Duxbury Town Meeting preview
February 26, 2024 | By Lisa ScagliottiCORRECTION March 2: The increase in the proposed town budget for 2024-25 has been corrected in this story.
Copies of Duxbury’s town Annual Report were mailed to voters. It’s also posted on the town website, and anyone who still needs a copy can pick one up at the town offices in the box outside the entry. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Duxbury is preparing for its fourth drive-through Town Meeting with all town business and elections on paper ballots.
Voting will be held on Tuesday, March 5, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. outside at the town offices and highway garage on Vermont Route 100.
Tonight, Monday, Feb. 26, the Duxbury Selectboard will hold an informational meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the board’s meeting room to review the articles on the Town Meeting warning. The meeting will be held in person and via Zoom. Details on how to participate online are on the warning posted on the town clerk’s page of the town website and in the town report.
Orange-covered paper copies of the town’s Annual Report have been mailed to households, according to Town Clerk Maureen Harvey. Anyone who needs one or an extra can get one at the town office where a stack is outside the entry door in the black mailbox drop box.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, Duxbury has switched its voting for all elections to outdoors using a drive-through format. In 2022, voters also decided to end its in-person meetings on Town Meeting Day and continue with conducting all town business and elections using paper ballots. The move came after the community saw participation triple when voters were able to cast ballots all day rather than attend an hourslong in-person meeting. A special meeting much like former in-person town meetings called Have Your Say Day was held Jan. 13. About 80 people gathered to hear a presentation from the Selectboard before it finalized the 2024-25 budget, remarks from one of the town’s state representatives, information from a variety of community organizations and enjoy pie for breakfast.
Early voting is open now. Anyone wishing to cast their ballot before March 5 may do so at the town office during regular hours. Voters will receive ballots with town budget and tax questions and town elections. None of the local offices on the ballots have contested races. They include three seats on the Duxbury Selectboard: incumbent Jerry McMahan and newcomer Crystal Sherman are running for two one-year terms; incumbent Patrick Zachary is seeking a three-year seat. One spot is open with no candidate listed on the ballot: a five-year term on the town Budget Committee. Any candidate can run as a write-in for that or any other office. A write-in candidate needs a minimum of 12 votes to win election, and be the top vote-getter of course, according to the town clerk.
Other ballots include the U.S. Presidential primary and voting on business for the Harwood Unified Union School District and the Central Vermont Career Center School District.
Article 1 on the ballot is the proposed town and highway budget for fiscal year 2024-25 is $1,167,946, up 17% from the $950,816 budget voters approved last year. Voters also are asked in a separate ballot question (Article 2) to appropriate $115,000 into the capital reserve account. If approved, that would be added to the budget for a total of $1,282,946 and an overall increase of 22.8%.
Articles 3 and 4 involve transferring funds, which do not affect the tax rate:
Whether to transfer $84,000 from surplus into a storm reserve account. This follows an auditor’s recommendation to transfer $50,000 and the remainder replaces funds spent on emergency road repairs.
Whether to put $30,000 from surplus into a pavement escrow account. This transfer will cover the cost of putting down an additional layer of asphalt on newly paved sections of River Road and Main Street.
The estimated property tax rate to support this year’s budget is $.7559 per $100 in assessed property value. That’s an increase of 4% from last year’s rate of $.7255. That would mean a property tax increase of $30 for every $100,000 of property value. The tax rate is set later in the year once the town’s grand list of property values is finalized.
Some cost increases in the proposed budget include $20,000 for road gravel and $10,000 for hauling sand, reflecting increased costs connected with new suppliers.
Duxbury held its informational Have Your Say Day on Jan. 13. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
At Duxbury’s January informational “Have Your Say Day” meeting, Selectboard Chair Richard Charland noted that road-related expenses are the predominant cost covered by the town budget. Duxbury has 30 miles of gravel roads and just 3.5 miles of paved roads, he said.
Projects ahead this year include looking to replace a culvert on River Road with a larger one. The state also plans to replace a culvert along Route 100 near Crossett Hill Road and the town is looking to improve the entrance and exit aprons in that area at the same time, town officials said.
The budget also has an increase of $12,717 for Waterbury Ambulance Service which is an independent nonprofit emergency response organization. The ambulance service has not increased its fees in recent years and the town’s appropriation will go from $26 to $35 per capita. This aims to align town support with the service’s costs and insufficient revenue from Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. The funding is for operations, not the new ambulance station project expected to break ground this year.
Budget details are in the town report.
School district ballots
Voters will receive two paper ballots with school budget questions: one each for the Harwood Unified Union and Central Vermont Career Center school districts.
The proposed 2024-25 budget for the Harwood district is $50.8 million, an increase of 11.9% over the budget for the current school year. Big drivers of that increase are health insurance for district staff which is going up 16%, higher special education costs, and contractual wage increases. The district is trimming the equivalent of 13 positions this year to account for the loss of federal funding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that is ending in September. District officials did not add new programming spending with this budget, but they did include $1 million for the Maintenance Reserve Fund to put towards school building repairs.
Based on the most recent state education funding data, school property taxes in the Harwood district are estimated to be increasing between 22% and 32% to support the proposed budget. The estimated increase for Duxbury is 22% or $417 per $100,000 of assessed property value. Final data needed in the tax calculation will not be available until later this spring.
In addition to the budget question, voters are asked to approve putting $535,000 of unspent funds from 2023 into the maintenance fund. This is a customary item that voters have seen since the district unified in 2017. The maintenance fund currently has a balance of less than $3 million and a list of projects totaling $19 million over the next four years.
The Harwood School Board will host its annual meeting including an informational presentation about the budget on Monday, March 4, at 6 p.m. at Harwood Union Middle/High School and online via Zoom and the district’s YouTube channel. School officials will answer questions and discuss the proposed budget at that time. Meeting details are on the school district's annual meeting warning.
Harwood is one of six Central Vermont school districts whose students attend half-day career training programs at the Central Vermont Career Center in Barre. This year 28 Harwood students attend CVCC.
Duxbury is one of 18 communities to vote on the center’s budget and officers. The proposed budget of $4,604,130 for 2024-25 is up 11% over the current year’s budget. Funding for the career center is already included in the contributing school districts’ proposed budgets for next year.
The Career Center School District School Board will hold its annual meeting and informational presentation about its proposed budget on Monday, Feb. 26, at 6 p.m. at the career center and online using Google Meet. Details of that meeting including the link for the public to attend online are on the meeting warning. A recording of the meeting will also be posted on the district’s website cvtcc.org.
Find the town report, the Town Meeting warning and sample ballots on the Duxbury town website’s Town Clerk page.