November 5, 2026 | By David DelcoreEAST MONTPELIER — The board that oversees the operation of the Central Vermont Career Center will learn later today what voters in the 18-town district think of its latest expansion plan.
However, a decision made Tuesday night means the hours-long exercise of processing those ballots won’t be just a formality.
It’s officially one down and two to go for the CVCC board, after voters in five of its towns — all of them also members of the Washington Central Unified Union School District — decisively answered a threshold question involving the $54.9 million project.
Voters from Berlin, Calais, East Montpelier, Middlesex and Worcester collectively authorized the Washington Central School Board to enter into a land lease that could pave the way for CVCC’s plans to construct a satellite center on a sliver of the U-32 Middle and High School campus in East Montpelier.
Had that measure failed — it passed 1,887-1,220 — it would made the results of yet-to-be-tabulated ballots cast by voters in the broader CVCC district little more than an historical footnote.
That didn’t happen on a day when voters in the five Washington Central towns got two cracks at the lease question, and one at the bond that hinges on both affected boards having the authority to enter what amounts to a 30-year land lease.
Washington Central’s board now has that authority after ballots cast in Berlin, Calais, Middlesex and Worcester were transported to East Montpelier Elementary School after the polls Tuesday night.
Dumped on a table and mixed with those cast by voters in East Montpelier, the commingled ballots were then hand-counted, producing the collective result.
Diane Nichols-Fleming, chair of the Washington Central Board, and that district’s acting clerk, oversaw the process, which, except for the hand-counting, was a mini version of the one that will play out in Barre today.
As has now become customary, a third-floor meeting room in Alumni Hall will become CVCC’s election central, and ballots from across the regional district will be fed into one of four vote tabulators that were used to process CVCC ballots cast in Barre, Barre Town, Montpelier, and Waterbury on Tuesday, and many more will be added before any of the machines produce a result.
Election officials from 14 other towns will take turns feeding ballots cast in their communities into the machines.
Middlesex and Worcester are up first, and the hope is the process, which will start at 9 a.m., will produce a single reportable result after ballots from Duxbury and Moretown are fed into the machines early this afternoon. It could take longer, depending on the volume of ballots that need to be processed, but likely not much.
Though it coincided with Tuesday’s General Election, the CVCC special election, like the one in Washington Central, didn’t involve mailing ballots to all active registered voters. You either had to request them in advance or show up at the polls.
General Election turnout in the five Washington Central towns — 5,741 ballots cast — was significantly higher than the 3,150 voters who weighed in on the lease question. Election officials say the latter number is likely comparable to the five-town turnout for CVCC’s special election.
The same is true in the two-town Barre Unified Union School District, which includes two of the CVCC district’s most populous community, and is home to Spaulding High School, which has housed the career center since it opened in 1969.
Combined General Election turnout in Barre and Barre Town was 7,363. However, Town Clerk Tina Lunt, who, in her role as clerk of the CVCC district, will oversee today’s tabulation process of the ballots already processed but not counted in the two communities, will likely mirror turnout for Tuesday’s budget revote. Nearly 4,550 ballots were cast in that special election.
With 2,969 Montpelier voters casting on the career center bond and Waterbury accounting for another 1,603 votes, turnout for the CVCC special election will easily exceed the number — 9,643 — who collectively rejected a much pricier bond proposal last November. That $149 million bond failed by 1,878.
Assuming Lunt’s educated guess regarding CVCC ballots cast in Barre City and Barre Town is close to accurate, that should easily be more than 9,000 ballots in the room before those from any of the other 14 towns start arriving in waves.
The Washington Central towns alone should easily push that total over 13,500 in a district where the high-water mark in terms of voter turnout is 14,115. That’s how many ballots were cast on the CVCC budget on Town Meeting Day 2024, when the district’s annual budget vote coincided with Vermont’s presidential primary.
Tuesday’s turnout should rival, if not surpass, that record turnout after ballots from Marshfield, Plainfield, Duxbury, Fayston, Moretown, Waitsfield, Warren, Cabot and Roxbury are added to the mix.
CVCC Superintendent Jody Emerson is more interested in voters’ collective verdict regarding the latest bond than she is with the number of voters who participated.
Like everyone else, Emerson will have to wait.
“I’m trying not to think about it,” she said on Wednesday.
Still, Emerson noted the successful lease vote in Washington Central was a positive sign instead of a crippling blow, and the price and the place of the latest proposal seemed to resonate with voters.
“There’s (been) a lot less negativity online,” she said, adding, “I feel somewhat optimistic.”
Though the latest proposal is radically different from initial plans to invest $149 million in a standalone center on its own campus in a corner of Barre Town, the goal — expanding access to students CVCC can’t currently serve — is the same.
Investing $54.9 million in a satellite center that would house half of the district’s programs at U-32, while retaining and likely upgrading space currently occupied at Spaulding, would allow CVCC to serve more students.
That’s the plan. Voters did their part on Tuesday; Emerson and members of the CVCC board are anxious to learn what they said later today.