Burke Town Meeting

The town of Burke met on February 28, the night before Town Meeting day, to go over what was to be voted on the following day through Australian ballot as well vote on several public issues in both the Town Report and the School District.





The meeting began with the reading of the names of those who had died in the previous year and a singing of America the Beautiful in honor of them and those who are currently serving in the armed services. Then State Senator Joe Benning and Representatives Howard Crawford and Richard Lawrence all gave speeches on what they are doing for Burke.
After these speeches the meeting moved on to the Meeting. They began with the Town Meeting where after briefly introducing each article to the floor they discussed Article one through three before voting on the issues including accepting the town report, setting a date for when taxes would be paid into the treasury, and authorizing the select board to borrow money in anticipation of revenues. All of these articles were voted through with no real opposition and all the articles that were voted on the following day were also gone over but there were very few questions about them. In fact every article that was put forth was voted through the next day including the electing of Town Officers which all candidates ran unopposed.
Unlike the town meeting the school meeting was a bit more controversial. After introducing the seven articles they discussed each article and voted on articles four through six. But the article that recieved the most contreversy was article three which states, "Shall the voters of the Burke School District authorize the Board of School Directors to apply for a loan from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund Program and borrow an amount not to exceed $211,200 for water system improvements at the school?"

In order to better understand the project that this had to deal with the school board brought in the engineer in charge to explain it to the residents. The engineer explained how the state is requiring the Burke town school to put in a disinfection system in order to further filtrate the schools water. Due to the fact that the school already puts orthophosphate into the water to combat levels of iron and copper the system would have to be a chlorine system. He also explained that they might have to put in a tank to hold water to disinfect it. But if they show the state that the town school doesn't need a tank and just have a contact pipe, which is a slow flowing pipe which would disinfect as it goes and would cost less money.

Many of the people in the crowd didn't understand why if the school hadn't failed any water tests they had to put in this secondary system, but the main concern had to be that the system would be chlorine which they were worried about. One Resident, George Wagner Sr said "Chlorine is a carcinogen and I don't want my grand kids drinking that." While in a meeting afterwards School Board member Tony DeMasi said that the amount of chlorine would have to follow Vermont standards for safety. During the meeting it was suggested that they replace all the pipes in the building in order to deal with the problem, but there would still need to be a disinfection system installed. Although if there was no use of orthophosphate they could use a Ultra Violet system which would not put any chemicals into the water. Demasi stated that he is willing to look into replacing the pipes but doesn't think people realize how much work would really have to be done.

DeMasi also stated that if the loan didn't pass the following day the town would miss out on a forgivable loan which would essentially give them a $50,000 grant. After all was said and done the article was passed the next day with a vote of 161 to 66. All the other articles were also passed with no close races.
After town meeting day had ended and the votes had been tallied up there wasn't a single item that wasn't passed and there were no close races.