The school held its third annual Career Day for students across its grade levels, inviting community employers, programs and organizations to share about the opportunities available after high school.

“We have all these things at Otter Valley. We have my technical education program. We have Moosalamoo, which is our outdoor education program. We have all these career-connected learning opportunities, but they’re not connected at this juncture,” OV Technical Education teacher Devon Karpak said. “We need to fortify the connective tissue that are those things.”

A raccoon got itself into a sticky situation on Tuesday. The Shelburne Fire Department posted pictures on Facebook after helping a raccoon whose head was stuck in a peanut butter jar. They say it was an unlucky Saint Patrick’s Day for the raccoon, who had a lot of luck finding peanut butter, but not enough luck to get its head out of the container.

Concert pianist Alan Chiang is returning to the area to share another free concert with the Brandon community in the Brandon Congregational Church sanctuary on Thursday, March 19, at 6 p.m. The concert will last around an hour and include works by Bach and Brahms.

From our friends at Brandon Rec: We have coming up in our beautiful Brandon Town Hall, Brandon Idol performances on March 20 at 6:30 p.m.; Foley Comedy Act on March 21 at 7 p.m.; Community Youth Talent Show at 5 p.m. on March 28; Kids Idol performances on April 3 at 6:30 p.m. For more information, go to brandonvt.myrec.com.

Our beloved Rutland Herald has been publishing all the local, county, state and world news for well over 200 years. Well, we’re excited to announce the New Neshobe Current Local News Source has officially launched. This new online/electronic hub for news, events, history and general happenings in Brandon, Pittsford and the surrounding areas aims to fill the local news gap created when The Brandon Reporter closed operations last fall… It will take a river of people power to accomplish the goal of having a sustainable publication keeping our communities connected and well-informed. If you would like to share your interests or talents to help this publication thrive, please contact them if you have an interest in helping out.

“I think about 25% of Vermont now is conserved in some manner,” he said. “But only about 3% of Vermont is conserved as ‘forever wild,’ so the vast majority of conservation is still actively managed, and in many cases, logged for commercial use.”

He said the trust does things differently, though. He said it helps create a balance of wildlife conservation and managed commercial conservation.

“But on forever wildland, we’re doing something different. And importantly, both of these things are very complementary,” he said. “We need both wildlands and managed forests, but we have way too little wildlands in Vermont. That’s where Northeast Wilderness Trust serves the common good in that manner.”

Delaying local road projects only means they will be more expensive in the future, Hanford said. Monkton isn’t the only town being forced to give up on rural roads when the price tag for maintenance is too high.

“It’s of great concern to municipalities,” Hanford said. “And we’re wondering if we’ll be left shouldering the vast responsibility for road maintenance, repair and construction going forward.”

Despite some FEMA funding and state aid, towns are still facing expensive repair bills.