The Burlington Free Press from Burlington, Vermont • Page 13

Clje Turlington JTrce Press? ERMONT INSIDE Calendar 2B Deaths 4B Sports 5B SECTION www.burlingtonfreepress.com A- Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Metro Editor Patrick Garrity 660-1897 or (800) 427-3124 Page IB staff Essex suggests sharin Sometimes policy needs to be scraped good gesture on the part of the town to offer the services of the town manager to supplement village needs during the period that they're not going to have a manager," McEwing said. "This has been done in the past, and I think it would be a good gesture." There was no response to the suggestion made during Monday night's Selectboard meeting. Contact Victoria Welch at 651-4849 or At that point, the new Selectboard will be made of Jeff Carr, Linda Myers, Alan Nye and new members Max Levy and Irene Wrenner. James' suggestion came moments after town resident Bob McEwing asked the board to extend town services to the Essex Junction Board of Trustees on a temporary basis. McEwing said the gesture would demonstrate good will between the town and village.

"I think it would be a eran said Thursday that he is moving on to become town manager in Stowe. By offering the village shared services, Safford's departure could be viewed as employee attrition, James said. The change could cut costs by more than $100,000 in annual salary and benefits and serve as a step toward merging the town and village into a single municipality, said James, whose tenure on the town municipal board will end April 2. Village, town could cut costs on administration By Victoria Welch Free Press Staff Writer ESSEX The impending departure of Essex Junction's village manager prompted a suggestion Monday night that the town of Essex and the village share an administra tive staff member for general municipal operations. Tom James, outgoing chairman of the Essex Town Selectboard, suggested that the board consider in April offering the Essex Junction Board of Trustees shared use of a municipal staff member.

The suggestion came less than a week after Essex Junction Village Manager Charles Safford said he will vacate the village's top administrative position April 4. The 10-year village vet Talking about public policy can be the conversational equivalent of watching paint dry lethally dull. And that's not where the comparison of policy to paint ends. They both start out spanking fresh. A new policy is crafted to remedy a specific problem; a coat of paint is applied to a fresh wall or a new plank of wood.

Time is cruel to both. Paint succumbs to moisture, to light, to heat and to cold, to changing tastes and trends. Policy fades before changing priorities, to economics and to power. Painting anew over the flaking paint or tweaking text' and adding or deleting a program each make sense in incremental bits and might even suc Police follow leads, search for woman Maitland disappeared after work 3 years ago Ed Shamy mm 7 1 M.A By Lisa Rathke The Associated Press MONTPELIER Three years after Brianna Maitland vanished after leaving work at a Montgomery restaurant, police haven't given up hope that she could be found alive. "We're still treating this as a missing person investigation," Ver- mont State Police i fK.

Detective Lt. If I Glenn Hal1 said. I VI "Whilp cnmp rf ALISON REDLICH, free Press II I the leads are indicating that she's not alive, we haven't been able to verify that." Monday night, a Sylvie Vidrine (from left) attends a candlelight vigil Monday night outside Hinesburg Town Hall with fellow residents Harrison Mead, 8, Harper Mead, 6, Jen Bradford, Brian Dunlop and Dan Sullivan to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. Vigil marks war anniversary I.HI Maitland friend oi Maitland planned to hold what could be her last yearly candlelight vigil with Maitland's family at a park in Enosburg Falls to remember her friend, the County Courier newspaper reported. Maitland, of Sheldon, was 17 when she vanished after working as a dishwasher at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery on the night of March 19, 2004.

Her car was found the following day with its back smashed into an abandoned house about a mile a way. Since then, police said they have investigated hundreds of leads and scoured farms and property in See MISSING, 3B Renate Parke, 66, of Hinesburg compared this war to the Vietnam War: "This is far worse because in Vietnam we were fighting with the people against Communism. Here it just seems we're fighting for oil. There's no way to win in a civil war; this war isn't going to solve anything." Eric Hendel, an 18-year-old Hinesburg resident, stood with his parents, facing Vermont 116. "The whole thing going on in Iraq isn't about what they say it is, and I don't think war works," Hen-del said.

"I think there are other ways to solve problems. I think they need to get out." Contact Ashley Matthews at 651-4811 or amatthewsbfp.burlingtonfreepress.com. Davis, along with dozens of others, braved the cold to help rally opposition to the war that has killed 3,217 U.S. service men and women and thousands of Iraqis. Davis said she's just as concerned about Iraqi deaths as she is about the deaths of Americans.

"We've trashed their whole country, so this is for them, too," Davis said as she stood on the sidewalk at the intersection of Vermont 116 and Charlotte Road. Dozens gathered with Davis on Monday night, lighting candles and standing silently by the roadside. Participants read the names of the 18 Vermonters killed in the war and the somber silence that followed each name was often interrupted by the sound of car horns sounded in support of the group. Hinebuig residents gather at Town Hall to show opposition By Ashley Matthews Free Press Staff Writer HINESBURG A blustery wind made it hard to keep the candles lighted Monday night, but a vigil to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq persevered as dozens gathered on the side of Hinesburg's main road to express opposition to the war. "Our spirits will light it," said Raven Davis of Charlotte as she realized keeping her candle lighted was a losing battle.

ceed in briefly patching paint or policy. Ultimately, though, adding another layer of color makes no sense and might even border on madness. The old patching technique can work for only so long. Eventually, we need to cut through the old layers to clearly see our original intent. It's easy to pay half a mind or less to the perpetual debating over two of" Vermont's most vexing challenges how to pay for public education and how to keep dairy farms solvent.

The issues are distant cousins related by money, and both have grown so complex as to be largely out of reach to the lay observer. Maybe we ought to listen more seriously to our inner simpleton when it tunes in at a random moment, considers the circumstance and innocently asks, "Huh?" Step back from the numbingly complicated web of school funding formulas that we've devised in Vermont in the decade since judges told us that we need to make sure that all children have a chance at a solid education whether they live in a town of great wealth or little wealth. Our solution is to punish and discourage the towns that want to spend more than we decree appropriate on education. Isn't that the moral equivalent of disciplining teens who eat lots of fruits and vegetables? The inner simpleton, free of the fetters of the debate's nuances, has to be aroused by the premise that we're effectively punishing whole towns for their conscientious support of education. Maybe my inner simpleton is overly sensitive.

But it won't quit pudging me in the ribs and demanding that I answer the simple question: "Huh?" Simpleton asks me the same question every time another dairy farmer reports that making piik is a money-losing proposition. Here's the text of a congressional tweak to agricultural policy, including dairy programs: "In order more fully and effectively to improve, maintain, and protect the prices and incomes of and on and on it went from there, page after page of well-intentioned if impenetrable gobbledygook. That was 1961. By then, formal efforts to bolster milk prices were 30 years old. What do we have to show for three-quarters of a century of trying to protect the incomes of farmers? Another year of desperate government payouts to hopelessly prop up the next wave of failed farms.

Maybe a fresh coat of policy isn't what we need to figure out our school spending morass or our dairy dilemma. Sometimes the only fix for a worn paint job is to strip off the old layers and start again. Or maybe that's just my inner simpleton talking to me. Ed Shamy's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 660-1862 or On the Web Bring Brianna Home: www.bringbrihome.org Study finds savings for armory conversion Emissions case delayed for secrecy-request ruling i ir 1 mterests Because me Ir fr importance of open pro- ceeumgs uuiweigiia uic claim of trade secrets.

The case involves a lawsuit filed by three Vermont auto dealerships and industry powers including Daim-lerChrysler 1 A Sessions lion, the committee estimated, or about $800,000 less than the Parks and Recreation Department concluded last year it would take. While the Parks Department thought it would cost $215,000 a year to operate the building, the new committee said it could be done for $86,000 a year by using part-time staff. The two sets of figures, however, reflect different ambitions for the building. The higher numbers from the Parks Department, Director Wayne Gross said, envisaged sprucing up the entire building for a range of programs run at city expense. Ewing said the new committee's approach is to get the building, which it described as "structurally sound," used as soon as possible.

The committee recommends fixing up the front part of the building, including a large multi-purpose room, putting a new See ARMORY, 3B By John Briggs Free Press Staff Writer A citizens group charged in January to come up with ways to make the best use in the foreseeable future of the Gosse Court Armory building has concluded that part of the building could be remodeled and that a partnership between the city and private groups and companies could help keep operating costs affordable. "We view this building as a citywide multigenera-tional facility," said John Ewing, chairman of the special committee that reported Monday evening to the city's Board of Finance. "It should be available to anybody around the city and for any age. I think this will make a wonderful addition to the city." If the city fixed up just part of the 50-year-old building off North Avenue given to the city in summer 2005 by the Vermont National Guard it could be done for about $1.2 mil By Adam Silverman Free Press Staff Writer A federal judge Monday delayed the start of a landmark environmental trial to allow lawyers and himself more time to balance the public's right of access to the proceedings against the automobile industry's desire to shield trade secrets from competitors. U.S.

District Judge William Sessions III said he will establish by Friday a legal framework attorneys in the case should use to decide what information is public and what might warrant protection. Challenges to the judge's ground rules or the classification of specific material could prompt an appeal, so Sessions moved the trial's beginning back more than two weeks, from Thursday to April 9. The industry is suing Vermont in an effort to prevent the state from enforcing new environmental regulations that aim to curtail carbon-dioxide emissions from vehicles. Attorneys for the manufacturers contend some information they plan to use to prove their case is "highly confidential" and should be presented under seal and in closed court. The Burlington Free Press, which is fighting the industry's request, counters that a trial with far-reaching implications should not be sealed to protect business a General Motors Corp.

and two trade groups. They contend Vermont lacks authority to impose new emissions limits; the state argues it does. During a three-hour hearing Monday in U.S. District Court in Burlington, industry attorney Andrew Clubok said secrecy in the trial, though "minimal," is necessary in a case where rivals have joined forces for the limited purpose of challenging Vermont's law. "While they sit together nicely in the courtroom, in the business world they are fierce, fierce competitors," Clubok said, adding that his clients have an interest in the others' trade secrets.

"That's why it can't be in the press, because otherwise they would just read about it in the paper." Free Press attorney Bob Cain countered the closure the industry is seeking See TRIAL, 3B.