here comes the rain again

Make a plan to vote

We did it. We made it to the last vote of 2024. On Tuesday, December 10th, we are bringing you Part 2 of the the Water Infrastructure votes. As a reminder, this vote is by Australian ballot and you can vote at Town Hall between 7am - 7pm.

If you still have questions about the bonds, let me know. Happy to help you calculate what you will pay, or answer any question that comes up, though you will find a lot of FAQs on the town website.

FY26 Budget

The joint boards are deep into budget season, having met twice this week to hear from department heads about what they are requesting for the next fiscal year. The meetings were recorded and I definitely suggest watching (always 1.5x) if you want to hear from the horse’s mouth.

Some highlights:

Public Works Director Chris Barr emphasized that we are still in the midst of recovering from neglecting infrastructure projects. And the department remains understaffed. We will be acquiring some equipment as apart of the water company purchase and there’s a possibility some of it is redundant and we can sell.

Dispatch - Beth Therrien commented that it’s been hard to hire and retain employees since “they can get paid more bagging groceries”. In order to avoid overtime, the dispatchers swap days frequently.

Fire Department & Emergency Services - Unpaid ambulance bills are increasing each year. For those that don’t know, these are “soft bills” meaning that our practice is to send 3 reminder notices and not to send to collections. Our staff works with individuals to establish payment plans, but those are often abandoned, according to Chief Green. He has requested $98,000 to write off those unpaid bills in FY26.

Clerk - Our clerk’s office has administered 7 elections this year, I think it’s a record. Our Clerk Charlie is asking for two new computers, one for himself and one for the assistant clerks to share. They are using computers purchased new in 2015 and 2009, respectively.

Finance - Director Robert Densmore has successfully weaned us of NEMRC for payroll. This is a big move almost a year in the making. NEMRC makes the software most VT municipalities use for maintaining grand lists, AP/AR systems, and some other functions. They have a near-monopoly because 1. it’s cheap and 2. it’s used by the state. A combo that can only guarantee good outcomes, obviously.

Listers - Right now we have three lister positions. They are elected and work part-time - their only requirement is that they live in Woodstock. If you recall, Woodstock voted down replacing listers with a paid assessor on Town Meeting 2023. I personally think we could get more bang for our buck by replacing the lister positions with one full-time paid assessor (likely someone already in that office), but we’ll see if folks want to tackle that this Town Meeting.

Planning & Zoning - Consultant Mike Tuller has been filling in, with assistance from Bryan from Two Rivers, while we hire for two vacancies. In his short tenure here, Mike has said our office is the busiest one he has ever worked in. This staff is also experiencing a sharp increase in harassment and abuse from residents. Because of this, Eric suggested they consider moving to an appointment-only format.

Village Police - This week I learned our police cruisers have never had snow tires. Sgt. O’Keeffe has asked for an increase to provide 3 or all 4 of the cruisers with studded tires/snow tires. One of our cruisers spun out recently responding to a call on a dirt road. Fun. We also talked about the system the department uses to log interactions - citations, 911 calls, etc. I’d like to see this become readable, public-facing info, like in Lebanon - we’ll see if that’s in the cards.

Let me know if you notice a theme :)

There are few places we can cut and be more strategic, but I guarantee they aren’t popular solutions. I’ll write more about that next time.