Updated at 10 p.m.
The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department has stopped providing patrol services in the town of Georgia with 10 months remaining on its contract after failing to renegotiate a roughly $50,000 increase for the current year.
Town officials said the decision followed “virtually no notice” and has left them looking for another agency to fill the gap.
Meanwhile, the sheriff said the contract negotiated by his predecessor didn’t account for the rising costs of policing.
Georgia, a town of 5,000 just south of St. Albans, does not have its own police force. Instead, policing is provided by the sheriff’s department and Vermont State Police.
Scott St. Onge, chair of the Georgia Selectboard, said the sheriff’s department and state police will continue to provide emergency services in town. Georgia also has a patrol contract with VSP, and neighboring agencies have offered to fill in for coverage, he said.
The sheriff’s department came to the selectboard multiple times this year to renegotiate its patrol contract, St. Onge said. Georgia’s existing contract for 2021-22, set to start July 1, was for 40 patrol hours a week at $45.15 per hour, or about $94,000 per year.
The department proposed a contract for comparable services that cost $67.30 per hour — about $140,000 per year.
The town’s current patrol agreement with state police works out to roughly four hours per week at $77.41 per hour, or about $16,000 per year.
“It was a huge sticker shock to us,” St. Onge said, noting the town had already budgeted “razor thin” because of the pandemic. “We only have so much money that’s already been approved by the voters. Where do we find $50,000?”
Franklin County Sheriff Roger Langevin said Georgia’s existing patrol contract was signed under the previous county sheriff’s administration, and he wanted to renegotiate the agreement like he has in other municipalities where the department also provides patrol services.
The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department has partnerships with six towns in Franklin County, including St. Albans Town, whose contract began this month.
Dispatching services now cost more than three times what they did when the town’s existing contract was negotiated, Langevin said. The department has also increased officers’ salaries to be more competitive and recently started offering more comprehensive health insurance plans.
At the same time, the department has lost revenue because of the pandemic, Langevin said. Its largest source of revenue are jobs such as road construction and traffic safety escorts, which he said were less frequent over the past year.
“We really had to pay attention to our revenue stream,” he said. “That’s what made us really look at the Georgia contract and make the decision that is difficult to make, but had to be made.”
After further negotiation with the sheriff’s department, the selectboard voted to keep the existing patrol contract, according to St. Onge. Town officials told Langevin they were willing to revisit contract negotiations in the fall while preparing next year’s budget.
On June 24, though, Langevin sent the board a letter stating his department would stop providing patrol services at the end of the month in order “to avoid financial loss.” The contract had covered Georgia through the end of April.
“We were kind of taken by surprise,” St. Onge said. “That doesn’t give us much time to come up with an alternative.”
St. Onge said the selectboard considered suing the sheriff’s department for breach of contract, but decided it would be more responsible to use town funds to search for a replacement patrol agency instead.
Georgia will release more details about that agency soon, he said. He declined to discuss specifics in an interview with VTDigger.
“Why would we want to reenter into a contract,” St. Onge said, “with somebody that doesn’t mind terminating it for the best interest of their party?”
