Community Visit

BENNINGTON -- The next step in the Vermont Council on Rural Development's Community Visit to Bennington is scheduled for this Wednesday.

In a letter to local interested participants, VCRD Executive Director Paul Costello said the upcoming meeting would bring a new team of facilitators to Bennington to interact with community members involved in the process. This week will also mark the formation of task forces dedicated to working toward goals previously selected by residents.

Although the prioritization work of the Community Visit Program requires a town to decide what is most important as it moves forward with Task Forces, nothing is lost in the process from the long list of concerns and ideas expressed in early community focus sessions. Many interesting and diverse thoughts are represented in the notes, and are presented as a reminder of issues explored, and a possible foundation for future projects.

At the first Select Board meeting in April, the board reorganized electing Joe Krawczyk Jr., chairman, and Sharyn Brush, vice chairwoman.

This meeting featured a presentation by Trevor Mance seeking to create a compost facility, on a small scale, for organic food waste generated at the larger institutions. He was seeking permission from the town to use a site behind the town’s former landfill on Houghton Lane. This year, the Vermont Legislature is considering a bill that will eventually mandate the removal of such waste from the municipal waste stream.

BENNINGTON -- Residents winnowed more than 20 potential action statements down to four Thursday evening with the help of the Vermont Council on Rural Development as part of that group's ongoing Community Visit Program. The group held nine community meetings last month on various topics and culled the ideas and concerns raised by Bennington residents into 22 action items that the Bennington community could focus on and pare down.