Nicole Aimone, Editor-in-Chief
The Spring Green Village Board met for the first time with its three newly-elected board members — Jeannie McCarville, David Saperstein and Jennifer Snow, marking not only the largest village board turnover in the last 20 years, but also the first female village president.
“This is probably the largest turnover we’ve had in more than 20 years,” said newly elected Village President Robin Reid. “Thank you for being here, welcome.”
The first order of business at the April 28 meeting was to fill a seat left vacant following Reid’s election to village president.
The board unanimously voted to fill the seat with Deb Miller, the candidate who received the fourth highest votes in the recent April 6 election. Miller will fill the remainder of Reid’s term, which is up in April 2022.
The board also voted unanimously to allow the Vesperman Farms ice cream truck a permit, a matter the board tabled at its last meeting, due to questions about the trucks location when visiting and having enough space to accommodate lines, and the owner, Kyle Vesperman, a fifth generation farmer in Lancaster, not being in attendance previously.
Vesperman was present at Wednesday’s meeting, and shared some background and his plan for the trucks visits to Spring Green.
“We go from community to community bringing people happiness and serving ice cream,” said Vesperman. “Our intentions are once every two weeks, maybe three times a month, we come to the community, set up for three or four hours and serve some of our homemade, small batch ice cream that we make on the farm. That’s really just it.”
The Vesperman truck was scheduled to set up in Spring Green on April 18, the Sunday after the board tabled approving the permit until the next meeting. Vesperman said he planned to set up near the intersection of N Lexington Street and Daley Street, near North Park.
The truck was scheduled to be in the area the Sunday following the board chose to table approve its permit.
“Honestly, I looked at google maps and said ‘well here’s a park, here’s a pool there’s the main street downtown kind of thing,’ that’s honestly how we decided on our location,” said Vesperman. “If that’s a problem or something we need to look at, I have no problem moving to another location. We’re fine with whatever, we don’t want to cause any problem or rustle any feathers, we just love coming to Spring Green, we really enjoy it.”
Newly-elected Trustee Dave Saperstein suggested the truck park in front of the Post House Garden, where the Jose’s Authentic Mexican Food truck has been setting up in recent visits to the area, because it provides ample space for lines and groups of people, and would interfere with the pool concession stand selling ice cream at North Park in the summer season.
“Everybody loves ice cream, it’s not like the practice of law, everybody wants ice cream,” said Saperstein. “I think you’re going to have a hard time finding anyone who doesn’t want ice cream in the village.”
Vesperman clarified to the board that it wasn’t the trucks intention to interfere or overlap with any existing services or business in the village.
Trustee Michael Broh shared that similar food trucks in the area, such as Butternut Road Coffee Truck and Jose’s Authentic Mexican truck have successfully partnered with local businesses to serve the area.
“They’ve worked with the businesses, they’ve said ‘If I don’t encroach on your business, maybe we can work something out that will work for both of us,” said Broh. “I think this has worked out pretty well. I like the idea of working with area businesses.”
Other actions and discussions the board took include:
- Deciding to continue meeting via zoom through May.
- Approved a Class “A” liquor license to Kyle Adams with Wander Provisions LLC.
- Approved new committee appointments following the April 6 election.
- Approved a deed restriction for a piece of village land near the Usonian Inn off Highway 14, stating the village will not place a water tower on the land.
- Discussed but took no action on the installation of solar powered speed signs on Highway 23.
The next meeting of the board will be Wednesday May 12.
This story has been updated to include the new trustees’ names.