Glover Town Meeting

Voters call for second meeting to look at future spending

 

by Natalie Hormilla

GLOVER — Residents here dug deep on the budget, cut a big ticket line item to more than half, elected two new officers, and engaged in gritty conversation at Town Meeting on March 4.

The contents of the Town Report itself first needed addressing, and were criticized by some as being confusing.

Town Clerk Cynthia Epinette took voters through a list of corrections to almost a dozen errors in this year’s Town Report.  Deb Clark, one of the town’s three auditors, explained to the crowd that mistakes in the Town Report are due in part to many entries that are made manually, rather than tabulated by a computer system.

“I think we can work really hard to get our accounting system to do more of the work, rather than the manual work to enter them in each time,” Ms. Clark said, looking to the future.

Resident Jonathan Gilbert got an object lesson in what can come from speaking up at Town Meeting, even when it’s to say something nice.

He raised his hand to “recognize the work of the auditors and thank them,” he said.

Just minutes later, townspeople needed to elect a new auditor, to fill the position of Darlene Young, who did not seek reelection.

“This is one of those cherished positions,” Moderator Nick Ecker-Racz said to a laughing crowd.

“Jonathan,” someone called out, “would you like to be an auditor?”

Quickly, resident John Rodgers, who is also Vermont’s Lieutenant Governor, said, “I nominate Jonathan.”

The room filled with laughter as heads turned toward Mr. Gilbert.

“If I take a position, I like to know more about it,” he said.

Both Ms. Clark and her fellow auditor Andrea Carpentier attempted to both explain and sell the job to Mr. Gilbert.

Joan Alexander, sitting at the Glover Historical Society’s table, joined the effort.

She held up her copy of the Town Report and said, “the auditors get to pick what goes on the cover!”

Mr. Rodgers offered help, too:  Perhaps the sitting auditors could “give Jonathan some comfort” in knowing about the support given to new auditors from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT), he said.

Mr. Gilbert asked if he could modify the usual three-year-term of an auditor.  “So I could commit to one year and see how it goes,” he said.

“You can always resign,” Mr. Ecker-Racz said, “but it’ll never be accepted.”

Mr. Gilbert then shared a bit about himself as a former finance director for Heartbeet Lifesharing in Hardwick.

“I know some of you a little bit and you seem like good people to work with,” he said, before concluding his out-loud thinking with: “All right!”

A town officer swiftly cast a single ballot for Mr. Gilbert.

Select board member Dave Simmons did not seek reelection.  Glenn Gage was nominated from the floor to take that spot, and won, unopposed, on a single ballot.

All other incumbents sought reelection and were voted in with a single ballot.

Several voters attempted to explain to the crowd how to read the Town Report’s expenditures report so they could scrutinize the proposed budget for 2025 as compared to last year.  After lengthy back and forth about which lines to look at and which to ignore, resident Stephan Cantor offered a sharpened version of the crowd’s questions:  “Why do we go from total taxes needed [being] less than a million, to needing $1.4 million?  That is the question,” she said, “And that is a question the select board should be able to answer.”

Select board members offered a list of new or increased expenses as the reasons for a bigger budget.

“The Shadow Lake dam, that was a pretty big chunk,” said select board member Phil Young.  The

dam needs major repairs that could cost a million dollars, said Mr. Simmons.

The town also bought a new truck and saw insurance rates increase for town employees, Mr. Young said.

Also, last year’s budget included money from grants and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said select board member Anne Eldridge.

“That isn’t there this year,” she said.

In saying so, Ms. Eldridge made reference to the situation that was mentioned throughout the meeting by residents, select board members, and also Glover’s representatives in the State House in Montpelier, who addressed the town at the beginning of Town Meeting.  Money that people are not expecting to come down as usual from the federal level, due to sweeping cuts made by President Donald Trump and his administration in Washington, D.C.

Money also previously came from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) and for the roads, said resident and former select board member Jack Sumberg.

“The last year looked a lot cheaper than it was because we had all those funds,” Ms. Eldridge said. “So next year looks way more expensive, and it is way more expensive.”

“There are some big ticket items that are included in this $1.4 million figure,” Ms. Epinette said.

That list of items includes things like an 18 percent increase in health insurance for town employees, $1,500 for wood pellets for the municipal building, $10,000 for maintenance of the new Glover Park, a $10,000 increase to replenish the property reserve fund, and an increase in office salaries and liability insurance, among other things, she said.

She also listed expenses for town roads.  The proposed budget includes an additional $5,000 for chloride to help keep down the road dust, $10,000 for guard rails, $25,000 for the paving reserve fund, grader expenses of about $12,000, and $75,000 for a salt shed.

“This is our opportunity today,” to do something about the budget, said Ms. Eldridge.  “You want to vote down line items?  We can do that.”

She also said that a lot of the new expenses are things that townspeople have asked for.

Some sought to put the day’s line items into perspective.

“What we’re talking about here are our municipal taxes,” Mr. Sumberg said.

Those taxes reflect only about one third of what property owners in Glover pay, he said.  “The rest is education, which is like two-thirds of what you pay,” he said.

The tax rate for education is set by the state, not voters at a Town Meeting.

“I’m going to be annoying again,” said resident Tabitha Armstrong, who has voiced concern about the budget at Town Meeting for years.  “Year after year after year” she has pointed out that the town keeps raising its budget, she said.

We are looking at less revenue with the federal government cutting things, she said, so we might see increases regularly.

“We’ve been raising [the budget] every year,” she said.

This is when voters zeroed in on the proposed allocation for a salt shed.

“I would like to cut the $75,000 on the salt shed,” said resident Topher Waring.

Town Planning Commission co-chair James Coe said that the salt shed project would be unlikely to materialize unless the town gets a significant grant.  The results of the submitted grant won’t be known for another month or so, he said.

Road crew member Richard LaClair made the case for the allocation.

“The reason we requested a salt shed is that right now it’s being stored in a metal building,” said Mr. LaClair. “It’s eating the building alive.”

The current situation also makes the salt hard to load, he said, and a new salt shed would have more capacity.

“It’s what we need,” he said.

Voters amended the proposed $75,000 for a salt shed down to $35,000, by voice vote.

“Can you explain why the liability insurance went up so much?” said Mr. Rodgers.

“VLCT, that’s the rate they’ve given us,” said Ms. Epinette.  “And we also didn’t get a reimbursement we had received the past two years.”

“Based on what we’re seeing out of Washington, I wouldn’t count on a bunch of grants and money,” Mr. Rodgers said.

Mr. Rodgers voiced concerns about the select board buying the road crew a new truck, and about how that truck is being used.

“My main concern is about the pickup, and the fact that the select board approved the pickup” in a select board meeting held soon after last year’s Town Meeting, he said.

“That would have been a great conversation to have,” he said, for transparency and to discuss cost.

The road foreman also uses that truck for personal use sometimes, including to plow his own driveway, Mr. Rodgers said.

“It’s a misuse of town appropriations for him to use that as his own vehicle,” he said.

Mr. Young said that he didn’t know anything about the road foreman using the vehicle inappropriately.

“It’s also pretty common practice for a foreman to drive around checking out the roads,” Mr. Young said.

This concern was taken up again later in the meeting by another resident.

“I move to make a motion that town equipment isn’t used for personal use,” said resident Tyler Scelza.

“So, just to make sure I understand,” said Mr. Young, “it’s, don’t drive the pickup home?”

Mr. Ecker-Racz steered the conversation back to the budget, which the town did eventually approve, with the lowered allocation for a salt shed.

The conversations about the town budget, uncertainty at the federal level trickling down, and the affordability of living in Glover could have gone on for a while.

Ms. Armstrong proposed that the select board hold a special town meeting in the near future “to discuss the expenditures and presumably the taxes required to run the business of the town in the future,” she said.

The crowd voted unanimously in favor.

The issue of town equipment potentially being used for personal reasons came up one more time under the catchall portion of Town Meeting, familiar to townspeople as the article that comes just before the article to adjourn the meeting.

A lengthy discussion circled around the potential for liability and worker’s compensation, in the event of a town employee possibly getting hurt in the course of using town equipment for personal matters.  Others pointed out that it could make sense for a foreman to have a truck at their house, so that they might be the first to arrive on an emergency scene at an odd hour and be able to clear the way for an ambulance or get people to one.

Mr. LaClair addressed the accusation of the new truck being used for personal use by the road foreman, who did not seem to be at Town Meeting.

“He takes off about 1 a.m. and goes and checks the road, and then he calls us in,” he said.  “He’s not going to get groceries in this truck.  He uses his own for that, as far as I know.  I believe he plows his own driveway in a side-by-side.”

Mr. Rodgers said he has photos that prove otherwise.

“There should be a policy about what he can and can’t do with that truck,” Mr. Rodgers said.  “And what I see now is [no transparency.]”

Mr. Young agreed that there should be a policy concerning use of town equipment.

This issue could be taken up at the upcoming special meeting requested by Ms. Armstrong, Mr. Ecker-Racz said.

The meeting ended on an odd note, upon Mr. Waring inquiring about a property on Route 16, known by some as an unofficial tire dump that many townspeople have complained about over the years.

Residents voted to allow a non-resident the right to speak — evidently a person recently evicted from that property, according to resident Dawn Stone — and he spoke at length about how he sees the issue before Mr. Ecker-Racz asked him to wrap it up.

As for the property covered in tires, townspeople got just one simple update:  The Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) is looking into it.

Whatever help comes from ANR will take time. “It’s sort of the slow grinding wheels of the state,” Mr. Young said.

Mr. Ecker-Racz ended the meeting, mentioning that the time may be coming for him to retire as town moderator, a position he has held for decades.