Weather: false spring continues with cloudy skies and temperatures in the high-30s to low-40s. It's a good time to make sure your mud boots still fit.

It's New Year's Day and I'm writing right now for an audience of one. What are your plans for New Year's renewals? I plan to take one of my dogs running, despite the slush and ice, and maybe flip through a seed catalogue. And eventually wrestle my elementary aged daughter back onto a school schedule. Happy New Year to me, and to anyone who might be reading in the future — did we make it? I hope so.

Town governments are jumping right into budget planning in preparation for March’s town meetings, so if you’ve ever groused about town budgets, now’s your time to do something about it. If you’re planning to attend any of these meetings, please let me know.

Monday, January 2: The Rochester-Stockbridge school board (RSUD) will have its regular monthly meeting at 5:30 PM, at the Rochester campus and via Google Meet. The board will be appointing a new chair, vice chair, and WRVSU full board member, and discussion items are packed, including consideration of the 2023-2024 budget, an update on the school audit, and the announced tuition rates recently released by the state of Vermont. The full agenda is here.

Monday, January 2: The Granville-Hancock school board (GHUD) will meet at 6:30 PM at the Hancock town offices and over Google Meet. The board will be discussing the second draft of the 2023-2024 budget, so don’t miss this opportunity to weigh in on school spending. The full agenda can be found here.

Tuesday, January 3: The Hancock select board will meet at the Hancock town clerk’s office and via Zoom at 6:00 PM. Their new business includes discussion of the town budget and annual report. You can find more on the town’s website.

Thursday, January 5: The Pittsfield select board will meet at the Pittsfield Town Hall at over zoom at 6:00 PM. An agenda hasn’t yet been posted but the dial-in information is available at the town’s website. 

Thursday, January 5: The Stockbridge select board will hold its regular meeting at 7:00 PM. An agenda has not yet been released, but per minutes from its most recent meeting, topics for discussion will include town meeting planning as well as a discussion on AirBnb.

From the Vergennes police log, a resident filed a complaint that her ex-boyfriend had stolen her Christmas presents. According to the Addison Independent, she later found the presents where she had left them, but they had been hidden beneath some other items. Sounds about like my house. Maybe we need to use this false spring for some real spring cleaning.

I'll be honest — I'm fully expecting this to sit in the void and discover it years from now covered in cobwebs, where I'll read it in an agonizing shudder at how dull it is, and maybe a little pride at how far it's come. But you've gotta start somewhere, or at least I've been told.

If you do happen to be reading this, let me know how you found it, and what you think? There will be a learning curve, for sure, but I'm pretty thrilled at where this might go.

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