOTO BY AL FREY
See WASTEWATER on page 16
Travis Stroh delivers the pitch to an Essex batter in a scrimmage on April 17. See the weekly roundup, page 12.
Charlotte ties up tree planting debacle, looks for new warden LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
Following a contentious tree-planting debacle in Charlotte
that overtook several recent meetings, the selectboard is now working to tie up loose ends before appointing a new tree warden. What began as an effort to
plant trees along State Park Road revealed a deep-seated issue over process, contracts and how exactly the funds used to plant trees should be doled out. More
important, the selectboard started to explore the process under which tree planting decisions are made — especially if they happen on private property — and who
should control the distribution of Rutter Tree Fund money, the fund See TREES on page 16
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