COLCHESTER — More than 500 residents of a sprawling manufactured home park in Colchester have crossed the first hurdle to incorporate as a municipal village in Vermont — and is the first community to do so in years.
After two years of organizing, Gayle Pezzo, Westbury Village project team leader, said it was almost anticlimactic how quickly the Colchester Selectboard voted to accept the team’s petition Tuesday night.
“I really haven’t processed it yet, it happened so fast,” said Pezzo, who moved to the Westbury community seven years ago.
Started in 1972 by a couple who rented the land and created a privately owned mobile home park, the neighborhood now involves more than 500 residents living in 250 owned units over 4.6 miles of wooded roads in a sprawling 183 acres in and around Coventry Road.
It is managed by the Westbury Homeowner’s Association Inc., a limited equity cooperative formed under Vermont law after the mobile home park was put up for sale in 2018.
Thanks to a Vermont law that defines mobile home owners’ rights, the residents were allowed to compete with developers to buy the park in 2019 with help from the Cooperative Development Institute and ROC USA, Pezzo explained.
“It’s beautiful, it’s private and it’s a community,” said Louis Lamphere, a resident there for 12 years who stopped by the office Wednesday to chat with Pezzo.
“I feel very impressed about us being able to become a village and to be more comfortable with our living spaces,” he said.
Town Manager Aaron Frank confirmed the town has verified that 250 of the 275 signatures submitted with the petition are registered voters.
Tuesday night’s vote indicates the selectboard has agreed that the petition has met the threshold for creation of a village under state statute 24 V.S.A. chapter 39.
The next step is for the selectboard to sign the agreement and for the village to post it. Then they have to set up and warn their first meeting, according to Colchester Town Clerk Julie Graeter.
Pezzo said they are waiting for the signed agreement, plan to hold the first village meeting on Nov. 11 at 1 p.m., and will gather nominees for a moderator, treasurer, clerk secretary and five trustees.
Meanwhile the existing co-op, of which Pezzo is a board member, will continue to function as manager of the property and services, she said.
The idea behind incorporation is to get greater access to municipal funding and services such as roads and drinking water and to lower the burden on residents. Since the 1970s, Westbury’s infrastructure has been managed by the co-op. But what worked well for a small community has become more complex as the community has grown, according to information on the Westbury Village Project website.
Village residents would continue to be residents of the town of Colchester but would also become residents of the village. According to the documents from Tuesday’s meeting, “the Selectboard will continue to provide the level of services to Westbury that it provides to other areas within the Town and wish the Village residents goodwill in their endeavor.”
State officials said it is rare for villages to be formed nowadays in Vermont. According to a list on the Secretary of State’s website, Jericho Village was the last one formed in Vermont 90 years ago.
“We’re more often merging than creating,” said Ted Brady, executive director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. “I’d say the biggest benefit to creating a village is the ability to raise taxes and provide a municipal service.”
Officials pointed to an essay by T. Edward Rowe, who said that, while the number of villages continue to decline in Vermont, they have been “an integral part of the structure of local governmental units” and “have served as the setting for several aspects of growth within the state, particularly its economic development.”
