The Franklin County town of Georgia has sworn in three new selectboard members who pledge to improve town relations after several residents questioned whether the former board had acted ethically.
Residents’ complaints included the town hiring selectboard members to municipal positions and voting to delete the conflict of interest and ethics policy that would have prohibited such hires.
“It just seems like there’s a lot of very questionable things happening on the selectboard, things they’re not being transparent about,” Georgia resident Frank Gore told VTDigger the week before Town Meeting Day. “I get the impression like they’re keeping everything hidden so that we don’t question certain things.”
During voting on March 7, challengers defeated three incumbents, with Jamie Comstock ousting Chair Doug Bergstrom for a three-year seat, 473-284; Devon Thomas defeating Vice Chair Gary Wright for another three-year seat, 482-287; and incumbent Carl Rosenquist and challenger Shannon Jenkins winning in a four-way race over incumbent Dawn Penney and challenger Charles Cross, 427-399-377-284.
Carolyn Branagan, who represents Georgia as a Republican in the Vermont House, was partway through a three-year term on the selectboard and was not up for reelection on Town Meeting Day. After a contentious meeting Monday night, she resigned from the board Tuesday, citing ongoing health issues and the competing demands of her legislative work.
New selectboard members were sworn in as of Monday, according to Georgia Town Clerk and Town Administrator Cheryl Letourneau.
Many Georgia residents’ complaints boiled over at an informational meeting on Feb. 28, when Jenkins pointed to Bergstorm’s hire as the town’s zoning administrator.
Bergstrom was hired as interim zoning administrator in November 2022 after former zoning administrator Emily Johnson, who began the position in May 2021 after working on the planning commission, resigned from the role in frustration.
In an interview with VTDigger, Johnson reported she had begun to feel overworked and undervalued.
“I didn’t feel like they understood the importance of what I was doing” as zoning administrator, she said. “There was a disconnect.”
Johnson said she was supposed to have support from a part-time assistant. Johnson said she could manage the workload alone in her first few months of employment, but in the fall of 2022, she reported feeling overwhelmed and repeatedly asked the selectboard to hire the assistant her job description had promised.
The selectboard “specifically told me there was no money in the budget for an assistant,” Johnson said. “That’s when I said, well, I needed an assistant in order to stay. They refused to give that to me, so I took (another job) offer.”
Bergstrom was hired to the role on Feb. 17, 2023 after serving as interim since Johnson’s departure in November, according to meeting minutes. A few weeks later, a part-time assistant was hired at $25 per hour, Bergstrom said at the Feb. 28 meeting.
At the meeting, Jenkins questioned why the salary for the zoning administrator position was increased by nearly 50%, from about $51,000 for Johnson, to $75,000 for Bergstrom, according to figures provided at the meeting by Wright.
When Johnson asked at the Feb. 28 meeting what previous experience Bergstrom brought to the zoning administrator position that would warrant his pay raise, selectboard members did not respond to her question.
“(Doug is) a man, to point out the obvious,” Johnson said at the meeting.
In a statement emailed to VTDigger on March 9, Letourneau and Rosenquist wrote, “it was not improper under Vermont law for the Selectboard to appoint one of its members to serve as the Zoning Administrator. The Planning Commission interviewed the candidate and recommended his appointment. Mr. Bergstrom was not present during the Board’s deliberations and did not participate.”
Bergstrom declined to comment.
Later in the informational meeting, residents expressed concern that the selectboard had unanimously voted to delete its Ethics and Conflict of Interest Policy on Dec. 1, 2022, at a special budget meeting where no members of the public were present.
At a board meeting a few days prior, Georgia resident Suzanna Brown told the board “she would like to see the (ethics) policy withdrawn as it is outdated,” according to the meeting’s minutes.
But in an email to VTDigger, Brown said she was surprised that the board did not implement a replacement ethics policy immediately.
“(The selectboard) never asked what I thought needed updating, but just eliminated it at the next meeting,” Brown said. “Certainly not what I expected them to do.”
Had it still been in place, the ethics policy — which included that “a Town Selectman, Planning Commissioner, or member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment shall not be an employee of the Town of Georgia” — would have prevented the board from hiring Bergstrom to the position of zoning administrator when he was already chair of the board.
The policy also would have prevented Penney, the former board member, from occupying a position as assistant town clerk while serving on the select board.
Meeting minutes from Dec. 1 show that “the board voiced the belief that we were in conflict” with the Ethics and Conflict of Interest Policy.
Penney told VTDigger that the board had been abiding by the state ethics standard since deleting the town ethics policy.
However, the state code applies only to state public servants and was not created to govern municipalities, and therefore is silent on the issue of town officials’ conduct, according to Christina Sivret, executive director of the Vermont State Ethics Commission.
Jenny R. Prosser, general counsel & director of municipal assistance at the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office, said municipalities must have “either a conflict of interest ordinance adopted by the voters or a conflict of interest policy adopted by the Selectboard.”
Yet there are few repercussions for towns that don’t comply with state statute, she said, as the “statute itself doesn’t explicitly say there’s a consequence.” Instead, residents can vote out elected officials at the polls or can petition their local governments, Prosser said.
As newly elected selectboard members took their seats this week, many of them hoped to repair rifts in the community that have been growing over the past few months.
Thomas, Jenkins, and Comstock all said they believe the new selectboard should reinstate the previous Ethics and Conflict of Interest Policy immediately upon beginning their terms, prioritizing the subsequent creation of an updated policy created with community input.
“I think that (the community) definitely deserves that at this point. And I think that having a code of ethics with a clear policy about conflicts of interests would go a long way to helping us do our job and build trust with the community,” Thomas said. “If a sitting Selectboard is able to repeal their own code of ethics, I don’t know if that’s an effective code of ethics.”
Jenkins also emphasized her intent to ensure that the town of Georgia signs on to the Vermont Declaration of Inclusion, a statewide commitment to diversity and inclusion that the former town selectboard declined to adopt.
Comstock said the selectboard looks forward to rebuilding trust with the Georgia community and directing focus toward issues like infrastructure, budget, recreation and diversity, equity and inclusion.
“Perception is everything,” he said. “If the community perceives that the selectboard is not being honest or transparent about their intentions then this causes frustration and a fire to push change.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Carolyn Branagan’s status on the selectboard.
