Theo’s bat
What the hill?
School project brings generations together
Ski museum exhibit chronicles lost ski areas
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Volume 52 Number 52
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shelburnenews.com
December 28, 2023
Year in Review
Finding a balance
Shelburne officials, residents search for a path forward LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
PHOTO BY AL FREY
The Champlain Valley Union High School gymnastics team competed in a meet Dec. 20 against Essex and Burlington high schools at the Green Mountain Training Center..
Shelburne has spent most of the year asking the hard questions: Who are we and who do we want to be? The selectboard and other town commissions have spent months discussing topics that seek to balance the rural nature of the town that many residents cherish with a need for more housing and development. According to the Vermont Futures Project, an independent nonprofit pursuing ways to support the evolution of Vermont’s economy, Shelburne makes up a little more than 1 percent of state’s population. To influence future population projections to create an economically thriving state, Shelburne would need to increase its population of 7,700 by 1,848. This adds up to an average of 154 people along with 80 new houses per year. Beginning the year in the thick of regulatory reform, Shelburne’s planning and zoning staff are now making big strides toward reworking the town’s zoning bylaws that some have deemed overly complex and inconsistent. The hope is to have the work nearly complete by the end of 2024. But as policies began to change, so, too, did town officials. Residents bid farewell to former town manager Lee Krohn in May after five years and, in June, welcomed Matt Lawless, who quickly saw the passionate level of civic engagement among residents as a proposal to revamp the Parade Ground left the town charged and divided. Most of the summer months
were spent in a fight over what many residents would say was to save the town’s historic village green from the dangers of “paving paradise to put up a parking lot,” or in this case a 28-foot by 14-foot pavilion. Residents charged meetings with vehement public comment and flooded online forums to express their distrust of the selectboard’s intentions while selectboard members urged residents to reexamine the root cause of the upheaval. Coming in just in time to clean up the kerfuffle was a threemonth community-building exercise known as Shelburne Forward Together meant to unite the community to find common goals about the direction Shelburne is headed. The community visits initiative was spearheaded over a year ago by Krohn after questions of development, expensive capital improvements and other changes to the town began to take shape. More than 300 residents participated in the monthly meetings and identified three top priorities as the town continues to grow: improving bike and pedestrian connectivity and safety, conserving open land and wildlife habitat, and advancing affordable housing in the community. “I also want to just step back and say there is a lot of change coming to Shelburne,” chair of the selectboard Mike Ashooh said. “We can be like the proverbial frog in the pot as it heats up around us and we don’t do anything, or we can be proactive and start to think about where we are going.”