Full plate for Waterbury Select Board tonight: police, schools, federal windfall, and 2023 budget
December 19, 2022 | By Lisa ScagliottiTonight’s Select Board meeting has a full agenda running the gamut with visits with representatives of the Vermont State Police and the Harwood Unified Union School District, a report on the recent community survey on how to spend federal economic stimulus funding, and a start to preparing a draft budget for 2023.
As usual, the board meets at 7 p.m. and will be in person in the Steele Community Room at the municipal building and online via Zoom. The link to join online is in the meeting agenda on the town website in the Select Board section.
Lt. David White from the Vermont State Police Berlin barracks is on the agenda to visit with the board. The state police provide local policing services to Waterbury on a contract basis that has two troopers dedicated to Waterbury daily.
The municipality and state are in the second three-year contract under this arrangement since Waterbury closed its village police department in 2018 when the village government was dissolved. In recent months, the board has heard concerns from community residents about speeding and traffic enforcement and other public safety issues that fall within the purview of the state police contract.
Harwood Superintendent Mike Leichliter is also scheduled as a guest on tonight’s meeting agenda. Leichliter is in his first school year as superintendent having started July 1. Part of his efforts to connect with community leaders has involved visits with select boards in the communities in the Harwood district.
Select board members at recent meetings have brought up various issues and concerns regarding school district issues. For example, following the Nov. 8 general election, town officials discussed requesting that the school district not schedule classes to be in session on general election days given that school facilities such as Brookside Primary School in Waterbury are often used as polling places.
Board members also have expressed concern about high turnover in Waterbury’s membership on the HUUSD School Board. Being the largest community in the district, Waterbury has four seats on the school board. The other five communities – Duxbury, Moretown, Fayston, Waitsfield and Warren – each have two representatives for a total of 14 members on the school board.
One of Waterbury’s seats on the school board has had five individuals serve since March 2021. Waterbury resident Jake Pitman was appointed in October to that seat to serve until the March Town Meeting Day election next year.
Select Board members Chris Viens and Chair Mike Bard at their Dec. 5 meeting both described the school board as “dysfunctional.” The Waterbury school board member turnover, for example, “speaks volumes,” Bard said, about the climate on the board.
Viens said he is concerned about the overall effectiveness of the school board. “It seems as though our school board process is just really, really broken and I don’t believe that the taxpayers are being served by it the way they should be,” Viens said. He suggested the 14-member school board may need restructuring to be a smaller group in the future.
Viens also questioned a recent school board decision to move ahead with plans to upgrade the Waitsfield Elementary School kitchen that will be paid for mostly from school district maintenance reserves with an estimated cost at $554,000.
Select Board Vice Chair Dani Kehlmann and member Alyssa Johnson both cautioned their colleagues from offering criticism before getting more information. Kehlmann said she has only ever attended two school board meetings and would be interested to learn more about how the school board operates and what it has accomplished in the past few years.
Johnson agreed, saying that perceptions of how public boards operate may not be accurate. “As a person on a volunteer representative board, I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt,” she said.
Viens said he has attended school board meetings in the past and would be willing to go to more. “Maybe I'm stepping beyond my bounds, but it's because I give a damn about where we’re headed,” he said, after sharing concern about school taxes.
Deputy Municipal Manager Tom Leitz was in attendance at the meeting. He pointed out that school boards are independent governing bodies who operate under different constraints than select boards. He noted taxes as one example. “School [boards] pass their budgets, but the state sets the tax rates, and that's pretty complex,” Leitz said. “That's vastly different from us.”
All of the board members agreed that they should broach school concerns starting with the upcoming conversation with Superintendent Leichliter that they were looking forward to.
Tonight’s meeting will also include a presentation of results from a community survey on how to spend most of the $1.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds that have not yet been allocated or pledged. The board mailed paper copies of a survey to registered voters in Waterbury in November and also had an online version of the query to gauge public interest in several categories that might be considered including infrastructure, housing, recreation and developing a local source for road gravel.
Data from the survey are contained in the agenda file for tonight’s meeting posted on the town website. Infrastructure, housing and recreation resources top the list of priorities in the public input.
As the board begins its work on the draft 2023 fiscal year budget, tonight’s agenda has the fire and planning departments noted for discussion.
The board also will review deed transfers for three of the four properties that the Edward Farrar Utility District voted earlier this year to transfer to the town: the small parcel with the Welcome sign near the roundabout, the Elm Street public parking lot and Rusty Parker Memorial Park. The final property to change hands is to be the 40 acres along River Road where the Ice Center, dog park and mountain bike trailhead are located.