Addison Independent

Hello all you creative folks out there — it’s time to slip into deep thought and put fingers to keyboard for the Seventh Annual Weybridge Haiku Contest. Entries are currently being sought in a competition with multiple categories. Begun in 2018, the contest was originally limited to Weybridge residents or writers with a Weybridge connection. Nine writers submitted 70 haikus that year. But the contest is now open to all Vermonters and submissions have steadily increased. Last year, 51 writers submitted 443 haikus. Your haiku poem should be in the haiku form — either the traditional form of three lines with no more than 17 total syllables total (5-7-5), or a short three lines that captures the spirit of the haiku. There’s a 10-haiku limit. Participants of all ages are encouraged to submit. There’s a youth division, through high school, and an adult division. Submit haikus to George Bellerose, contest administrator, by Feb. 24. Email [email protected] or 80 Meetinghouse Lane, Weybridge, VT 05753. He’ll forward them to the three judges: Gwen Nagy-Benson, Susie Davis and Barbara Brosnan, all past contest winners. 2025 winners will be announced at the end of March to celebrate Poetry Month in April. Judges will select three youth winners and three adult winners. Judges also create “Best of” categories, such as “Best Haikus about Climate Change.” Winners will choose from books by Weybridge’s co-poet laurates, Julia Alvarez and Jay Parini, as well from books by Weybridge novelist Chris Bohjalian.

Barring an eleventh-hour adjustment, the Middlebury selectboard on Jan. 28 will send voters a proposed fiscal year 2026 municipal spending plan of $14.5 million.

Patricia Hannaford Career Center (PHCC) directors are proposing a fiscal year 2026 spending plan of $5,704,280 to deliver vocational-technical education to students from most Addison County towns. This ask represents an 8% increase compared to this year.

TRACY TEMBREULL, MIDDLE, and her husband, Mark and son, Eyon, to her right, pose with Officer Mark Stacey, left, and Sgt. Adam O’Neill of the Vergennes Police Department. Stacey and O’Neill worked with American Legion Post 14 to surprise the Tembreulls with the new flag that is flying behind them after their former flag — which they had flown for six years in honor of Tracy Tembreull’s brother, a Purple Heart veteran who took his own life — was stolen from their Vergennes home on New Year’s Eve. Independent photo/Andy Kirkaldy

BRISTOL RESIDENT DANIEL Lyons, right, and son Sawyer serve up soup at the BEATS Eats food truck this past November. The food truck is aimed at offering employment opportunities and support for a diverse group of local youth. Photo by Meredith Visco

Frigid temperatures and the recent removal of Middlebury’s largest encampment behind the Ilsley Library has temporarily made homelessness more of an unseen problem in the county’s shire town. So where did the folks go?

As the Addison Northwest School District struggled with a ransomware cyberattack last week, officials at the other two big school districts in Addison County were assuring folks that they had taken steps to ensure that they wouldn’t be similarly imperiled.

Addison County lawmakers are particularly well positioned for the next two years to influence state policy related to education, spending, human services and the environment.