CHESTER, Vt. – Town Manager Julie Hance came to the Chester Selectboard at their April 15 meeting seeking consensus to proceed with a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant application. According to Hance, the $3 million grant would “fund the planning process and…mockups for discussion of regionalizing EMS and fire services.” Regionalization will also apply to 911 and transfer services, Hance said.
Hance noted that Vermont is “one of the only states left that does not regionalize” its emergency services, though she felt that the move toward regionalization in the future is inevitable, and that Chester will be better positioned to ensure a positive outcome if it begins investigating options now. While there have been discussions among area towns about regionalization in the past, Hance said, the expense of a consultant to aid in the process and the inability to carry out trial runs of any regionalized services prior to their full integration have proven to be barriers. However, other towns in the region have expressed interest in working with Chester to regionalize services, according to Hance.
Unlike other grants the town has received, Hance explained that the scope of the project will be developed during the grant planning process. Due to the large amount of money and significant logistical differences inherent in this grant, Hance said she did not feel she would be successful as a grant writer. Instead, she has engaged a “very successful” grant writer to draft the proposal. Hance reported that the grant writer feels Chester is likely to obtain the grant, due largely to the aforementioned lack of regionalization in Vermont, and the fact that no other municipality in the state has ever applied for this grant. The grant writer’s fee of $15,000 will be funded by money earmarked for fire, police, and ambulance department training, but that the departments do not need for that purpose. The expenditure will therefore not impact the budget, Hance explained.
In response to a comment made by Vice Chair Arne Jonynas, Hance cautioned that the likely outcome if regionalizing services is not that the town saves money, but that “what you will have for your same dollars is a far [more] advanced [level of] care.” The board gave Hance their consensus to move forward with submitting the grant application.
The board also heard a lengthy explanation by town attorney Jim Carroll of the roles, responsibilities, and limitations of both the selectboard and the town manager. Much of the conversation focused on when and how certain town employees can be terminated – specifically, the town manager, zoning administrator, police chief, and police officers, all of whom can only be terminated for cause. This stipulation, Carroll said, is intended to prevent those positions from becoming politicized. In the event that a selectboard wishes to terminate a person employed in one of those positions, a public hearing must be held to satisfy the requirement of due process. It was noted, however, that the authority that oversees the hearing is, in fact, the selectboard itself, which Jonynas said seemed to him like a conflict of interest. Carroll responded that it is, in fact, a conflict of interest, but that “there’s nobody else to do it.”
The discussions also covered a number of other topics, such as from where the selectboard and town manager derive their authority – the state and the selectboard, respectively – and the ethics of when a board member ought to recuse himself or herself from a vote which may directly benefit him or her.
The Chester Selectboard will hold their next meeting on May 6, at 6:30 p.m., at the Chester Town Hall.