RANDOLPH — Voters in the Randolph Police District have rejected a plan to spend $771,000 on reestablishing the town’s police department.
The measure, which failed in a 227-136 vote at this week’s annual Town Meeting, would have required raising almost $500,000 in property taxes from inside the town’s central “police district.”
Until February, Randolph had a 120-hour-per-week contract with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for policing — the sheriff’s largest. But following a tumultuous transition in which voters ousted the former sheriff, Bill Bohnyak, and 17 of the department’s 21 deputies left along with him, the new sheriff, George Contois, was forced to end his department’s Randolph patrols for lack of staff.
“We need to make a short-term decision,” Trini Brassard, chair of Randolph’s Selectboard, said of the town’s need to figure out its policing future after the local police plan was rejected this week.
Randolph had its own police department of six full-time officers up until 2018, but the department died by attrition after its entire rank gradually resigned. Randolph then began contracting with the Orange County sheriff, selling its police equipment to the county-wide law enforcement agency. All that remained of the police department was its building, which is still owned by the town.
Despite the vote on Tuesday, Randolph still plans to get its own police department started. Because the town’s current budget runs until July, Randolph can fund its department through the money that would have gone to the sheriff’s department. The town has also used American Rescue Plan Act funds to get the department off the ground.
Currently, Vermont State Police are providing patrols in Randolph, but have warned the town that state patrols are not a long-term solution, Brassard said. There was a delay in receiving a federal identification number for the town’s police department, according to Brassard, pushing back the date on which the department could start patrols.
Now, the town needs some final help from the state to launch, and Brassard said the department hopes to be up and running as soon as the end of the week.
But what exactly Randolph’s police department will look like still requires hashing out. The town originally budgeted for four officers. Opposition to the police budget ranged from it costing too much to the process moving too quickly, Brassard said. Some people wanted the town to use constables rather than law enforcement officers, while others thought a mental health-first approach would work better than cops, according to Brassard.
“The conversation was all over the place,” Brassard said. While she wasn’t surprised by the vote’s outcome, Brassard was surprised by the lack of turnout, she said.
Following Town Meeting Day, Randolph has two new selectboard members. At their first meeting on Thursday, the selectboard planned to address the town’s policing future.
The town could present a new police district budget for a vote, Brassard said, but she was unsure what the selectboard’s approach to funding the police department next fiscal year would be.
Randolph has already hired a police chief, Scott Clouatre, a former captain in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. The town also hired an administrative assistant — another former employee of the sheriff’s office.
Asked about the future of Randolph’s police department, Bohnyak, the former Orange County sheriff and a Randolph resident, said the town “needs” policing. To highlight his point, he noted that roughly 60% to 80% of the arrests made by his sheriff’s department occurred in Randolph during his tenure.
Bohnyak also said Clouatre, having overseen Randolph’s patrols for the sheriff’s department, is “the man for the job.”
While Randolph voters inside the police district shot down their half-a-million-dollar share of the police budget — the town had expected to pay the sheriff’s department about $350,000 for its contracted police services — other portions of the budget have been approved.
Voters, in approving the town budget, agreed that $100,000 from the town’s general fund will go toward policing, up from $25,000. The town’s selectboard has also approved $300,000 in American Rescue Plan Act money to support the department, two-thirds of which will go toward startup costs.
The police budget that voters rejected would have raised property taxes inside the police district by about $269 a year on a $200,000 property, according to the town’s data.
According to financial documents provided to VTDigger by Randolph Town Manager Trevor Lashua, as of March 6, the town had spent more than $95,000 on equipment for its new police department. The biggest expense — $54,000 — went toward purchasing two vehicles from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department under former sheriff Bohnyak.