November 6, 2026 | By David Delcore | The Times ArgusThis story was first published by The Times Argus on Nov. 5.
CVCC Business Manager Michelle Leeman, left, and Superintendent Jody Emerson watch as the last batch of ballots cast on a bond proposal Tuesday are processed at Alumni Hall in Barre City on Thursday. The $54.9 million bond was approved in the 18-town district. Waterbury Town Clerk Wes Pollock (right) assisted with the vote tabulation. Photo by David Delcore
BARRE — It took two tries, and a massive adjustment, but voters in the 18-town district that operates the Central Vermont Career Center approved financing for a $54.9 million new facility proposed on the East Montpelier campus of U-32 Middle and High School.
Unlike last November, CVCC Superintendent Jody Emerson said it was worth the two-day wait for ballots that were cast around the region on Tuesday to be commingled and eventually counted in Barre on Thursday.
“I’m just super grateful,” said Emerson, who was on hand in the third-floor meeting room of Alumni Hall when the results were announced.
Technically, Emerson’s real-time reaction was “Woohoo! Thank you!” However, that was before District Clerk Tina Lunt announced the vote totals.
Waterbury Town Clerk Wes Pollock, who spent all morning and a sliver of the afternoon assisting with the process, jumped and gave away the ending.
“The ‘yeses’ clearly have it,” said Pollock, who had scanned the tapes just spit out by four tabulators and noted the vote wasn’t close.
Pollock was right.
Though it required some fast math to get the anticlimactic actual results, the bond easily passed 9,738-6,609, in a record-setting district-wide vote. So did a separate article requesting authorization to enter a 30-year land lease for 2.3 acres of the U-32 campus. That article, which was collectively approved by a slightly wider margin, 10,153-6,102.
“Now we have work to do,” said Emerson, whose cautious optimism about the bond’s prospects of passing only increased when voters in the Washington Central Unified Union School District handily approved a similar article involving the land lease, 1,887-1,220, during a separate special election on Tuesday.
Washington Central owns U-32, and its five towns — Berlin, Calais, East Montpelier and Worcester — voted twice on the lease and once on the bond Tuesday. Those ballots were commingled and hand-counted at East Montpelier Elementary School after the polls closed Tuesday night.
The favorable vote was a hopeful harbinger for Emerson, and other proponents of a project aimed at expanding access to the broad range of programs CVCC offers in a wing of Spaulding High School in Barre.
It wasn’t the only one. Emerson, who eventually joined CVCC Business Manager Michelle Leeman monitoring the vote tabulation process in Alumni Hall, stopped to snap a photo of a rainbow she spotted on the way to Thursday morning’s meeting of the Central Vermont Economic Development Council at Norwich University in Northfield.
“I texted it (the photo) to Michelle (Leeman) and said, ‘We’re good,’” Emerson joked while ballots were still being processed.
A year ago, voters in the CVCC district panned a plan to invest $149 million in a 167,000-square-foot new standalone center in the remote corner of Barre Town. That proposal was rejected 5,751-3,873 on a day when there was nothing else on the ballot in most of the CVCC district’s 18 towns.
The result was disappointing, but Emerson said the district’s response to it made all the difference on a day when more people — 9,738 — voted for the latest bond than the 9,643 who cast ballots on the last one.
Emerson said Tuesday’s turnout was heartening, but it wasn’t the difference. The difference, in her view, was the district’s decision to reach out to critics after last year’s failed vote, brainstorm alternatives, and settle on one that addressed key concerns.
Cost was one of them.
The $54.9 million bond voters just approved is considerably more palatable than the $149 million version that failed.
Location was another, in more ways than one.
Instead of abandoning Spaulding High School, the proposal contemplates retaining half of its programs there and moving the rest into a 61,000-square-foot building across the parking lot from U-32.
Co-locating with two high schools aligns with the state’s vision of creating regional high schools.
Emerson said those changes converted adversaries into allies and made pitching the latest proposal, which still accomplishes the goal of expanding access to the center’s programming, infinitely easier.
“What I heard over, and over, and over again is that we listened, we went back, we considered other ideas, and we came up with something new,” she said. “People were really appreciative that we didn’t dig in and bring back the same (failed) proposal.”
Pollock told Emerson many Waterbury voters he’d spoken to shared that view.
“People appreciated you got creative,” he said of the CVCC board, its facilities committee, and the working group of residents that help craft the revised proposal.
Emerson said finalizing the lease with Washington Central is an immediate next step, and work would soon begin laying the groundwork for a hoped-for groundbreaking in 2028. If all goes well, the new building will be ready to accept students and expand CVCC’s capacity when school opens in 2030.
“There’s a lot to do,” Emerson said.
Though the result was the top line takeaway, turnout was part of the story.
Cast by voters in four towns — Barre, Barre Town, Montpelier and Waterbury — 9,476 ballots were processed but not counted by four tabulators used in a now-familiar process overseen by Barre Town Clerk Tina Lunt, who is also the clerk of the district.
“We’ve got it down to a science,” Lunt said of a system that processed more ballots than it ever has before and still finished right on time.
It helped that ballots from Barre, Barre Town, Montpelier and Waterbury had already been processed, and, as expected, the four-town total was flirting with last year’s 18-town turnout.
The first batch of ballots cast by 630 voters in Middlesex arrived shortly before 9 a.m. and soon pushed the total over 10,000. Worcester arrived a short time later with another 323 ballots.
The number was sitting at 10,429 with a dozen towns — most of them larger than Worcester and as big, or bigger than Middlesex — yet to arrive.
They did. Typically in two-town waves.
Ballots from the next two towns — Cabot and Calais — pushed the total to 11,382 votes cast.
East Montpelier, which, due to its comparative size, had its own time slot, chipped in another 935 ballots.
The total stood at 12,317 when Berlin, which also had its own time slot, added 680 ballots to the mix.
Marshfield and Plainfield were up next, and by the time election officials from the partners in the Twinfield Union School District headed for home, 13,749 ballots were either processed or in the process of being processed.
The record for turnout — 14,115 — in a CVCC election was set on Town Meeting Day 2024, when the district’s annual budget vote coincided with the presidential primary.
It was surpassed and then smashed on Tuesday, even if the ballots weren’t counted until Thursday.
The record fell while election officials from Warren were feeding the 561 ballots cast in their community into the tabulators. Those ballots increased the count to 14,310 with five towns still to go. Four of them — Duxbury, Fayston, Moretown and Waitsfield — are partnered with Waterbury and Warren in the Harwood Unified Union School District. The fifth — Roxbury — is part of the Montpelier Roxbury Public School District.
Duxbury’s 418 ballots were the last to arrive, increasing total turnout to 16,535.
Lunt and Pollock fed some of those ballots into two separate tabulators, and Dan Cardozo fed the rest — including the very last ballot — into a third. That process ended moments before 1 p.m., and the results were announced.
Waterbury Roundabout note: A check of election results reported to the Vermont Secretary of State found that 28,629 ballots were cast across the 18 communities in the Central Vermont Career Center School District. The turnout for the CVCC ballot items works out to be 57.8% of the General Election participation.