Earlier this month the Selectboard Chair asked to hear input on the town’s merger plan from people other than the usual suspects. Elaine Haney’s request was granted at the November 16th Selectboard meeting.

What about Separation? asked first-timer-to-remote-meetings Ed Daudelin at the Selectboard’s second listening session. 

Long-time Village resident Daudelin believes separation is a valid alternative and should be considered equally with merging or not merging. Why has separation never been given much thought?

To him, “Separation is important because it lets the Village keep the identity it’s had as an industrial hub of Essex for over 100 years. Now you’re taking our identity away.”

This isn’t the first time that someone has publicly uttered the s-word since Sarah Macy, Finance Director, presented a detailed analysis of separation impacts vs merger impacts in September. 

However, Haney downplayed the rigor and importance of that analysis during this November meeting, calling the estimates on separation “very back of the napkin”.

Actually, Macy spent two months generating her models and a comprehensive report after a late-July request from 27 residents.  The revelation on separation -- that it costs no more than merger but its effects manifest promptly -- contrasts with Haney’s 13-year merger plan. 

The audience was then treated to a lesson in merger history according to Haney. She tutored that separation was considered early on, when the SB and Trustees established a Governance Subcommittee.  Members of that committee (including Haney, Max Levy, George Tyler and Irene Wrenner) reviewed a variety of governance models and developed criteria on which to grade them.  

Haney reminisced about a chart that ranked the scenarios on such criteria as “would it equalize taxes, would it benefit the future economic development of the community, [and] would it reduce the number of times residents had to vote”. The one with the highest total was merger. It met “more of the goals than any of the other models.”

The chart, shown below, contains the actual criteria used by the four elected officials to rank the alternative governance models they had generated.

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Not included in the two-year-old analysis were such criteria as preserving planning expertise and priorities; ensuring public input gets incorporated into plans and ordinances; and diversifying representation. Only recently have these been recognized as important considerations.

This author, when called upon, noted that, of the nine options ranked by that team, five were versions of merger, one was status quo, two were forms of separation-and-sharing, and one was separation.

Very little time was spent discussing separation back then, because the boards were looking for ways to continue consolidating functions. Also, the assumption was that separation would be cost-prohibitive.