Satellite Global Positioning Bug moves Yarmouth Fall out of Vermont.
For the last 136 years Yarmouth Fall has been right on the Vermont Border. That was until Sunday 22st August when the Satellite GPS system was hit with the EOW Rollover Bug. For the whole of that Sunday Yarmouth Fall was repositioned 1300 metres to the left, ending up over the border in New York State. (See map of normal position of Yarmouth Fall).

Well for the unknowing Vermonteers of Yarmouth Fall it was like every other Sunday. Get up, eat, go to church, paint the house, wash the car, eat, watch TV, eat, watch TV and go to bed.

Obviously when the system was reset at the end of the day everything went back to normal and Yarmouth Fall was back in Vermont. That would be the end of it just a glitch and no one noticed.

Wrong. However short the trip may have been there have been serious repercussions effect the Town, County and State.

On Thursday the 7th October all households received NY State tax Bills for one day's tax. For fishing without the appropriate license 16 fishermen who were down in the pool at the bottom of the Fall have been summonsed by the NY Fish and Game board. The Town Council has been charge by NYPD with illegal gaming for holding a Bingo game in the Town Meeting room. The list of demands for this deemed one-day's trespass just goes on in the same way.

After numerous phone calls from concerned townsfolk the Town council called an emergency meeting on Friday evening.

There was a very heated debate in the filled hall on the legalities of the situation. Councillor Deadman had called Mr Jorgensen of the Stark County Attourney Generals Office who was quoted as saying "If the border, as defined was shifted east by a precision American product like the GPS then technically Yarmouth Fall was in New York State for one day". Uproar ensued with various unprintable actions threatened against Jorgensen. The most quotable comment was from Farmer Brendan Jeanes, who said "If Jorgensen was shifted by a precision American boot, he still wouldn't know his *** from his elbow". The meeting ended with the Council agreeing to express our serious concerns to the Stark County Board of Selectmen over the weekend.

The County Board met on Tuesday 12th, (after Columbus Day holiday), and decided to pass the problem onto the representative at the State Legislature. (Probably took them all of 10 seconds to decide to pass the buck, as usual, they all going to have to watch their backs at next years elections if they continue like this).

The State Legislature eventually met on Monday the 18th and ordered the congressional office to contact their opposite numbers for New York to explain their reasoning behind these ridiculous demands on Vermont citizens.

To date the only open response has been from the representative for Ressenlayer County saying "If they were in our wonderful State using our services for one minute we would charge them for it. If they think they can backslide in paying honest taxes for being a New Yorker for a day they have another thing coming".

A reply was sent under seal back to the congressional office but details have not yet been sent back to the County Board. Off the record quotes seem to lead this reporter to believe the issue is off to Washington to for a Federal decision as it was their GPS that misfunctioned. Well, we all know how long that decision is going to take.

Finally, on an alarming note, The Yarmouth Falls IT correspondent says he has seen reports of another failure of the GPS on 31st December 1999 at midnight. The calculations he has made show Yarmouth Fall moving due South by 1300 metres over the border into the Berkshires of Massachusetts and he has not seen any reports of how long the GPS will take to fix. A song comes to mind it's called, South of the border down Massachusetts way.

See other GPS references More in next month Gazette.