It may seem early to be thinking about March town meeting, but it's only about five weeks away. It's good to think about since that's generally the time maple sap begins to run, our Ice-Out Contest will be gearing up for the big finish on April 1, but this year there will be some very serious decisions to be made.

Cabot will have its first two-day meeting this year. It was voted last year that the school district meeting would be held on Monday evening at 6 p.m., before the regular town meeting on Tuesday which begins at 10 a.m. Voters must remember that all Australian balloting will be on Tuesday, with polls open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the school gym. This means that at the Monday evening meeting, only matters pertaining to the budget will be discussed and voted. Election of school directors will be by Australian ballot on Tuesday, along with other town business.

According to a report in the Hardwick Gazette, school principal Regina Quinn was asked by the school board to try to shift $50,000 from "non-personnel portions" of the proposed budget so fewer cuts would need to be made in faculty and staff. According to that article, she was able to do that by combining duties and restructuring some areas. Support staff, special education, industrial arts and physical education will feel most of the cuts. She expects there will be consolidation of classes by grade or age, curriculum changes and new approaches to teaching at the secondary level will need to be explored in the future.

The $3.3 million budget that the school board has proposed will now be met by the changes Ms. Quinn has made and another $50,000 resulting from teachers sacrificing raises and an increased town-wide property value assessment figure that was added back into the budget last week.

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We were in St. Johnsbury today. I visited our two Ice-Out ticket outlets, St. Jay Hardware and Caplan's, but nobody had sold any tickets, even through the holidays. I'll be contacting Harry's Hardware in Cabot soon. Walt Ackerman has done a great job of selling tickets for us there in the past.

We thought you'd like to see all the snow we have - even St. Johnsbury has a fair amount, but not as much as Joe's Pond. Fred had to stop at the animal hospital to pick up a bag of food for Woody and took a picture of the poodle patiently waiting to see one of the doctors. Back home, he got a picture of the two fishermen in back of the islands. A few minutes ago I took a picture of the Rt. 15 hills as the sun was setting, and they were still out there. Click on the picture to enlarge and then click below to see slide show:

Slides

I measured another inch and a half of snow this morning. That makes about 21" in our back yard, after wind and sun have compacted it somewhat. I think by Sunday we may have a fairly big storm coming our way. January weather, for sure.

We heard from our granddaughter, Jo-Ann, last night. She was excited that she'd had her first day in her new school. She's in 5th grade and said she liked everything about it, but she couldn't remember her teacher's name because it was "too complicated." She told me about having to get into snowpants to go outside at recess - something completely new to her, but at this point everything is new and exciting. She also said she had some homework, but she didn't seem to mind that, either. We think she's off to a very good start.