6-YEAR REQUEST TO UPGRADE .3 MILES OF “CLASS 4” ROAD WITH 5 FAMILIES
The documents below show brazen discrimination, grossly misleading and even dishonest statements, and other misconduct by Middlesex, VT officials. The misconduct includes discriminatory use of nearly $8M in FEMA funds provided to help residents recover from severe flooding in 2023 and 2024. The discrimination long preceded the floods (e.g., 2015) but was brazenly expanded after them due to the sheer magnitude of federal help. Misconduct included grossly disproportionate spending on the favored view — e.g., a Board Member and Road Foreman including within a year when his position as Foreman was terminated — to the detriment of others (e.g., a complaining resident who lived on a road that was far worse than the Foreman’s yet received $0 of FEMA funds in the year 2023 when the Foreman’s already-better road received over $400,000). The resident had complained in 2022 after the Foreman threatened the entire group of 5 families after one of them requested road improvements (the threat was to turn their road into a trail). The 2022 threat was followed by Board-level “wagon-circling” in the form of grossly misleading and even dishonest statements as well as explicit discrimination, and it recently led to a second (2026) Board threat if the complaining resident followed through on his stated intent to seek judicial intervention if the discrimination continues.
2015-12-15 Middlesex Board approves upgrade of .4miles of road along vacant land owned by former Bd. Member & Road Foreman (Bd. rejects concern of precedent on ground that a .4mile section is too small to set precedent; 2015 upgrade was not needed to provide emergency or other access for any families)
2022-09-06 Hearing Video (PW: @SvK9KLx) (Bd. rejects even considering .3mile upgrade request, citing concern for setting precedent despite express rejection of that reason in context of 2015 upgrade of Road Foreman’s and Board Member’s road); Bd. Chair says SBS request should come from all 5 families within the .3mile section).
2022-10-18 Hearing Video (PW: IK*kv2fE) (threat to turn road into a trail is reported to full Bd.; Chair denies his Sept. 23 assurance of support if all 5 families petitioned; Vice-Chair and 3rd Bd. Member equates request to one to plow and grade their private road and/or driveways; Bd. refuses to even consider the request unless 5% of the Town Petitions to mandate that it do so; Vice-Chair states expressly that she and other Bd. Members are less likely to grant relief requested because 1 of the 5 requesters had, in her view, gone “immediately into lawyer-mode.” Vice-Chair says this while ignoring “lawyer-mode” resident had since 2019 unilaterally offered to pay for .1 mile of the upgrade himself, and also ignoring 2022 threat against the 5 families that preceded any discussion of legal prohibitions of discrimination).
2024-06-24 Minutes (Bd. fires Road Foreman but does so in secret session; says it will provide public explanation but never does; Bd. permits Foreman to vote as Bd. member on his own firing; one Bd. Member abstains).
2024-10-13 article that Middlesex and may need to move to regional governance
2026-01-04 Ltr. to Town regarding Bd Chair’s Dec. 29 FPF Post rejecting emergency request
2026-01-13 resident emails Town re. urgent need to move Road Closed sign due to significant risks due to false negatives and positives (for outsiders as well as residents); Town ignores request.
2026-01-20 Board Hearing to consider whether to consider for upgrade of .3mile SBS section (with resident offering to pay for first .2miles. On motion of new Board Member (Stacey Skadberg) seconded by new Board Member (Larry Rooney), Board agrees to hold hearing Feb. 3 to consider upgrade of the 1st .3miles (and possibly the full .8mile length).
LAW
ABA & VBA Guidelines re. lawyer’s obligations wrt Settlement & Civility
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