On Town Meeting Day, voters in Fairfax will decide whether to do away with the position of town manager, leaving day-to-day operations in the hands of the selectboard.
But the selectboard is urging community members to vote against the measure on March 4, saying it would create an unmanageable workload for its five volunteer members, all of whom also hold full-time jobs.
“If we don’t have somebody to run the town on a day-to-day basis, it may come to a point where I may not be able to fulfill the duties of my role on the selectboard,” said Tim Burns, the vice chair of Fairfax’s selectboard. “That’s how much work there is in that position, how important it is, and to shift the responsibilities of all of the duties of a town manager to the staff or to the selectboard, you’re setting yourself up for failure in my eyes.”
The item landed on the March ballot through a petition that garnered more than 200 signatures from town residents last summer. Controversy over an investigation into a missing town truck set the effort in motion.
Town managers, in effect, operate as de facto mayors, with the selectboard overseeing the role as well as town policy.
Nearly 100 municipalities in Vermont have either a town manager or a town administrator, with the majority relying on a town manager, according to Carl Andeer, a staff attorney with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.
Fairfax established its town manager position in 2017 with voter approval. Previously, the selectboard for the Franklin County town of just over 5,000 handled those duties.
But last year, confusion over the whereabouts of a town-owned truck quickly billowed into calls for the resignation of then-town manager Sarah Hadd and later morphed into action to rid the town of her position altogether. She has since left the job.
A missing truck, an investigation and an outcry
In 2023, an old truck that was owned by the town but had not been used for some time was taken by a town employee with permission from Tim Germaine, the public works supervisor at the time, according to later interviews and public comment from selectboard meetings.
The town’s bookkeeping records had listed the truck as an asset. Months later, during an inventory of those assets, town officials asked where the truck had gone.
In January 2024, Hadd reported the truck missing to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, which later referred the case to the Vermont State Police, according to Sheriff John Grismore.
Adam Silverman, a public information officer with the Vermont State Police, said his office turned the case over to the Franklin County State’s Attorney’s Office for review, which declined to file charges.
Investigators had questioned several town employees over the truck, inciting confusion and anger in town, and prompting the calls for Hadd’s resignation.
Frustration boiled over during a selectboard meeting in February 2024, during which residents alleged that the situation had been mishandled.
Bobbi Jo Magnan, a Fairfax resident who signed the petition, said during the meeting that the town employee who had been in possession of the truck was “going through hell” because Hadd “decided to open an investigation over a piece of friggin’ scrap truck.”
“Somebody’s gotta rein this girl in, ’cause this is enough,” Magnan said. “I’ve had enough of this girl destroying our town.”
Hadd, who declined to comment for this story, explained in public meetings that she was legally obligated to report missing property to the authorities. Selectboard policy around capital asset disposition and fraud prevention, she said, guided her decision.
“I followed those policies and did what those policies said, for better or worse,” she said. “That’s what I was legally and ethically obligated to do. Some people can say that that’s the wrong decision, or maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but these policies were adopted by the board and I had to follow them.”
The issue soon swelled into a debate around the town manager position itself, and whether the town should return to full selectboard control over day-to-day operations.
“You have a bunch of people… who are frustrated,” James Langelier, a resident who signed the petition, said during a February 2024 selectboard meeting. “Please take a good hard look at where the direction of this town is going, because it’s not good. We don’t need another Colchester, St. Albans.”
Jim Webb, a longtime resident who also signed the petition, argued at several board meetings that Fairfax should move away from a town manager position.
“I don’t think we need a town manager. I think there’s other ways that can be done, like an administrator or something like that,” he said at a February 2024 selectboard meeting. “What’s going on in town is terrible.”
Residents submitted a petition in June with 216 signatures to rescind the position, according to Town Clerk Lynn Parah.
Parah said 12 residents have since removed their name from the petition, including Germaine, the former public works supervisor. Germaine, also a former selectboard member, signed the petition after being contacted by state police during the debacle.
“When I played that message and it was a state cop, I called him and I let him have it, and I went looking for that petition because I am no thief,” he said during a July 2024 selectboard meeting. “It was a piece of shit truck.”
Germaine declined to comment when reached by email. Efforts to reach other petitioners, including Webb and Langelier, were unsuccessful.
Hadd stepped down from the position in December after she was appointed to Vermont’s Land Use Review Board. Nick Nadeau was appointed as interim town manager.
VTDigger could not verify the current whereabouts of the truck.
‘We’re not a small town’
While some residents remain opposed to the town manager position, others have since spoken in favor of the position — arguing it’s necessary for the operation of town government.
Josh Blake, who is running unopposed for one of two open seats on the selectboard, said he was not in favor of eliminating the position.
“It is not okay to change the form of government just because you didn’t like the person,” he said. “Just because somebody doesn’t like Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, doesn’t mean you get rid of the presidency.”
He noted, however, that the fate of the town manager job is “in the voters hands now.”
“It’s not in my hands or the board or the town manager or the 200 people who signed the petition. It’s in the 5,000 people that live in town,” he said.
Barbara Murphy, a former Fairfax resident and state representative, said in an interview that the petition is the work of “one small segment of the community that really feels that we could go back to a selectboard running our town, the way it used to, and in my belief, not understanding how much our community has changed and how much the regulations for running a community have changed.”
“We aren’t a small town in Vermont, really,” she added. “We’re not a big city, but by population, we’re not a small town.”
Doing away with the town manager would stymie the progress of the town government, Murphy said. “In Vermont, where we don’t have a county government to run things, it really makes it complicated.”
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In Fairfax, town managers have been critical in managing grant applications and other major projects, as well as handling responses to natural disasters. Hadd alone garnered more than $2 million in grants for several projects in town, said Burns, the selectboard vice-chair.
Those grants, according to Burns, helped fund repairs to a number of roads that washed out during flooding in July and December of 2023.
“A natural disaster hits us here in town, or another flood, all that has to be managed,” he said. “That’s a lot to put on the selectboard.”
The town selectboard has spent the last few weeks preparing for the outcome of the vote.
In preparation for potentially losing the position, Burns said town officials have divvied up the town manager’s responsibilities among the five selectboard members.
The town may also entertain the idea of a town administrator position, should the town manager position get nixed, he said. (Town administrators are more common in smaller towns, whereas towns with more than 5,000 residents typically have a town manager.)
But the selectboard has voiced its opposition to the petition, passing a resolution in support of the town manager position during its Feb. 17 meeting.
“I feel it’s a slippery slope to be going down to not have somebody there in the manager role,” Burns said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Fairfax to decide whether to nix town manager position. Its selectboard isn’t keen to take over. .