With town meeting mostly behind us, it’s worth looking at what we learned this year in covering 11 town meetings, their associated informational meetings and Australian balloting, along with the same for school districts and supervisory unions.
Our small staff did a heroic job getting at least some report from almost every town into the paper published early Wednesday evening last week.
Community members and town clerks helped greatly in the towns where they responded to our requests for assistance and they even wrote several stories. Where we had people gathering the news and votes, we were able to print reports last Wednesday, except for one, in Walden, that got missed because I lost track of what someone else had written. It is published in this edition, and we were able to put it on the website last week with a special newsletter.
A report for Marshfield, where we had no community journalist and the town clerk hasn’t finished with their report, remains absent until we get that information for next week. While we’ve been able to gather info for some school board meetings and Australian ballot votes, those have been harder to obtain than town meeting results.
Which is all to say, we very much appreciate the community help we’ve had and appeal to those of you community minded and active in your communities to be gathering news and planned schedules for community and entertainment events.
This week Orleans Country Forester Jared Nunery shared a photo and information about GMTCC students doing a logging job in Craftsbury. Their Instructor Corey Hathaway shared some photos and more information, then Craftsbury community members Joe Houston, Rob Libby and Ned Houston talked with us to fill out the story. So, while it carries my byline, it was a community effort that brings the story to you in today’s paper and online.
Hardwick Zoning and Floodplain Administrator Kristen Leahy has written her first story with a detailed look at what’s happening at 41 Brush Street. She plans to continue with more stories as her schedule allows and share work on flood clean-up and mitigation as it continues. More of that would be good to see from other towns and help us build a team of community journalists to share the interesting and important news that happens daily.
Many have commented on liking the “Local Lumps” columns that once appeared in the Gazette. While we think the time of peeking in neighbor’s windows to share who visited for supper and what was served is over, there are a huge number of things happening in our communities that are worth sharing with others.
As a nonprofit community-owned organization, we are here to meet the needs of those 11 communities we serve and look to Gazette readers to share their noses for news with us.
Paul Fixx, editor
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
