O’Brien onward
Long walk
Town officials approve development agreement, moving project along
Man crosses America in effort to ‘fix democracy’ for all
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Volume 54 Number 6
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shelburnenews.com
February 6, 2025
Remembering Al Fortin The officer other cops turned to for safety training MIKE DONOGHUE CORRESPONDENT
PHOTO BY LEE KROHN
Allen Fortin worked for the Shelburne Police Department for nearly three decades. He died Sunday.
Veteran Vermont police officer Allen A. Fortin, who became the leading voice and face for highway traffic safety in the state, died at his Hinesburg home Sunday. He was 61. Fortin, a lieutenant with the Chittenden County Sheriff’s Department, won numerous awards for his dedication to highway traffic safety work about drunken driving, proper use of seatbelts, speeding, child safety seat protections, passing stopped school buses, aggressive driving and more. The awards included being honored at a Vermont Statehouse ceremony for his public service in 2017. He served as the full-time traffic safety coordinator for Chittenden, Franklin, Grand Isle, Lamoille and Orleans counties. Fortin hosted numerous press conferences and public events throughout Vermont for over two decades on every kind of safety issue and was the go-to guy for media members looking for comments and statistics for any news story. He helped coordinate a news conference as recently as last month at Jay Peak Resort concerning winter driving and sharing the roads with slow-moving vulnerable road users. “It is hard to guess how many lives Al
Fortin saved through his safety messages and enforcement work,” Chittenden County Sheriff Dan Gamelin said Sunday. Fortin was well known for his honesty and integrity, Gamelin said. Fortin’s favorite word, “absolutely,” went hand-in-hand with his can-do attitude. He collapsed at his home Sunday morning and first responders were unable to revive him. Gamelin said survivors include Fortin’s longtime wife, Anne, and their three adult sons, Patrick, Stephan and Sam. Gamelin said funeral arrangements were being completed as the newspaper went to press. The tentative plan was to have a police escort for the casket from the Ready’s Funeral Home in Burlington to St. Jude’s Catholic Church on Vermont 116 on Thursday for a public viewing. The funeral is tentatively set for Friday. Specific details, including times and the full obituary will be posted online this week by this newspaper and on Facebook by the Chittenden County Sheriff’s Department. Fortin began his extra focus on traffic safety work initially part-time when he was not serving as the No. 2 person at See FORTIN on page 11
School district ahead of curve on statewide phone ban BRIANA BRADY STAFF WRITER
Champlain Valley School District has been working towards a new bell-to-bell phone free
policy for months, which, if the recent school phone policy bill proposed in the Vermont house passes, will put the district in a good position to meet new statewide requirements.
Statewide school cell-phone bans have been increasing in popularity in the last year due to concerns over teen mental health and the harms of social media. Eight states have passed bans, and
another 23, including Vermont, have introduced legislation, issued policy recommendations, or launched pilot programs. Vermont’s state senate introduced a different cellphone bill last
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year that didn’t move forward. The future for the house bill proposed in January, H.54, looks better. See CELL PHONES on page 16