This story by Maryellen Apelquist was first published in The White River Valley Herald on May 21, 2026.
With just about six weeks remaining before Randolph’s Fourth of July parade, host White River Valley Chamber of Commerce is sticking with a changed route that’s drawn the ire of community members — many of whom blame police Chief Scott Clouatre for his role in the chamber’s parade permit.
Chamber President Karen Laroque told The Herald on May 18 that “we are standing by our decision to go straight” down Main Street.
“We’ve backed up the start of the parade, which in turn opens up lots of available viewing opportunities,” Laroque said, referring to the parade’s start beside the Gifford Auxiliary Thrift Shop on South Main Street, before the Gifford Green.
The new path, permitted in April, notably bypasses a long popular viewing area in the residential neighborhood Hospital Hill. The area includes Highland Avenue and Maple Street, from where it’s been estimated that each year several hundred to 1,000 community members have viewed the annual parade from front lawns for as long as many local residents can remember.
“This is about safety, and we respect our local law enforcement and their decision” to bypass the neighborhood, said Laroque.
Clouatre, after weeks of pushback from community members and in the wake of a contentious public comment period during the May 14 selectboard meeting, told The Herald that he has considered resigning his position as police chief.
He also said his push for the revised parade route was in the interest of public safety and that he stands by it, but acknowledged community members’ disappointment.
“Does it suck? Absolutely,” the chief said. “Do I like this plan? Absolutely not. But it is the only way that we can swing this in order to have a parade.”
During an interview May 15 at the police department, Clouatre reviewed a map of the permitted parade route, including where he plans to station law enforcement officers. There are five of them, including two from South Royalton.
Per the chief’s plan, he’ll have an officer with cruiser on each end of the road closure, at Main and Prince streets and at Route 12 and Beanville Road; an officer with cruiser at Pleasant Street and Main Street, to maintain the detour (on Beanville and Pleasant) and prevent motor vehicle traffic from coming into the Main Street area; and an officer at Main and Maple streets, in the event an ambulance needs to enter or depart Gifford Medical Center, or if the DHART helicopter needs to land during the parade.
“That leaves one officer on foot in the downtown area, and this area is overcrowded with people,” said Clouatre.
“Usually we do this detail with eight to 10” officers, he added.
The police department is short-staffed overall, with one officer on military deployment for the next year and another on medical leave.
Last year, the chief said, he had seven officers working the parade, and they weren’t enough.
“We were overrun. I couldn’t even get an ambulance for a medical call to Salisbury Street because of this throng of people,” he said, pointing on the map to the Main-and-Salisbury intersection, close to the railroad tracks, where large crowds gather during the parade.
“And when I say that we were overrun, we couldn’t clear the roadway for EMS to get to a medical patient.
“That is the only reason why it is this route — it’s more for this support in this downtown area. This area is my most contentious piece.”
This year’s revised route eases access for law enforcement in case of emergency, the chief explained.
“By having this open, this allows first responders to gain access to anywhere downtown. If the parade was going to be on here, I can’t get there because the parade will be in full motion. These roadways [would] be blocked out.”
“Now they have unrestricted access through the Hospital [Hill] area to get to that hospital” or downtown, said Clouatre.
In previous years, the chief said, there was more law enforcement on hand to help, including “from the Orange County Sheriff days.”
“I had a bigger pool to draw from. From a roster of 28 in the sheriff’s department, we could pull those deputies to fulfill the 10 to 12 officers needed for this event,” he said.
The Randolph chief said he reached out to other agencies, such as area sheriff’s departments and Vermont State Police, as well as other town managers statewide, for assistance.
“Neighboring agencies have declined due to their own staffing issues, or they’re already committed to events,” he said.
The chief made another round of calls for assistance recently, to no avail, after an anonymous community member told him “‘money is no object. Find the officers and we will pay for them.’”
Several dozen community members attended the May 14 selectboard meeting, both in person and online. Chamber leadership wasn’t present — the parade wasn’t on the agenda — while Clouatre was online but remained quiet.
Some people questioned the basis for the police chief’s role in the chamber’s permitted route, a decision that also included input from outgoing Town Manager Trevor Lashua. They also questioned the exclusion of community involvement in problem-solving around the decision, as well as perceived lack of transparency in the permitting process.
Highland Avenue resident Guy Waldo said that having “no input from the public that is directly affected … to be ignored as we are now, is totally ridiculous.”
“We pay the wages for the police department, and we’re not getting what we pay for,” Waldo said.
Local business leader Paul Rea noted that it’s “disappointing how things are being treated around this community” but remained solution-focused.
“Let’s pull this off and get it done,” he said.
Selectboard members several times told those at the meeting that the permit belongs to the Chamber of Commerce and that the parade is a volunteer-run chamber event.
“It’s really up to the chamber,” said selectboard chair Larry Satcowitz. “If the chamber wants to come back to the selectboard with a new permit, they can do that.”
Tamara Morgan told the selectboard, “I just wish that you had interrogated that permit and put it off a little bit.”
There is one remaining selectboard meeting, on June 11, between now and the Fourth of July.
Randolph vs. Montpelier
Some Randolph community members have made comparisons to Montpelier’s July 3 parade, which draws an estimated 20,000 spectators and participants. They assert that Randolph, with its smaller scale of closer to 5,000 spectators, should be able to pull off its parade without changing the route from previous years.
Just as Randolph’s assembly permit application includes approval sign-off from the police and fire departments as well as public works and the health officer, Montpelier requires permit applications “be reviewed and approved by the police department, public works, the fire department, city manager’s office and Montpelier Alive.”
The Herald spoke with officials in Montpelier, which has 17 full-time police officers. One of the officers takes the lead on planning public safety for the parade.
Katie Trautz, executive director for Montpelier Alive, the independent nonprofit that hosts the parade, said that “Montpelier police, fire, county sheriffs, and Capitol complex grounds staff all help with security measures.”
Montpelier Alive also “usually” hires 10 security people from a company like Chocolate Thunder or Green Mountain Concert Services to help with crowd control during the parade, Trautz said.
Like Montpelier, Clouatre also tried to “hire out … but at the time of the permit we were working in the restraints of what the chamber could pay, which was nothing,” he said, and now no one is available.
Trautz said Montpelier utilizes 15 to 20 volunteers for setup, to work an information table, and cleanup — not in public safety or security roles.
In terms of enlisting volunteers locally, the Randolph chief said, “I cannot in good conscience ask volunteers to help with crowd control because they don’t have the ability at all to help with pushing people back, asking people to move, or if an event took place, be able to hold people back from an incident or hopefully not go hands-on, where an officer can. Asking volunteers to fill those roles and to be yelled at and to be screamed at and to be spit on, or all the above, is not fair.”
Chamber president Laroque previously told The Herald that finding volunteers to help with the parade — ideally two people to stand at every intersection in addition to walkers to move alongside the parade — has long been a challenge.
“We never have enough volunteers,” she said. “Everybody wants to volunteer until it comes time to volunteer.”
The Montpelier parade route, which travels down Main and State streets, has one turn. The previous Randolph parade route, to include Hospital Hill, has five turns.
Navigating those turns, the Randolph chief said, is problematic.
“This corner, from Maple to Earle [streets], and Earle to Highland, is the most contentious, because it’s a narrow, narrow street. And the larger the floats, the harder these turns are. So the bigger the floats, you know, they come into where the people stand.”
Rich tradition
Randolph’s Fourth of July festivities — there’s record of an 1807 “procession” for Independence Day — have long drawn visitors from across the White River Valley.
The American Legion previously and for many years presented the parade and other activities, pulling it all together through the work of several committees of volunteers.
In 1925, “5,000 Came” for the “Largest and Best Parade Ever Seen in Valley.”
Herald articles note a few different parade routes over the years, and other changes, too. The American Legion, in October 1963, announced that its members had unanimously voted “to postpone 4th of July plans for 1964,” citing significant investments of time and increased expenses.
“Hundreds of people in the area have taken it for granted that the show would always continue in Randolph on that holiday,” The Herald reported at the time, and welcomed letters “offering solutions to the problem.”
