Buying a big truck, fixing the highway garage, growing legal weed – Duxbury town meeting in a nutshell
February 20, 2021 | By Jacob Dawson 
A town truck plows River Road in Duxbury recently. Photo by Gordon Miller.
A $250,000 bond for the town garage, a purchase of a new tandem truck, and the prospect of legal marijuana operations in the near future are just a few of the questions before Duxbury voters for Town Meeting Day this year.
The March 2 vote will also give residents the chance to approve a budget about 4% larger than last year’s, and fill local elected offices - several of which remain open with no declared candidates.
With 10 articles, 13 elections, and a global pandemic, Duxbury’s Town Meeting Day will be different for 2021.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, Vermont’s Legislature made some allowances for communities to skip the traditional in-person meetings so as not to hold indoor gatherings. Municipalities are allowed to put all business questions on the ballot, with a simple vote of the local selectboard or city council rather than all of the town’s voters.
That means no room for discussion that might yield revisions to budgets or other articles that would happen in a normal year.
Duxbury’s Selectboard opted to drop its community gathering this year. Now every question for voters to consider that would normally have been held in person is printed on the paper (“Australian”) ballot which are available early by request from Town Clerk Maureen Harvey via email or phone call. Harvey will send the Harwood Unified Union School District ballot as well with its two questions. One asks voters to consider a $40.39 million budget, the other assigns $1 million in surplus funds from fiscal year 2020 to the maintenance fund, and sets aside another $650,000 to be used toward future budgets.
Similar to 2020’s elections, officials are encouraging voters to request early ballots and mail or drop it off at the town offices before March 2. Harvey and election workers will set up a drive-through voting location near the town garage and office for voters to either vote or simply drop off ballots on election day. That will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
With everything on the ballot, a required informational meeting before election day will take on new importance this year. Residents are encouraged to join a virtual meeting via Zoom video or audio on Friday, Feb. 26, at 6 p.m., to discuss the budget and articles on the ballot.
Selectboard member Mari Pratt said the board has agreed to offer limited in-person attendance for this meeting for those who truly cannot connect online or on the phone using the Zoom platform. Two board members will be at the Crossett Brook Middle School gym and voters will be allowed to attend as long as they follow COVID-19 health protocols including temperature screening, wearing a mask, distancing and hand sanitizing. The space will have a set capacity however, Pratt said, so only those who cannot attend otherwise should take this option.
Otherwise, the public may join the meeting by telephone or through the Zoom application on a computer or mobile device. To join by telephone, dial 1-929-205-6099, then type the meeting number, 242 764 3402, and password, 456789. If joining through the application, only enter the meeting number and password.
Harvey said town reports have been mailed to all registered voters and to look for them arriving in the mail in an envelope this year.
Candidates for each office
After the Jan. 25 filing deadline for local candidates, Duxbury has four positions without a declared candidate and only one contested position. One write-in has since stepped up, however.
Three seats on Duxbury’s selectboard are on the ballot this year, two one-year terms and one three-year term.
The three-year seat is currently held by Jerry McMahan, who is running unopposed. The one-year terms are currently held by board chair Kevin Garcia and Dawn Poitras, neither of whom appear on the ballot. Poitras was appointed to the board in November to fill a vacancy created when Richard Charland resigned at the end of October.
Mike Marotto is on the ballot unopposed for one of the one-year selectboard terms. After the filing deadline, Brian Robinson came forward as a write-in candidate for the other one-year seat.
The only contest on the ballot is a three-year term on the cemetery commission with candidates Stacey Misenko and Ken Spencer each vying for that seat.
All other candidates on the ballot are running unopposed:
Daniel Senning for moderator
Nate Isham for 1st constable
Maureen Harvey, the current town clerk, is running for both delinquent tax collector and 2nd constable.
Maxwell Popowicz for lister
Brian Dalla Mura for HUUSD school board
Three other positions do not have a declared candidate: the remaining year of a five-year term on the budget committee and another full five-year term for the same committee; a three-year term for auditor.
More funds for road maintenance
With just over a 4% increase proposed to the town budget, selectboard members found themselves grappling with a familiar issue: the state of Duxbury’s roads.
The selectboard is proposing a $1,051,267 budget, compared to last year’s $1,009,415. A tax rate of $0.714 per $100 assessed property value will be needed to support that budget. That’s more than 8 cents lower than the tax rate in 2020 that was $0.7971.
Notable increases to line items in the proposed budget include an increase from $40,000 to $72,000 for gravel purchases. At a selectboard meeting on Jan. 13, Garcia explained the increase is due to a “nearly 100% increase in the price of gravel,” as well as the town starting to purchase a higher-quality gravel.
Another increase was added to the town’s pavement escrow, with voters being asked on the ballot to add another $3,000 to the fund.
To save on costs, board members also made some changes to the ongoing Scrabble Hill Road project. Confident the project will not be completed by the end of 2021, board members decided to cut the line item in half, from $152,000 to $76,000.
Furthermore, another $23,000 was removed from that fund to cover a $23,000 match for a scoping study on Camel’s Hump Road, bringing the line item down to $53,000, ultimately lowering the budget cost by nearly $100,000.
Discussed at a special meeting of the selectboard on Jan. 28, board members agreed on two articles relating to the purchase of a new tandem dump truck.
After about 45 minutes of discussion about purchasing an automatic or manual transmission truck, the board ultimately decided on an 8LL manual transmission, and are asking voters to allow Duxbury to spend $145,000 on the purchase.
Board Chair Kevin Garcia was adamant that any truck driver the town may higher in the future know how to drive a manual. Board member Dan Schillhammer noted how it’s easier to control the engine with a manual, which is crucial to driving safely on some of Duxbury’s more treacherous roads.
Article 6 on the ballot asks voters to approve spending up to $145,000 for the purchase using the Capital Reserve Fund. Article 4 asks voters to put $107,000 into that fund.
Considering legal cannabis businesses
At the Jan. 28 meeting, board members discussed adding a question to the ballot to allow legal marijuana businesses to operate in Duxbury. Under a new state law enacted in October, towns are required to pose the question to voters whether they want their town to “opt-in” to hosting retail and other businesses associated with the new legal cannabis marketplace that’s being established.
Before any debate of the issue began, Poitras made a motion to remove the discussion from the agenda, saying there are still too many unknowns with the industry in Vermont.
“This project is gonna be at least another year to maybe a year and a half out because the governor hasn’t even set up his commission yet,” she said.
Gov. Phil Scott is required by the law to appoint a three-member Cannabis Control Board to oversee implementation, regulation and licensing of marijuana businesses. He has yet to announce any appointments.
Poitras’ motion ultimately failed to get any support, so the discussion happened. Garcia commented that the issue is ultimately up to the voters, and a discussion about retail sales or growing operations “will have to happen at some point.”
Poitras continued by saying it doesn’t seem appropriate to pose a question to voters when “there are so many unknowns.”
“For me, I don’t think we have all the information by the legislators, by municipalities, to really say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ because people are going to be asking those questions,” Poitras said, adding the tax revenues may not be as high as they are being discussed when the details are finalized.
“If the town next door has it, the kids are still gonna use if that’s a concern, it’s not like it’s going to be Duxbury’s fault, so I would hate to miss out on tax revenue for a town that drastically needs it,” Schillhammer said. “Even if it’s only 5%, it’s money that we didn’t have.”
Board member Mari Pratt agreed there are a lot of unknowns, but pointed out how the law doesn’t just pertain to retail. Growing and processing are other functions that will be part of the marketplace and require licensing.
“We’re not just talking about a place to sell it, we have land, they may be able to grow it,” Pratt said.
Schillhammer agreed. “To me, it would be foolish for a rural town to say no to this at this time,” he said.
McMahan admitted that there are unknowns, yet this is an issue for voters to decide. He said he will always support the right of the voters to express their opinions.
Poitras abstained while the other board members voted in favor of placing the question on the Town Meeting Day ballot. The law does not allow for new establishments to sell legal cannabis until at least October 2022.
All other articles
Article 2 asks voters to appropriate $20,000 to the emergency storm damage escrow account; Article 5 sets the due date for property tax payments of Oct. 8, 2021 and
Article 8 asks if voters would like to eliminate the office of local auditor.
Finally, voters will find Article 9 familiar as it looks to address the longstanding need to repair and upgrade the town highway garage. It asks voters so issue up to $250,000 in bonds for the work.
This is the third attempt at a bond vote for town garage repairs, after the first was voted down and a second was not properly warned and didn’t happen. This bond is expected to be paid off over 10 years, and will address all problems at the garage at once rather than in phases as the selectboard previously discussed.