If there’s anything Barre City’s Ward 3 City Council candidates can agree on, it’s that Barre is struggling.
“Barre has a really high poverty rate, and with the floods, that’s only gone up,” incumbent Samn Stockwell said.
“I do believe that Ward 3 has been kind of forgotten,” her challenger, Don Routhier, told the podcast 802 Scoop last month.
But on a variety of issues, the two candidates — who will face each other in elections on Tuesday — are at odds: from flood mitigation, to homelessness and crime, to the tenor of their candidacy and the way that the City Council should view Barre’s future.
Routhier, owner of a local used car dealership, has framed his campaign around the concept of “Bring Barre Back” — back to the days of his family’s roots as business owners in the North End.
The issue in Barre, as he described it on the podcast is “we have a lot of ideologies who have a dream, this rainbow coalition of everything’s going to happen, but it’s not.”
“We need doers. We don’t need teachers,” Routhier went on, “we need doers” taking action to address issues like crime and road repairs.
Stockwell, a poet and social services coordinator for the Family Center of Washington County, has put more emphasis on the need for affordable housing and ways to support residents on the path toward homeownership.
A similar battle of viewpoints has played out in Ward 1, where current Councilor Emel Cambel is stepping down. Former school board member Eddie Rousse said in an interview that supporting the police department and limiting loitering should be key priorities for the City Council.
His competitor Beth Hilgartner, a retired minister and author, emphasized consensus building over jumping to specific solutions.
In Ward 2, current Councilor Jeff Bergeron is running for another term unopposed.
The election, scheduled to take place on May 13, will also have a budget vote, a vote on a street and sidewalk improvement fund and a vote on whether the city clerk should be appointed by the City Council rather than an elected position.
‘Good Old Boys’?
Routhier declined to speak with VTDigger, saying that it was too close to the election for him to do an interview. As of Thursday, his sole media appearance has been on 802 Scoop, a local podcast, on April 16.
In that appearance, Routhier held up an old photo of his parent’s former business, the Heiress Motel, now known as the Budget Inn. Although Routhier left Barre to go to college, he eventually returned and opened a used car sales business, Routhier Auto Center.
On the 802 Scoop podcast, Rothier was asked if that made him one of the “good old boys,” an oft-used term in Barre to refer to an in-group of political figures. He replied that he finds the term “slanderous,” he said on the podcast, but indicated his support for current mayor Thom Lauzon, who came back into power in 2024 after a six-year hiatus.
“Thank God that, you know, we have a new mayor, and I think with a little bit of help, we can turn the city around again,” he said.
His vision for turning the city around includes more support for the police department and more cleaning up, beautifying and adding amenities in Ward 3, which includes the North End, one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the 2023 floods.
Stockwell also believes that new flood-safe development should be a priority in the North End. As a City Council member, she’s been working on flood mitigation through creating new floodplains, removing bridges that contribute to flooding and seeking federal funds for flood-safe housing development and home elevation.
But at the same time, she said, Barre should be looking for more opportunities to build dense housing downtown.
“The North End would remain a rehabilitated and restored neighborhood without a ton of apartment buildings,” she said. “I think downtown is a place to develop ‘up.’” She also said Barre should look at programs to help residents become homeowners.
The two candidates are directly at odds on whether the city should consider dredging the Stevens Branch of the Winooski River, which state officials have warned municipalities to approach with caution, since it can worsen flooding in some situations.
Routhier told 802 Scoop he would dredge the river and recommended it be “cleaned out.” Stockwell said there were “real reasons” that dredging can be destructive and hasn’t been the most effective method for Barre.
Not ‘that easy a divide’
Like Routhier, Rousse, in Ward 1, said he’d like to talk to Barre Police Chief Braedon Vail about ways to reduce crime. He’s specifically interested in cracking down on loitering, particularly among drug users and unhoused people, and said he believes it creates a negative image in downtown.
Growing up in a family of seven, Rousse said he didn’t have a lot of goals, but “you’d see (someone) loitering around that was unmotivated, and I just said, ‘That’s not who I want to be.’ And I see more and more of that now.”
Rousse has spent decades as a financial planner and representative for National Life Insurance Co. He’s also active in local civic organizations like the Barre Rotary. He cited his professional experience as giving him an advantage when considering the complex fiscal situation of the city.
“I think I could provide a common-sense response to whatever comes my way, no matter what it is,” he said.
Hilgartner said she tried to approach issues like homelessness with “compassion.” But beyond her personal beliefs in how Barre should address the issue, she believes the emphasis should be on a more community-driven process for tackling it. It’s something she has experience with as an Episcopal minister, where you “have to keep everybody on board” to gain funding and support, she said.
She does have one topic that is personal to her: traffic safety. Shortly after Hilgartner, a Barre native who was away a long time, moved back in 2022, two cars got into an accident on her road, damaging the heat pump connected to her home.
Barre’s road quality was a top complaint among residents in a 2025 budget survey, and all four candidates mentioned the need to fix cracks and potholes. But Hilgartner floated the possibility of going beyond maintenance and trying to add features to slow down drivers on Main Street.
“There’s a 25 mile-an-hour speed limit throughout the city of Barre,” she said. “It is not observed.”
Despite the challenges Barre faces, Hilgartner said it’s a wonderful place to live. She recalled the flood in 2023, when residents and community organizations across the board jumped in to help clean up.
“The day after the rain stopped, people were just down Main Street and in the North End with their buckets and their shovels and their boots and their gloves, and they were digging their neighbors out and trying to get the businesses up and running again immediately,” she said.
Stockwell said one recent bright spot has been the influx of new businesses to Barre, from the Slowpoke Clothing Exchange to Foxy’s, an LGBTQ+ bar. Reflecting on the tone of the different City Council campaigns, she said that Barre had a broad spectrum of political beliefs and backgrounds, among both new and longtime residents.
“I don’t think it’s that easy a divide, and I hope people will work together to keep Barre alive,” she said.
