Keith Squires

Keith Squires, chairman of the Arlington Select Board and a member of the Local Emergency Planning Committee, said that the training being given to officials through the activities being planned would also focus on public outreach and getting them involved.

"One of the major sources of funding has been funds controlled by the trustees of public funds," said SelectBoard Chairman Keith Squires on Monday."Over the years they have been using the principal."

The problem was discovered in April with a new accounting system and trustee.While switching accounting programs, the two trustees discovered the interest was not going to yield enough for this year, according to Squires.

"We have to come up with a solution to come up with the money," Squires said.

Trustees of public funds watched the budget, but the trustees have seen a lot of turnover and were often short-staffed, according to Squires.
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The allocation will only maintain the cemetery for the remainder of the year, and next year the issue will have to be addressed again, Squires said.

There is still money left in the account, and that is generating interest to help rebuild the fund, according to Squires, but the town is not currently replenishing the spent funds.

"This year, we're going to have to give up mowing or something," Squires said."We obviously have to cut the budget back."

Squires suggested that the town highway department may help with the maintenance to lower future costs and said the new accounting system puts the town in control.

The town's appropriation, of $7,500 annually, will now be another line in the budget, and the board will approve expenditures.The trustees still will be in charge of the fund, according to Squires.

Arlington Select Board Chairman Keith Squires said the town was forced to institute a spending freeze because of the amount of delinquent taxes.

According to Squires, the Select Board and the Fire Department worked together on Monday and "pared down the fire department requests to a manageable list."

"That is kind of our role to help the fire departments," said Local Emergency Planning Committee Chairman Keith Squires.

A school bus, donated by the Arlington High School, was overturned with a town backhoe in the morning and three cars, donated by local townspeople, were placed in the accident scene with victims in them.A propane truck was scheduled to be placed down the bank next the road but, said Squires, it broke down.A burning garbage can was used in its place and was hosed down by fire departments upon arrival to the scene.

After the drill concluded, the group held a lunch meeting at 1:30 p.m. to discuss what went well and what could improve.This was the third year that the Local Emergency Planning Committee has organized a drill.Last year was a plane crash and two years ago it was a terrorist attack at the airport.

"We've done one every year and try to involve many agencies," said Squires.

During this year's drill there were five dead, 15 wounded and 10 "walking wounded."The wounded were transported to Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, where the hospital staff was drilled to take care of them.

"It drills if the hospital can handle all these people at once," said Squires.

Under that heading, three areas of concern came up, one of which was raised by Keith Squires, chairman of the Arlington Select Board and member of the Local Emergency Planning Committee, who said that identifying the individuals most in need of fuel assistance was a challenge."We need to be aggressive in getting out there and identifying those people," Squires said.
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Those at the meeting also decided that Squires, along with the emergency planning committee, would hold two workshops, one for town health and service officers to help them recognize human issues regarding fuel needs and one for landlords on what to look out for in the buildings they own regarding the issue.

Select Board Chairman Keith Squires spoke to the reasoning behind the line item."There is no doubt that the town of Arlington is

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growing all the time, and we're seeing an increase in the amount of paperwork that's piling up," said Squires.As a result, the work of the selectmen has steadily increased, and Squires said he has been working significantly more than the traditional 12 hours a week.This reality, said Squires, necessitated a change in the way the selectmen were compensated for their duties.

The $12,000 up for debate, according to Squires, "is a source of money that can be tapped into to compensate selectmen when they work above and beyond what's normal," something that is expected to happen as the selectmen devise a way to keep track of their hours and duties to determine whether or not a town manager is needed to assist with the governance of Arlington.
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Squires answered, "We're starting to keep track now to form a baseline, to find out, what would the job entail for a person who would come in from outside?"He went on to explain that, since the Select Board is considering hiring a town manager next year, the process of gathering information about the work the Select Board does

will give the board an idea of what a town manager would do.Moreover, having a town manager would significantly reduce the amount of work each select board member would do.

"This, in our opinion, is the beginning of a change in the way we do

usiness," said Squires, who left the door open for opposition.

Keith Squires, chairman of the Arlington Select Board, said at a recent meeting that the town's grand list had grown from $186 million to $306 million, an increase of about 65 percent.

Keith Squires, the chairman of the Bennington County Local Emergency Planning Committee, which held the drill, said Wednesday that he was impressed with how candid participants were about their performances.They were both critical of themselves and receptive to suggestions for improvement.

"It's trying to find what you did well and what you need to improve on," he said about the drill.

"We're very pleased, everything went according to plan," said Keith Squires, chairman of the Bennington County Local Emergency Planning Committee, which organized the event.

The project will extend alongside the historic town green and extend the walkway towards the town's Recreation Park, said Keith Squires, the chairman of the Arlington Select Board.

This grant will allow the town to begin planning the project.They will go back to the federal government for another grant when it's time for the actual construction, he said.

"It's been on the town list for a long time, but now we're getting started," he said.

The federal money will require a 20 percent match from the town of $4,000, which can be in the form of in-kind services, he said.