To: Select Board of Newfane, VT
From: Newfane Anew

Newfane Anew is an organization dedicated to encouraging community spirit in the town of Newfane. In the past, we have put on concerts on the common, organized a Winterfest celebration, maintained the flags in the town center, and restarted publication of the Newbrook News quarterly newsletter. Unfortunately, Covid-19 put most of those activities on hold.

Now that the Pandemic is loosening its grip on public activities, we are attempting to restart our functions. The one project we managed to maintain during the many months of isolation was the Newbrook News newsletter. Our original goal was to broadcast information about activities and people in Newfane and Brookline to everyone in both towns, even if they didn’t have access to the internet. This was done by printing the newsletter and mailing it to every household served by the US Postal Service in Brookline, Newfane, Williamsville, and South Newfane zip codes.

Unfortunately, we have had to suspend publication, due to the high cost of printing and distribution. Each issue costs approximately $1,500 to produce. We covered some of the costs with advertisers and generous donors, but, by this past summer, we realized we couldn’t continue in this model without support from both towns. We have put in requests for annual appropriations from the coming spring town meetings, but we need some funds to carry us through until then.

We are asking the town of Newfane to grant us $3,000 of ARPA funds. This will allow us to produce the newsletter for the rest of the fiscal year 2022-2023, pending appropriation from the town budget. We feel this would be an appropriate use of ARPA funds, to foster a sense of community in our town, and promote interest in our piece of heaven in Vermont.

Thank you for your consideration.

Newfane Anew Directors
Priscilla Cotton, Denise Kiss, Jane Douglas, Angela Sanborn