SmartTranscript of House Government Operations-2025-03-28-1:20PM

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[Speaker 0 ]: Hi. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. Hello, everyone. We are here after lunch, wrapping up the week with some testimony on h four zero four, an act relating to authority over the highways of the village of Old Bennington. And we asked to hear from some folks from the from the village itself, the town manager. They're joining us remotely, and we're just gonna take some time right now to hear from them their perspective on the bill that was introduced by representative Greer. Stewart, Anne, how are you? [Stuart Hurd]: Good afternoon. We're very good. Thank you. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Wonderful. Yeah. So, you know, we just wanted to hear from you folks. We're just starting to pick up work on this. This was a piece that was flagged for us a couple of weeks ago, if not more than a month. But it is exempt from our crossover deadline. So we wanted to get that behind us, and here we are. [Stuart Hurd]: And, well, I guess, here we are as well. Anne and I were just talking before we came on. The village truck and town staff began discussions of this potential, back in January of twenty twenty four. So it's been on an ongoing discussion among us as to how we accomplish this. The village has about three miles of road, similar amount of sidewalk. We provide municipal water and sewer to the village. And so they have a separate highway fund that they operate, and they contract for most of their highway maintenance. Obviously, we have a highway fund of our own. I think it's we have excellent employees. And so the question really is, is it more efficient from a government perspective for us to work together to maintain the sidewalks and the roads of the village than what we had in the past? And maybe I'll let Anne jump in. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you. The history behind this, just so everybody understands it, is for the last twenty years, the village of Old Bennington has been collecting the taxes, so on and so forth, but neglected in many circumstances to increase the tax rate as costs went up. So this past year in twenty twenty four, our treasurer put together an in-depth discussion of the cost of maintaining the roads in the village of Old Bennington versus the taxes that we were charging for it. Because they had not the village had not increased the tax rate over a period of time, we were not able to take care of the roads in in a fashion that we thought was was proper. Last year then at our annual meeting after, we had explained this all to our to our villagers, we ended up increasing our road tax rate substantially, trying to become even with what, the town of Bennington has done. We also have experienced, I don't think it's a surprise to anybody, that it's simply impossible for such a small village to maintain roads this way when we're contracting out to individual contractors. Where we have a town that has developed a force of its own to maintain the roads. So it is ideal for the village of Old Bennington to have our roads go over to the town, and we'd work to get our tax rate up so it would be equal to almost equal to the town. So that's where we stand right now. I should point out that this has been discussed at every trustee meeting since February of twenty twenty four. It was discussed last year at our annual meeting. Then we held a information only trustee meeting, a special meeting in June of twenty twenty four where we asked all of the villagers to come in so that they perfectly understood what we we are, what trying to do. I want you to also know that, it was suggested to us that we do a nonbinding vote of the villagers, and I believe it was suggested by, the government operations, committee. That is scheduled for April twenty second. After consulting with VLCT, we it is a the equivalent of an annual meeting. Therefore, it has been in the newspaper. It's been warned on the our our website. It's been posted in two locations. And a postcard, which was not required, we have sent to every resident or owner of a a a property in Old Bennington. That meeting will be April twenty second. [Chair Matthew Birong]: And I I think you might have cited this a little earlier in, this discussion, but, what is the what is the population of Old Bennington? Residents. I [Speaker 0 ]: don't know. Would you imagine? That's that's I'm sorry. I can't quite answer that one. There are eighty five, houses, if you will. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. That's a that gives me enough of a yeah. [Stuart Hurd]: Sorry. [Chair Matthew Birong]: No. That gives me enough of an idea. Three people per Yeah. Two point three people per house. We can do that math. Okay. Thank [Speaker 0 ]: you. [Chair Matthew Birong]: And so what is the what is the have you been able to gauge sort of the tone and sentiment of the community at this point leading up to the vote? [Speaker 0 ]: Could you repeat that? I'm sorry. I didn't hear [Chair Matthew Birong]: Have you been able to gauge a sense of the community on this even though the vote hasn't occurred yet? [Speaker 0 ]: Yes. I I can. First of all, as I said, we started talking about this a long time ago. But we when we discussed the roads at the annual meeting a year ago, everybody clearly understood that we could not continue the way we were. We had the June meeting where everybody voiced their concerns. We were fortunate that Stu attended that and Merrill Bent, our attorney, attended attended that. Then we went through this past winter. And as you can probably all understand that it was a very icy, snowy winter for us, and the contractor that we contracted with had difficulty meeting our expectations. And I would say based on the conversations that I've had with everybody in the village that, they're they will be very much interested in moving their roads over. But that is why we're having a nonbinding vote so that everybody has a chance to say what they think. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. [Stuart Hurd]: And and we from from our perspective, the the select board will await the results of that nonbinding vote and then consider the question, even though we also have been discussing it for quite some time, off and on with the select board, we've had our public works director take a look at their roads, their sidewalks. It is a very historic village. The sidewalks are not as wide as we would prefer them to be. So we've got some machinery issues that we're gonna have to deal with should this come to pass, but I don't think those are insurmountable, and that's really just maintaining the walks in the wintertime. Otherwise, it's a fairly straightforward question. Right now, when we reach the village line of Old Bennington on our way to the western part of Bennington, we lift our plows, drive through the village, and then drop our plows on the other side. That's not very efficient [Chair Matthew Birong]: and very [Stuart Hurd]: cost effective from either perspective. [Chair Matthew Birong]: And I so the the neighboring community is amenable to bundling with you folks, figuring out the tax rates and the dollars in and all of that, I assume. [Stuart Hurd]: Yeah. We've taken a hard look at it. If if in fact the the tax rates were the same this past year, the village would be generating about close to a hundred and fifty two thousand dollars in highway revenue. And from my perspective, anyway, we think that that would be more than enough to adequately maintain the highways. I mean, it's three miles of road. It's it's relatively easy to maintain most of their roads. The villa kinda sits in the middle of our western part of the town. All of our roads at some point pass through the village when you're moving up through the western part of the town. So we don't see it as a major a major issue for us from a a logistics point of view. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. I think our next step will be probably reaching out to those folks and just, you know, hearing from them and their amenability to this newfound partnership. Do we have any questions for today? [Speaker 0 ]: That's straightforward. That would be Stuart because Stuart represents Bennington. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I was I wanted to bring in, like, the road crew guys. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Friday brain. I was reading over my own notes. Yeah. Bring in the the folks from the public works and chat with them, but it seems pretty amenable and straightforward with everyone. [Stuart Hurd]: What is [Chair Matthew Birong]: the last name? If that so with the nonbinding vote with this, I think my initial sense is to wait to hear from the community and loads of nonbinding vote to see what that looks like, but have the testimony all conducted and everything situated. So once you folks hear from the voters and we hear from you, if everything's amenable, closing the loop loop on this charter then, if that makes sense to the table. Mhmm. Yeah. So representative coffee. [Member VL Coffin IV]: Yeah. I just wanted to be clear that I heard it right that the village has no highway department as it as it stands right now. So there's not a combination of of two people of two entities as far as that goes. [Speaker 0 ]: No, sir. We have absolutely no highway department whatsoever. Not not It's not [Member VL Coffin IV]: So okay. I just making sure I heard right because that does make it easier. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. Anything else for our guests? Well, thank you very much for your time. [Stuart Hurd]: Thank you. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. And Stuart, we really And we'll we'll reach out to the other folks, but we'll probably wait till we get a little bit closer to that vote date and do it all at the same time. [Stuart Hurd]: Very good. Good. Thank you very much. Thank you. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you. [Stuart Hurd]: Thank you. Have a great day. [Chair Matthew Birong]: You too. Alright. Team, what we got of it. Good. That was a big series of weeks. Everybody enjoy some downtime, downtime, and then we'll just take a peek at some schedule agenda planning for next week. But Yeah. That was a lot this week. Great work. We moved a lot of bills. So I got nothing for you.
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