Budget approval cures CVCC's bond blues

March 9, 2026  |  By David Delcore  |  Times Argus staff writer

BARRE — Fresh off its first-ever failed vote, the board responsible for running the Central Vermont Career Center got back on track, when thousands of ballots cast last Tuesday in the regional district were commingled and counted.

For the fourth straight year, the spending plan proposed by the CVCC board was easily approved in a districtwide vote. The latest budget — a $5.5 million proposal that reflects a 7.2% increase in spending for fiscal year 2027 — passed 7,385 to 3,345, according to the count held on Thursday, two days following the Town Meeting Day election.

The result, perhaps predictably, showed that voters in the 18-town district are far more comfortable spending $5.5 million to operate the Barre-based career center than they were investing $149 million to build a brand new one.

A bond issue that would have financed construction of a modern standalone center in Barre Town — one capable of offering a full-day program to up to 500 students — was rejected, 5,751-3,873, during a single-issue special election in November.

The bond failure was a setback for the four-year-old district, which, in many ways, is now exactly where it was a year ago — evaluating its facilities options, and pondering a bond vote, while celebrating approval of its budget.

Though Superintendent Jody Emerson wasn’t on hand when the budget vote results were announced on Thursday, she welcomed word the budget was approved.

“Thank you everyone for continuing to support CVCC,” she said, suggesting the favorable decision will allow the district to focus without distraction on its immediate needs, while weighing its future.

On Thursday, that involved interviewing candidates for the assistant director’s position. Soon it will involve preparing to launch a new early childhood education program, and then there is the ongoing discussion of how to meet the needs of a center that has outgrown the wing of Spaulding High School it has occupied since it opened in 1969.

“We’re going to keep trying to figure out how to get access for students, and what those short- and long-term (facilities) options might be,” Emerson said, had the budget failed like the bond did, it would have been “back to the drawing board” for the board, and potentially jeopardized plans to add the new early childhood program.

Emerson typically is on hand to monitor the now-familiar process that was last used to determine the results of the November bond vote. Busy with interviews, she made sure Business Manager Michelle Leeman was there to relay the results as soon as they were available.

Leeman did as she was asked, received a heart emoji in response and echoed the reaction of her boss.

“Ditto,” she said. “We definitely appreciate the community support.”

Tweaked over time, the tabulation process went according to script in a third-floor meeting room in Alumni Hall in Barre. It started with five tabulators, which had already processed, but not counted ballots that were cast on Tuesday in Montpelier, Barre, Barre Town and Waterbury.

Those four communities accounted for nearly 6,200 of the total ballots cast: 2,288 from Montpelier, 1,532 from Waterbury, 1,431 from Barre Town, and 932 from Barre.

Montpelier’s ballots were in two separate tabulators — one a spare in case there was a glitch with one of the other machines.

There weren’t, and a process that began when election officials from Middlesex arrived at 9 a.m. and fed the 274 career center ballots cast by voters in their community on Tuesday into two of the machines, was over by early afternoon.

Election officials from Duxbury and Moretown were the last on District Clerk Tina Lunt’s schedule, and partial results were available before either finished processing their ballots.

While four of the tabulators were still being used, Lunt turned the key on the spare from Montpelier. Based on the ballots it processed, the budget enjoyed a comfortable a near-700-vote cushion.

Though the margins varied, the budget passed comfortably based on the counts of all five machines, and by the time Lunt turned the key on the fifth, failure was mathematically impossible.

That’s good news for the district, and while turnout wasn’t record-breaking, having 10,730 ballots cast was solid. It eclipsed the 9,624 ballots cast in last November’s bond vote and was on par with 10,733 votes cast on the budget last March. 

Just under 69% of the voters on Tuesday supported the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. In the wake of the failed bond vote, that solid show of support for the center’s mission was comforting, Emerson said. The challenge now will be identifying solutions that will enable the center to accommodate mounting demand for its programs among students who attend the high schools it serves. “We’re working on it,” she said.

This story was first published by The Times Argus on March 5.