The Ice-Out Contest is officially over - all that remains is to present Mr. Desmond with his check. That will happen on Friday at 5 p.m. at the fishing access. Tom Dente, president of Joe's Pond Association, will do the honors, and we hope there will be at least a few TV folks or newspaper people there. If not, I'm sure Bill Rossi and Fred Brown will take plenty of pictures. I expect Ash Desmond has no idea how the clock gets stopped each year, so this will be an opportunity for us to show him how complex it was for him to beat the odds and win.

Now everything is over, I buckled down this morning and finished up the Spring Newsletter. It was ready to go except for the Ice-Out information. We will have it in the mail in about a week. In the meantime, those of you who have computers can access it from the web site now. It may load slowly - there are lots of pages with photos and such, so that makes the file bigger. Eventually we may need to put a text only version on for people who have dial-up or whose browser won't load it in a reasonable amount of time. To find it, go to "Joes Pond Assn" on the menu at the top of home page and you'll see "New Newsletter" on the dropdown menu. Give it some time to load. Let us know if it won't work for you.

I have a couple of notices for people in Cabot:

CABOT SPECIAL MEETING WARNING

The legal voters of the Town of Cabot are hereby notified and warned to meet at the Cabot School Gymnasium, Cabot, Vermont on Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. to transact the following business:

Article 1. Shall the Town vote to appropriate the sum of $50,068.32 to support the Cabot Library in addition to appropriations made at the March 3, 2009 Annual Town Meeting?

Article 2. Shall the voters of the Town of Cabot require that any group or organization requesting funding from the Town include in the Town Report a description of the organizations and summary of its activities including how funding will be used, and that any Cabot-based group or organization requesting money from the Town include in the Town Report a summary of its budget?

Article 3. To transact any other business that may legally come before this meeting.

Article 4. To adjourn.

Dated this 15^th day of April, 2009,

Attest: Tara Rogerson, Town Clerk

Selectboard: Caleb Pitkin, Larry Gochey, Ted Domey

Adopted and approved at a meeting of the Cabot Select Board held on April 15, 2009.

Received for record and recorded in the records of the Cabot Town Office, Cabot Vermont on Thursday, April 15, 2009

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To explain the above notice: At town meeting in March, Article 18 of the Warning requested $53,668.32 for the Cabot Library. Our tax payers did not pass this article. The library trustees have to come up with a new budget that is $3,600 less than the original, as shown in Article 1 above.

Article 2, requesting full disclosure by entities requesting money from the town, is self-explanatory.

Cabot supports two libraries: in the Willey Memorial Building, the public library whose trustees are asking for $50,068.32 (above); and the Cabot School library which is funded as part of the $3,660,125 school budget passed in March.

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At right is a handout from Cabot School. Click on it to enlarge it to read. It sounds as if these six youngsters have worked really hard to qualify for the Global Finals. We wish them lots of luck and will be anxious to hear how they do.

Fred just came home from St. Johnsbury where he and Bill Rossi did errands this afternoon. Fred took some pictures of the ice when they got back to the pond. Here they are. slides