Senate President John Campbell charts the course for the Senate over the next several weeks. Plus, rocker-turned-professor Joe Gittleman relates his experiences from life on the road in a Lyndon State classroom.

Marilyn Hackett and the Vermont chapter of the ACLU are suing the town of Franklin and its moderator, Timothy Magnant, in Vermont Superior Court for allowing a pastor to recite the invocation before Town Meeting business each year.

Voters in 31 towns have decided to boost a property tax benefit for disabled veterans. State law allows towns to exempt the first $40,000 of a disabled veteran's property value from local taxes. But up until a few years ago, many towns did not allow the full benefit.

The preliminary results of Senator Bill Doyle's town meeting survey are in. And as VPR's Bob Kinzel reports, Doyle was surprised by some of the results.

A Franklin County town is in trouble for its practice of beginning town meeting with a prayer.

For the second consecutive year, the five towns of the Addison Northwest Supervisory Union have voted to form one unified school district. The vote passed along a similar margin in 2010, but opponents in the town of Addison were able to overturn the results in a re-vote.

Voters in Stowe say they don't want to spend $6.5 million on a new ice rink.

Here's the round-up of Town Meeting Day headlines from newspapers around the region.

Voters in Burlington passed two City Charter amendments and defeated a third in Town Meeting yesterday.

For several years, voters in the Northeast Kingdom town of Concord have been squabbling about whether to close their high school.

By a more than two-to-one margin, voters approved a nonbinding resolution asking the Brattleboro select board to sign on to a letter sponsored by the group Safe and Green Campaign.

In Rutland, the most hotly debated issue was not the municipal or school budgets but a $3.9 million bond vote to upgrade the city's recreation department.  

A number of Southern Vermont towns had ambitious school renovations on the ballot. School officials have been saying that even in a time of austerity, it's economically unwise to put off building improvements. But the results were mixed.

Many town warnings ask voters to shell out money for worthy causes, but in the Northeast Kingdom, the stakes are especially high for non-profits who depend on tax dollars. Private donations can be hard to come by these days, and in recent years, voters have also become choosy about how to divvy up scarce public resources.

Voters in Stowe will be weighing whether to spend a $6.5 million bond to build a new ice skating rink. The old arena is 37 years old and has begun to fall into disrepair. The proposal calls for a fully enclosed, 34,000 square foot building.

Saving energy was on the minds of Town Meeting day voters in at least six towns around the state. The communities debated whether to allow homeowners to pay for energy upgrades through their property tax bills instead of with a bank loan.

VPR has been visiting West Windsor for the past few years as an example of the traditional town meeting, and to take the pulse of this basic building block of democracy. And indications are that Town Meeting is still alive and well in West Windsor.

The Calais town meeting is known as much for the quality of its food as it is for the civility of its debate. But this year's pot-luck banquet featured a special treat: A huge cake honoring town clerk Eva Morse, who is retiring after 48 years of service.

As people in Vermont gather for their town meetings, some last night, and some today there's one person in the room who's in charge, and that's the town moderator.

Town moderators across the state called their town meetings to order this morning. Voters in cities and towns all over Vermont are deciding municipal and school budgets and a range of other issues.

Voters in Vernon met Monday for the first part of their annual town and school meetings. They'll vote Tuesday by secret ballot on budgets and town officers. But the biggest issue in town - the prospect of closing Vermont Yankee in 2012 -- isn't on the warning.

Bob Kinzel hosts VPR's Town Meeting Coverage Tuesday evening at 7:00pm. Tune in to hear what towns are voting on around the state. VPR reporters will file reports live from town meetings and news from various meetings will be posted throughout the day on VPR.net.

We look at what goes into preparing a town budget and the steps it goes through for approval. Plus, two UVM professors discuss research exploring a link between a specific hormone and PTSD. And we hear the First Baptist Church of Brattleboro's 103-year-old Estey pipe organ.

For the men and women who oversee town meetings, there's a lot more to the job than banging a gavel.  100 town moderators gathered recently for a refresher course on the finer points of parliamentary procedure and protocol.   

Hard economic times, shrinking student populations and rising costs have put pressure on school districts to merge and consolidate. Only one district actually has merger on the ballot. But the prospect of restructuring education will be a topic of discussion at many town meetings.