Only Village residents will vote on merger in November. 

 

With Town and Village votes planned ages ago, how did we wind up with just one partner at the altar?

 

Years of work were at stake in the last-minute joint board meeting held August 20th. 

 

The Town Selectboard (SB) and Village Trustees hadn’t settled a half-dozen issues in the merger plan (charter). As the deadline for warning the vote and publishing the plan approached, the SB gave up on November, re-setting their sights on a March vote instead.

 

Rather than surrender to the calendar, the Trustees met just days before, and all-but-decided to put merger on the Village ballot this fall, with or without a companion vote from the SB. 

 

At that meeting they requested the August 20th special meeting, as a last-ditch effort to persuade the SB to also warn a November vote.

 

A lot was riding on this meeting and its potential outcomes. As municipal meetings go, this one displayed an unusually high degree of suspense. It was like two teams lining up for a championship playoff.

 

First Quarter: Trustees Justify a Village-Only Vote

 

To open, SB Chair Elaine Haney asks the Trustees why they pushed on unilaterally. 

 

Village President Andrew Brown wants to take advantage of the expected high turnout for a presidential election.

 

George Tyler makes it personal. He observes, “Merger no longer has the priority that it’s had for the last three years with the SB. There’s no sense in me mincing words. It’s like the Fellowship of the Ring, and I feel that fellowship is crumbling.” [The fellowship of the ring is a reference to a disparate group on a quest in a J.R.R. Tolkien book of the same name.] 

 

Tyler suggests the reason for the crumbling of the alliance is that new SB members [Vince Franco and Dawn Hill-Fleury] are not totally up-to-speed. [Those new members hail from the Town-outside-the-Village, giving TOV residents the majority on the Selectboard for the first time is over a year. The April resignation of Annie Cooper (a Village resident) and subsequent appointment of Dawn Hill-Fleury created this shift in political dynamics.]

 

Tyler believes putting merger on the Village ballot now will lock in place and honor what’s been done by both boards for the past three years. It’s an open invitation to the Town to join the Village, albeit on terms the Village has proposed.  And yet, he’s not optimistic about merger’s chances in a town-wide vote:

 

“Chances are,” he says, returning to the Fellowship of the Ring analogy, “we’re not gonna get to throw the ring into the fire, okay? Chances are, very high likelihood, that no matter what we do, if the Town puts the merger charter on the ballot in [the spring] it’s gonna fail, okay?” 

  
For the SB, a failed Town merger vote would be business as usual, Tyler says. “For the Village it’s a disaster.” He suggests the outcome of the November vote, if it fails, will spur a conversation about alternatives. This is not an attempt to coerce. Instead, this vote should take pressure off both boards to continue working on merger for the next three months. 

 

Second Quarter: SB Members Feel Cornered

 

Pat Murray is “uncomfortable” that the SB has been put over a barrel by the Trustees’ recent action to finalize the charter singlehandedly.

 

He feels that merger won’t pass until the representation model is settled. [Right now, the SB wants the “3+3” (www.fairness1st.org) district representation model passed by voters in March; Trustees want a seventh at-large member, which negates the equal representation the voters chose in March.]

 

Vince Franco echoes that including “3+3” is crucial. 

 

Andy Watts notes the extensive public engagement that was promised has yet to take place. 

 

Dawn Hill-Fleury wants to see the separation numbers that were requested. Costs of Separation were requested of staff by two dozen residents on July 28th. 

 

Haney says her board is compelled to include “3+3” and pleads with Trustees to wait until March to put forth a charter they can all agree on.

​

Third Quarter: Representation Conversation

 

The Trustees respond. Even though the town overwhelmingly approved it, Raj Chawla believes “3+3” should have no bearing on the merger charter. He also thinks the Village has been very generous by agreeing to a 12-year timeframe for merger tax transfer.

 

Tyler warns of the “dark feelings” he expects if the merger doesn’t pass in the Town in March. He heard Village sentiments against merger at a recent downtown event: Why is the Village giving up so much? Why is the Town not paying us for all the infrastructure they would acquire?

 

Acknowledging the possibility that merger might not pass in November, Tyler wants a backup plan saying he can’t focus on developing one while he’s still working on merger. 

 

At this point Watts makes an offer to the Village representatives: In exchange for TOV support of the Village charter, would the Trustees give up resistance to 3+3 equal representation?  He believes the TOV won’t support the charter without it. Nor will he.

​