FAIR HAVEN — The plan seemed simple to Linda Barker: let a shuttered airport go to the dogs.
That is: build a dog park where the former Fair Haven Municipal Airport once stood, and enlist the help of the mayor — who also happens to be her pooch — to do it.
Yet seven months and almost $19,000 later, the Fur Haven Dog Park has hit a snag. Though the park is ready to welcome visitors, it can’t open until the town gets a special permit from the state government, since the property includes a designated wetland.
The question of who should pay for that permit has become a thorny subject. While the committee behind the dog park has leftover cash from its fundraising efforts, it’s not enough to cover the $8,645 permit fee, and town officials have yet to decide how much money they can contribute to the expense.
“We’re working on different ideas to pay for the permit,” Town Manager Joe Gunter said. “People are upset, but at the end of the day we’ll have a really nice, beautiful dog park that people can be proud of.”
But in the eyes of committee members, the town government has thwarted their efforts to open Fur Haven on schedule. Barker shared her frustrations with VTDigger Friday as she walked around the 14,200-square-foot parcel that’s furnished with fencing, benches and even chew toys owners can borrow, but devoid of any good little boys or girls.
“It’s been one of the worst headaches of my life,” the 68-year-old said wearily.
This isn’t Barker’s first time leading a project for Fair Haven. As owner of Murfee, a 5-year-old dog — a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel — who serves as the town’s second “pet mayor,” she’s helping to raise money for town initiatives, a tradition dating back to 2018.
This year, Barker focused her efforts on building the dog park, after raising enough money for a new playground at Fair Haven Grade School last year. Events headlined by Murfee, such as a “Bark in the Park,” raised more than $23,000, which Barker said would go toward building the dog park and adding play structures for local pups.
What she didn’t account for was a large permit fee. If selectboard members wanted Barker to finance the permit with the money she’d raised, she said, they should have asked her to do so when they voted to apply for the permit on July 13.
Gunter said he doesn’t recall discussing how the permit would be paid for at that time. “To be honest, I thought it’d be more of a collaborative effort” between the town and the dog park committee, he told VTDigger.
But one factor complicating who would pay for the permit, Gunter said, was uncertainty about how much it would cost. State officials didn’t relay the $8,645 price tag until Sept. 9, he said.
The permit fee is calculated using uniform rates. The state charges 75 cents for every square foot that impacts a wetland, and 25 cents for every square foot within 50 feet of a wetland, an area called the “buffer zone.”
About two-thirds of the park is in a wetland, with the last third sitting in a buffer zone, according to a site plan provided by the state Agency of Natural Resources.
Of the roughly $5,000 left in fundraising dollars, about half is earmarked for buying equipment and other costs. That leaves about $2,500 in donations to finance the permit.
“I have no problem doing that, because it would accomplish what we told people we’d do with the money,” Barker said.
While it remains to be seen where the other $6,000 or so would come from, Gunter and the selectboard will have the opportunity to present their funding plan to the public at the board’s meeting Tuesday night.
“It’s government,” Gunter said. “We move a little bit slower than everyone else.”
