Seeking yet struggling to find help? Local leaders who run Vermont’s 247 municipalities relate.
This March Town Meeting season, Castleton, Newfane, Strafford, Troy, Tunbridge and Whiting are asking residents to eliminate the oft-unsought post of constable and instead contract with local, county or state law enforcement.
Almost a dozen communities are voting on calls to replace elected — yet increasingly elusive — citizen listers with professional assessors.
Thinking even more out of the box, Brookline, Norwich and Wilmington are seeking permission to fill some local posts with nonresidents. In the latter case, voters were set to consider allowing longtime meeting moderator Robert Fisher to run for reelection Tuesday after he recently moved just over the town line into neighboring Marlboro.
“I reached out to other people to take it on,” Wilmington Town Clerk Therese Lounsbury said, “but nobody would.”
Municipal officials have reported the challenge of filling local posts for at least a decade as more residents say they don’t have the time or expertise to serve. The trend has become so common that the Vermont League of Cities and Towns currently has several web pages explaining how a community can replace its auditors and listers.
Votes to swap auditors with public accountants are scheduled for Reading, Ryegate and Woodstock, while requests to trade listers with professional assessors are on the ballot in Albany, Bridgewater, Hartland, Lincoln, Reading, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Williamstown and Woodstock.
“Some 40 or 50 years ago, laypeople could volunteer and it wouldn’t conflict with their regular occupation,” said F. Charles Degener III, former lister and current town clerk in Woodstock. “But with so much more required now, these positions are more difficult to fill.”
That’s why Fairlee is set to vote Tuesday on appointing rather than electing a treasurer and Lowell to consider appointing rather than electing a road commissioner.
“When I first started here, everything was manual, but the jobs have morphed and gotten much bigger,” said Fairlee Town Clerk Georgette Wolf-Ludwig, who began working in the office in 1990. “We now have grants and all these other things you have to keep up with.”
Brookline and Norwich have found the situation tricky enough to vote this Town Meeting season on whether to allow Vermont residents who don’t live in the community to be elected or appointed to local offices, excluding selectboard and justice of the peace.
“There’s fewer and fewer people stepping in, and we sometimes have a hard time filling those seats,” Brookline Town Clerk Guy Tanza, who’s retiring at age 81, said after his community approved the request Monday night. “This takes care of that.”
Amid the changes, some communities are expanding citizen roles.
At least four towns are voting to increase their number of justices of the peace. Concord wants to go from five to a yet determined higher number, Fairfax from three to 15, Hyde Park from 10 to 12 and Sharon from five to seven.
“It’s always nice to have a few extras, as people aren’t always available,” Fairfax Town Clerk Lynn Parah said of a post that helps officiate marriages and elections. “The more you have to help, the better off you are.”
Marlboro is voting to establish a cemetery commission, while Thetford will weigh whether to expand its cemetery commission from three to five members.
Killington and Winhall will decide proposals to increase their selectboards from three to five seats. (Westmore, for its part, will determine whether to rescind its 2024 vote approving the same action.)
Municipalities also are trying to boost resident participation at the polls.
Arlington, Hyde Park, Leicester, Lincoln, Lyndon, Northfield, Richmond and Waterbury are weighing whether to move some or all of their decision-making from Town Meeting to all-day balloting, following 18 communities that voted on such a switch in 2023 and another 10 that considered the question in 2024.
After Strafford approved a change in 2023, participation rose from about 100 residents at Town Meeting to between 400 to 500 casting ballots, Town Clerk Lisa Bragg said. Nonetheless, the community will consider a citizen-petitioned article Tuesday to revert back to its traditional gathering.
“There’s been a lot of feedback both ways,” Bragg said. “I will do the job either way it goes.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Town Meetings reveal the growing challenge of running a municipality.