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Hardwick Gazette/Burlington Free Press

While state legislators continue to wrestle about how to cut costs in Vermont’s schools, voters in the five towns of the Addison Northwest Supervisory Union delivered a message on Town Meeting Day about taking a positive step in a time of fiscal uncertainty.

By a combination of state employee layoffs, pay freezes, suspension of payments into the education fund, and increased taxes on estates and capital gains, this year’s (fiscal 2010) general fund budget will be nominally balanced.

Unfortunately, no matter what else the stimulus bill may or may not have done, it’s slowed down the rate of broadband deployment in the U.S. over the last year. The Rural Utility Service (part of the U.S. Agriculture Department) and NTIA (part of the U.S. Commerce Department) have awarded only 15 percent of the first round money they promised to make available. To be blunt, they failed in their mission. They are now poised to compound that failure with an absurd deadline of March 15 for second-round applications prior to availability of first-round results.

On Feb. 24, the Vermont Legislature voted a potential death sentence for Vermont Yankee, the source of a third of the state’s electricity.

The Olympics, Stowe Derby and town meeting all happened in rapid succession. Many Vermonters and Stowe residents deserve praise for their accomplishments in those events. We’d like to recognize four in particular.

Stowe’s town meeting has come to resemble a big, cast-iron, claw-footed bathtub. It can still do the job, but it’s not efficient, it provides only one way of doing things, and it belongs to an earlier generation.