Selectboard Debate 2027 Budget; Take Steps to Deal with Contamination from Old Dump
Few attend public hearing on 2027 capital budget and overall budget discussion; selectboard leaning towards compromises; another budget meeting Jan. 14.
(NOTE: Video courtesy of the Media Factory. Municipal and school board meetings available online at https://mediafactory.org/meetings)
Record Staff Report
In a sparsely attended meeting on Jan. 7, the Hinesburg selectboard discussed the coming year’s capital budget and then veered toward several compromises in the police, fire and town clerk’s budgets. All three departments had asked for more staff.
Selectboard member Dennis Place continued his mantra that the town should not expand services until the new housing is built and occupied, and the tax base is greater. “We have growth coming,” he said, “but it’s not here yet. We need to wait until we get the money.”
Selectboard member Paul Lamberson voiced his belief the board needs to hold off on major increases. As did Mike Loner, another board member: “One of the problems we’re kind of coming to is asking current residents to carry the costs of future needs, which is tough.”
Town Manager Todd Odit, in continuing to make the case for a budget that addresses the needs of the departments, countered with this observation: “The town has been planning – zoning wise – for growth for 10, 20 years. We haven’t been planning on the service side at all.”
Through the back and forth it was clear that the selectboard members have been hearing from citizens who are concerned about the continued rise in their property taxes.
Yet the town budget only represents about 35 percent of the total tax burden; the schools budget represents the other 65 percent. In its present iteration, the town is debating whether to increase the budget by $557,000. As perspective, the Champlain Valley School District faces negotiated salary increases of $3.1 million and a required increase in healthcare costs of $750,000.
One person who’s gotten a few letters has been Prescott Nadeau, the fire chief, who opened the discussion with a 10-minute clarification of what he is trying to accomplish with two additional EMT-firefighters so the station will have at least one staffer present 24/7.
He reiterated his concern that the number of emergency calls – mostly medical emergencies – has been steadily rising, and the number of “failed” calls – calls that cannot be covered by anyone at the station or on call – is now 18 percent or 109 missed calls in 2025. While those calls are covered by Richmond Rescue, the response times are longer. Nadeau said the average Richmond Rescue response time is a little over 17 minutes, compared to “less than five minutes” for calls when someone goes out from the station. Currently there are two staff firefighters who cover about 60 hours a week.
Nadeau also addressed a concern raised by several selectboard members in previous meetings, that the fire department would become a “career” department and should be staffed with more volunteers. Aside from the nationwide trend of declining volunteerism, Nadeau pointed out that training requirements and regulations had vastly changed since 20 years ago when the department was largely volunteer.
He also noted that having adequate staffing would allow the trained firefighters to mentor volunteers and thus would make recruiting “on call, ‘volunteers’” much more successful. After a lengthy back and forth, it appeared a consensus was settling in – one new EMT-firefighter, not two.
While the police department was not represented, Odit pointed out that while the budget proposal called for six police officers, including the chief, this was the same number of officers the town had in 2022. He noted that even so, the FY2027 police budget is far short of the 2022 levels because of drastically lower funding for part-time officers for fill-in, vacations and extra duty.
Loner and several others posed a potential consensus – that maybe the sixth officer could be budgeted to start in the middle of the year.
The selectboard will resume discussion of the budget at 6 p.m. this Wednesday, Jan. 14, at Town Hall and via Zoom.
In other action …
Peter Gibbs of Engineering Ventures told the board that the best solution for the five homes on Forest Edge and Beecher Hill Road with contaminated wells was to run a four-inch line from the municipal water set-up at Mountain View Mobile Home Park at a potential cost of $1.8 million. This solution had been suggested by the selectboard several months ago and was one of five options Gibbs outlined. The wells have been contaminated by runoff from the old dump. Currently the homes have point-of-entry filtration systems which the town subsidizes for an estimated $50,000 a year.
The town’s capital budget of $840,205 proposes an increase of $72,733; the big-ticket items are a new compressor for the fire department’s firefighter breathing tanks; and additional crosswalks at Hinesburg Community School and Lantman’s Market.
The selectboard agreed to replace a highway department pickup truck with a larger one that would allow it to do some of the plowing on smaller, residential roads. The net cost is $81,000, after a $30,000 trade-in for the old truck.