News & Citizen

Serving the People of Lamoille County with News Since 1881

Volume 123     No 10 No 5569               January 18, 2007 Thursday                           Morrisville, VT 05661                        Web Edition

A Promise to HearthStone by Amy Kolb Noyes MORRISTOWN – Despite recent layoffs, local stove manufacturer HearthStone, is still looking forward to expanding its business and workforce. However, growth at the current Morristown plant is limited due to the fact that the HearthStone facility is not on the Morrisville Village sewer system. While other businesses outside Village limits are on the Village sewer line, there would be significant expense involved in extending the line to HearthStone. continued on page 2 Click here to check out the new Lamoille Home Buyer Guide HP Teacher Injured in Car Accident by Mickey Smith ELMORE – A Hyde Park Elementary School teacher was involved in a single car accident on Sunday morning, January 14, as she traveled on the Elmore Mountain Road. continued on page 2 Team members of the Lamoille Family Center¹s Peer Outreach Program who will be staffing a new teen center located in Morrisville. Left to right: Imelda Turner, Mike Ducey, Paul Ulrich, Crystal Young, Samantha Barrett and Tai Wallace. Whose Line Is It, Anyway? by Amy Kolb Noyes MORRISVILLE – Back in the fall of 1909, Morrisville Village voters approved constructing a power line to provide power to the Mt. Mansfield Electric Railroad Company. In November of that year, a route was laid out between Morrisville’s Cadys Falls power plant and Stowe Village. Landowners along the proposed route were paid one dollar each (or perhaps a dollar per pole) to allow the Village “…an option on a right of way for a pole line…continued on page 2 Alexander Sentenced for ’04 Shotgun Attack by Mickey Smith HYDE PARK – Daniel Alexander, 44, of Morristown, was sentenced in Vermont District Court to serve one year of an up to nine and a half year sentence for a domestic incident, which resulted in him firing a shotgun in the direction of an Elmore man in April of 2004. continued on page 2  Visitors For Questions or Comments on this web site please contact webmaster at http://www.kingdomsedge.com dan@kingdomsedge.com Snow at last! Morristown Highway employees were hard at work on a chilly Wednesday morning, JANUARY 17, clearing bucketfuls of snow from the Union Bank parking lot.  Noyes photo Hyde Park VFW Sued by Former Employee by Mickey Smith HYDE PARK  – A wrongful termination suit has been filed in Superior Court by an employee of Hyde Park VFW Post 7779, who was fired on June 13, 2006. continued on page 2 Lamoille to Hire Principal and Study Sharing of Duties   by Mickey Smith HYDE PARK – At a meeting of the Lamoille Union School Board Tuesday night, January 16, the board voted to hire a new principal at the high school and to let the current administration look into ways to better divvy up the chores of the middle and high school heads. continued on page 2 Read all the News, Sports and More Click Here To Subscribe Today Looking for something? Search for: Copyright © 2004 News&Citizen Inc. All rights reserved. Have a press release? edit@newsandcitizen.com e-mail correspondence concerning advertising should be addressed to news@newsandcitizen.com

Things Look This Way to Me

Editorial by J.B. McKinley 1/18/07

Can This Be True?

If you get an electricity bill from any company you either have, or probably will, receive some explanation of the Energy Efficiency Charge that’s part of your bill. From a philosophical point of view, my question is why are those customers who are conserving being financially punished?

The explanation sent to ratepayers by Morrisville Water & Light has a table that shows the residential efficiency charge is going up, while the rate paid by commercial and industrial electric customers is going down. To simplify the situation, further research has shown me that the primary reason for this disparity – residential EEC rate up/commercial-industrial EEC rate down – is because residential customers actually conserved electricity and used less than expected and the C/I customers burned up almost 5% more electricity statewide in the same period of time.

So, what do you think? Are we residential customers being given an incentive to conserve electricity? Our very success seems to be punishing us. Yes, we may have used less, even much less, electricity at home being good little boys and girls and installing compact fluorescents lights and wrapping our hot water heaters so perhaps our bill actually may go down. But...wait, that is apparently a bad thing for Efficiency Vermont, so it will balance its budget on the backs of the little guys. Sound familiar?

If anyone out there can philosophically justify this rate shifting, please write a letter to the editor and explain