Who are you? What is this? Why am I doing it?

I’m Oscar Heller, the current chair of the Brattleboro Selectboard. I’m in the second year of a three year term. It’s really fascinating work. I’ve been thinking for awhile about how to make the Selectboard more accessible to the public, and how to let regular people with regular busy lives know more about the decisions we make.

I also want to make my own opinions more accessible. Selectboard meetings are long, formal, and often technical. This is an experiment in speaking less formally. If anyone remembers the iBrattleboro live blogs that Chris used to do, I really enjoyed reading those. This is a little bit in that spirit.

My plan is to recap the meeting, highlight things that I think people might find interesting, and be transparent about my own opinions so you can set me straight.

Documents, next meeting

This meeting was held on October 20. Here’s a link to the agenda packet with all the backup materials. Everything we consider has some kind of memo or supporting materials in the packet with more information.

Our next meeting will be November 5. Unusually, that’s a Thursday, to avoid holding a meeting on Election Day.

Emergency savings

A big topic of the night was the state of our fund balance. I won’t try to explain that entire saga here, but basically, our fund balance is our emergency savings. We’re supposed to keep that balance at 10% of our yearly budget, or about $2.8M, but it was spent down in previous years, and the town ran an operational deficit in some years as well. Right now we’re at closer to 2% than 10%. (We are tentatively expecting a substantial surplus from the fiscal year that just ended, which would bring it up to the 5% range.)

One suggestion was to establish a standalone “emergency fund” that can’t be touched. I’m open to it, but my priority is less the structure of the fund, and more replenishing it. I had a conversation with the executive director of the Vermont Bond Bank about it. What he’s seen in other towns is: be disciplined, don’t spend anything more, and put every penny of every surplus into the fund balance until you’re back to your target. That makes sense to me.

NextGen Brattleboro (launch event on October 28)

Town Manager John Potter updated the board on NextGen Brattleboro, which is starting to come together in a more formal way. We saw a draft of an organizational charter. There’s a launch event at the Latchis on Wednesday, October 28, from 5:30-7pm. Register here or just show up - there’s no charge and it’s open to all.

NextGen is starting to develop some exciting momentum and energy. It showed its worth during the fight to save the birthing center. Keep it up!

Human Services Committee (apply by November 11)

The board adopted a new process and timeline for the Human Services Committee. We will appoint a new committee at our November 17 meeting. Any existing applications are still valid, but anyone who wants to serve and hasn’t applied yet should do so by November 11. Apply online or in person at the Town Manager’s office.

The process:

• The committee will be appointed November 17 and organize itself this fall
• The Selectboard will put a number for human services funding in the budget in January
• Town Meeting will finalize that number in February or March
• At that point, with a final number in hand, the committee will solicit applications, perform their evaluations, and bring their recommendations to the Selectboard
• Any funding will be disbursed in the beginning of the new fiscal year as usual

This should avoid some of the frustrating doubling-back and extra work that happened last year. Seems like a much better process to me.

Monthly budget update

We got a new report format with some new graphs and visualizations from SerahRose, our new finance director. I like the direction that’s headed. This report was for the first two months of this fiscal year (July and August). The big concern is the overtime in the fire department. We got a great explanation from Fire Chief Lynch, which I’ll try to reproduce correctly:

• Overtime has been a chronic problem for several years due to lack of full staffing
• For the first time in a long time, the fire department is on track to be fully staffed
• New hires require a period of training and onboarding before they’re ready to work without restriction or extra oversight
• All hires should be fully onboarded by February, and we should start to see overtime trending down around that time

I’m still worried about parking revenue. We’re almost on pace for our yearly revenue, but that’s after two summer months, so I expect another down year once we go through the slower winter months. The board is still planning to schedule a standalone parking discussion as per our decision at a recent meeting.

The board also talked about a variety of documents and projections we’d like to review as part of the upcoming budget process. The current plan is to see a draft budget at our next meeting, which is on November 5.

Shorter topics

We accepted a paving grant to resurface Elliot St between Main and Elm. I’m excited as an Elliot St resident. It’s the downtown section, so it should make things nicer for Gallery Walk and other events. We approved an additional cost, almost $100k, due to federal tariffs on some necessary replacement parts at the wastewater treatment plant. Frustrating but necessary. We also approved some uncontroversial licenses and permits, and moved forward on the grant agreement for replacing the Dettman Bridge.

I had some reservations about making the Rail and River entertainment license so expansive (it’s now 7pm-midnight, seven days a week), but plan to be very responsive to any issues faced by neighbors. The lack of evening entertainment, and everything closing at 5pm, is a constant complaint (and I agree!), so I’m willing to give it a try.

The new Town Plan and some routine updates to our our Licenses and Permits ordinance passed without much debate. The Town Plan is actually a very important document, but we had already gotten a presentation on it last month, and it’s very well done, so the board approved it without concerns. Good work by staff and the Planning Commission.

Town staff will be reviewing the town’s farm stabilization program to modernize and streamline it. That should be coming back to the board a little further down the line.

The board issued a health order for 6 Reynolds Drive, as part of an ongoing effort to deal with issues at that address. Hopefully this moves us closer to a resolution.

In conclusion

I know the decisions the Selectboard makes can stir up disagreement. Let’s keep it friendly and remember we’re all on the same team. The Selectboard makes mistakes and so do I. You can email me anytime with your thoughts at [email protected], and I’m always happy to grab coffee or take a walk together and hear what’s on your mind. (I generally don’t get into the comments though - I don’t think it’s a good way to communicate.)

Also, if you have feedback on ways to make these recaps more useful or interesting to you, don’t hesitate to let me know.