The Calais town government will turn over more than half of its major positions this March. Calais residents have until Jan. 30 to file the necessary paperwork to run for office.
The names of residents who represent all five seats on the selectboard — along with the current town clerk, road commissioner, treasurer and lister positions — won’t appear on the Town Meeting ballot in March.
People have a number of reasons for leaving the town government, but John Brabant, one of the selectboard members leaving office, said he believes it all ties back to the heavy workload placed on local governments in Vermont, particularly in small towns like Calais, who have no town manager or town administrator.
Brabant said Vermont should adopt a moniker like Tennessee’s “volunteer state,” because the state government has become so dependent on local government officials to do the work that keeps the towns running. A Washington County town of 1,700 residents, Calais is a prime example of small-town Vermont.
“I think the problem we’re seeing is that Vermont, the ‘volunteer state,’ is increasingly unable to meet the needs of government as Vermont expects it to operate in 2023,” Brabant told VTDigger.
Sharon Winn-Fannon, current chair of the selectboard, will step down in March after serving two three-year terms on the board. Winn-Fannon agreed with Brabant that town officeholders shoulder immense responsibility in Vermont, mostly on a volunteer basis, which many Vermonters do not realize.
“There is a lot that goes on in any municipality, big or small,” Winn-Fannon said. “You still need infrastructure in a small town.”
Brabant will step down after serving 18 years on the selectboard because his heart is no longer in the job, he said. Winn-Fannon said she had always planned to step down after serving a term or two so she could give other people the chance to participate in the town government.
Other selectboard members not seeking reelection are vice chair Marc Mihaly, who was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in November, and Denise Wheeler and Richard Kehne, who are leaving the board for personal reasons.
The town treasurer position has been open for over a year, and the road commissioner resigned last fall. The town clerk chose not to seek re-election for reasons that have not been made public.
While there is no official data tracking for the number of people running for local office in Vermont, Ted Brady, executive director of Vermont League of Cities and Towns, said it is becoming harder to serve in municipal government.
“It is oftentimes a thankless job,” Brady told VTDigger. “With social media and a decrease in civil discourse, it makes the jobs even harder.”
According to Winn-Fannon, many of the bread-and-butter issues that the Calais Selectboard handles are the same as in any small town, including budget allocation, road and highway maintenance, personnel issues and the occasional legal matter.
In the past year, however, the board had to make decisions on a couple of controversial issues, which escalated tensions over its role in the town. Calais resident Jamie Moorby described the past year for the selectboard as involving issues that would inevitably make some people unhappy.
“They’ve had a series of no-win decisions they’ve had to make,” she said.
One issue involved Calais resident Elisabeth Shedd’s free-roaming horses, which the town confiscated and paid to board. A number of residents were angry that their tax dollars were spent on boarding the horses, Moorby said. Shedd’s family sued the town for impounding her horses, but a Washington County Superior Court judge ruled in early January to uphold the town’s actions.
Another contentious issue involved a right of way on an old road, Town Highway 7, which is owned by the town but now encompasses a resident’s driveway and a wooded area. While the selectboard opted to give the road to the owners of the property it crosses, many people wanted the town to hold on to it for possible future development.
Brabant said these issues, along with others the selectboard dealt with this year, had been percolating for a number of years. “Unfortunately, they all came to a head at once in the same year,” he said.
Moorby thinks another factor that has ratcheted up controversy around the town government in recent years is the influence of Front Porch Forum and other forms of social media. Moorby compared local reactions on Front Porch Forum to the national political climate, saying people are quicker to throw around accusations publicly without getting the backstory.
“That just heats everything up,” she said.
Winn-Fannon expressed similar sentiments about Front Porch Forum’s impact on residents’ perceptions of the town government. People interpret posts on the platform as factual, when they may be dramatized or inaccurate versions of what is actually happening, she said.
Despite this, Front Porch Forum proved useful recently in allowing Moorby to organize a meeting for Calais residents interested in running for a position in town government. The Jan. 15 meeting included a Q&A session with some past and present town officials about the responsibilities of their roles.
“It was a great example of a community dialogue around governance, really in a way that I’ve never seen happen here in Calais,” Moorby said. While the effort has not quite succeeded yet, Moorby said the goal is to ensure there is somebody running for every open position.
Winn-Fannon said she, too, is optimistic that people will come forward and run for the vacant positions.
“There is definitely an awareness that there is an opportunity to run,” she said. “I have no doubt that people will step forward.”
