ST. JOHNSBURY- Ricky Powers, 57, of Waterford, pleaded not guilty to his charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault with a weapon, and reckless endangerment in Caledonia County Court on Monday.
Read more: Powers Pleads not Guilty for Attempted Murder of Nephew
LYNDONVILLE- Today Northern Physical Therapy and Northern Vermont Regional Hospital have officially merged together. Both organizations are looking forward to the partnership because it is a way to develop more meaningful and effective plans of care for their patients.
DANVILLE-The Danville School held a Veteran's Day celebration this morning for students and community members to enjoy. Guest speaker Joshua Mitchell came to speak about his experiences while in the military.
ST JOHNSBURY & DANVILLE – November 6th, otherwise known as nation-wide election day, may have been a dark and dismal day weather-wise in the Northeast Kingdom. However, it was an important day for voters who hoped to see the change they would like to see at a local and federal level.
With the polls opening Tuesday morning, know more about some of the candidates running for US Sentate.
For more information about the candidates that were not able to be interviewed, click here for more information.
NORTHEAST KINGDOM- Saturday was National Make A Difference Day, and two towns in the Northeast Kingdom celebrated by having annual races. The towns of St. Johnsbury and Lyndonville hosted their 10th annual Kingdom Challenge.
Saturday morning started off with the half marathon race in Lyndonville. Runners started at Park Avenue and looped down McGoff Hill road to end in St. Johnsbury.
Read more: Northeast Kingdom Celebrates 10th Annual Northeast Kingdom Challenge
Lyndon- The students Veterans association helped to carve over 30 pumpkins to help contribute to an annual pumpkin walk. The walk is sponsored by the Summerville Neighbors association in St. Johnsbury. The group ordered 500 pumpkins that will be on display on a path leading up to their very own haunted house.
NORTHEAST KINGDOM- An epidemic that is seen around the country... hitting home here in the Northeast Kingdom.Sgt. Lester Cleary from the St. Johnsbury Police Department says, "Our officers are called to a variety of calls everyday and seldom there is a day that goes by that we don't have a crime, at least one crime that is related to someone's drug addition."
LYNDONVILLE- Sales for lottery tickets are through the roof across the country, at Nick Gas N' Go are up 1,7000 in the last week due to a historic Mega Million Jackpot of 1.6 billion dollars.
Read more: 1.6 Billion Dollar Mega Million Jackpot Breaks Records
EAST BURKE - As the winter months approach, people around the NEK are preparing for how they are going to heat their homes. While many heat their homes with oil, gas, or electric heat, there are still plenty people who heat with wood.
LYNDONVILLE- Many Vermonters started their Monday with a scam call from someone pretending to be with the Vermont Electric Coop.
PEACHAM- Fall is finally here, and that means that it is time for fall festival season. Peacham has their festival going on this week and with lots of events going on, people from all around the Northeast Kingdom and even other parts of the country have made this event one of their stops. Some of the events happening on Thursday were favorites of a lot of people, the bus tour and the crafts fair were just some of the few.
AROUND THE NEK - The Farm to School Grant which has been helping locally grown foods find thier way to students lunch trays will be going into its 13th year of operation with it's highest grant amount ever. The grand total of the grant will be $256,000 and will be applied to schools that apply and qualify for its benefits.
BARNET- After a mandatory 7th and 8th grade parent meeting last Thursday night at the Barnet School, the principal and administration worked together to create a new behavioral plan.
Mr. Brewster, the newly hired STEM teacher stated in his resignation letter, "the number of distractions interrupting my lessons and the amount of time wasted worries me moving forward, and I don't want my first experience to be affected in such a derogatory way."
"In my first five minutes at the school, I witnessed a 7th grade student use the 'F' word repeatedly towards the homeroom teacher and other staff members as he was asked to leave and as he tried to re-enter the classroom," wrote Brewster in a statement on the town's community Facebook page. "Many of the children inside the classroom laughed at this behavior and outburst, and I was left feeling completely appalled," he wrote.
Brewster's resignation and the reasons for it caused Principle Shawn Gonyaw to call a mandatory 7th and 8th grade parent meeting Thursday night. During the meeting, parents, students, and teachers shared their personal stories of their behavioral experiences. From bullying, to disruptions of class, many feel that the administration is lacking a effective disciplinary plan.
Principle Gonyaw said that he is willing to take the blame for this, but it's up to everyone to make an effort in improving the learning environment.
"The families at Barnet care deeply about their school, and were willing to come in and spend their evening talking about a problem that we have, and talking about how to solve that problem," Gonyaw said.
He says that the community has come up with solutions that they all agree on and the administration will be working on implementing them in the weeks to come.
NEK- Fall is finally upon us here in the Northeast Kingdom. More than just the leaves and climate changing, businesses tend to change as well.The Village Sport Shop is a perfect example of a business that is affected by the fall season.
N.E.K.- St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndon Institute continuously work to meet their budgets when it comes to enrollment numbers.
At the beginning of the 2018 school year, both institutions reported slightly lower numbers for their boarding programs than the year prior. So what does that mean exactly? According to Sara O'Connor, L.I.'s Interim Director of Admissions, it really hasn't made much of a difference.
NEK- Two-hundred and thirty-nine of Vermont schools have received 4 million dollars in grants from the Homeland Security Grant Program. This money directly takes care of the facilities and personnel which provide safety for these schools, however there is also an additional one million dollars available for training and planning.
THE NORTHEAST KINGDOM - The Vermont Legislature passed the minimum wage bill, S.40, from $10.50 an hour to $15 an hour by 2024 for tens of thousands of Vermonters. Proponents of the bill hope that by increasing wages it will allow Vermont workers to spend more money in the state and therefor boost the state's economy. However, employers could pay students three dollars less than the mandated $15 an hour.
NORTHEAST KINGDOM- May the fourth be with you, may the power not be with you because of the storm. Friday, May 4th, Vermonters got hit with a thunderstorm. Many people were without power due to trees on power lines and more.
BURKE-Bike season is here and the Northeast Kingdom Trails is prepping for the upcoming season. The trails Operation Manager, Erin Donnelly talked about safety tips and what people can expect for the upcoming season. She also had mentioned that even though there are workers that get paid all year round, there are people that volunteer for the sake of helping.
BARNET- 6th grade students at the Barnet school are working on a new project, a music garden for the younger students at their school. The students got the idea after attending a Vermont Rural Partnership celebration where schools get together to share ideas and projects they have created at their schools.
WHEELOCK- The town of Wheelock is starting a ditching road project on Matthewson Hill Road. The project will redesign the current roadside ditches to improve the quality of the road. The project is funded by a grant through "The Better Back Roads" Program as well as the NVDA. This program helps improve the quality of the water throughout the state and promotes the use of erosion control.
Northeast Kingdom-The snow may be gone for the northeast kingdom but that does not mean the weather will stop wreaking havoc. A powerful storm brought lightning, thunder, high wind and rain to the kingdom on Friday.
Many towns in the area were heavily affected and there was at least minimal impact on all towns throughout the kingdom. Those impacts range from power outages to downed tree branches.
In Caledonia County, Vermont Electric Co-op, Washington Electric Co-op, Green Mountain Power and Lyndonville Electric combined had more than 2,000 outages in total. Lyndonville Electric is having the most trouble and reports 1500 outages between Caledonia and Essex Counties. As of early this morning Lyndonville Electric was struggling in dealing with the widespread outages and were focusing on the areas of Calendar Brook road and along the route 5 corridor as well as broken poles in areas in and around Pudding Hill road and Peak road in South Wheelock.
There were many residents out and about this morning and afternoon cleaning up the mess. Residents of Wheelock are feeling the effects. Multiple residents have expressed how much damage they have seen. They say that there a multiple trees down on all terrain vehicle trails and many trees and power lines down on back roads of the town which makes it that much more difficult for someone to get to their home.
From an emergency personnel standpoint the St. Johnsbury fire department has had a few calls this afternoon regarding issues from the storm but says they have not been running into much trouble but are still feeling the impacts. Fire Chief Andrew Ruggles says "If you were to see power lines or trees down they need to stay away from them because they still could be energized and the ground around it could be energized" And for emergency personnel the response time is key in these types of events too. "It could even be under five minutes for our response time" says Ruggles.
For the latest up to date outage map you can visit vtoutages.org.
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