Village vote spells end of police

In about a year, the village of Waterbury likely will cease to exist as a municipal government, and the village police department likely will be long gone.

On Tuesday, village residents voted 224-83 to essentially eliminate all village government other than a small group to oversee its sewer and water systems. That dissolution includes the police department, which accounts for about 85 percent of the annual village budget. The change would not go into effect until next summer, after the move is approved by the state Legislature.

Town Clerk Carla Lawrence said 22 percent of the registered village voters participated in the vote. After the ballot count Tuesday evening, the three members of the village board of trustees stood outside the municipal offices, visibly pleased with the result. Board President Skip Flanders was cautiously optimistic: “We’ll wait 30 days to see if a rescission petition happens,” he said.

His caution stems from experience. Waterbury voters unhappy with election results don’t hesitate to use the rescission option to attempt to reverse a decision. Past rescission votes have occurred to undo decisions about structuring the fire department, merging the village and town governments, and funding school and municipal construction projects.

The notion of rescission in this case, however, seems a longer shot. In the days leading up to Tuesday’s vote, small “vote yes” yard signs popped up around the village. “Vote no” signs were conspicuously absent.

Trustee Natalie Sherman said elected officials understood that momentum among village residents at the annual meetings in 2016 and this March. After many years of working to streamline local government, Sherman said the timing seemed right for this final step: Village government has gradually dwindled as the town and village fire and road departments combined, leaving the police the primary village function whose cost landed squarely on village taxpayers.

Sherman noted that, unlike former calls for merging town and village government through townwide votes, “this was the first time we asked the village what they wanted for their future.”

Waterbury Village Police Chief Joby Feccia isn’t so sure of what the future holds now. “I’m disappointed, but it’s a sense of relief just knowing,” he said after the vote count. “The uncertainty has been difficult.”

Given that the margin was greater than two to one, Feccia said there’s some consolation in the fact that the village doesn’t appear to be bitterly divided. Barring a revote, Feccia said his department will prepare to finish operation by the end of the year.

For the next six months, the village police still have a job to do. At about half-staff from a decade ago, the department has two full-time officers — Feccia and Corp. Anthony Mazzilli — and six part-timers, many of whom only work a few times a year. Between now and Dec. 31, there still will be crimes to investigate, scofflaws to arrest, tickets to hand out, and parades to patrol, like this weekend’s Not Quite Independence Day festival.

“It’s our biggest event of the year, and we’re gonna go out and do it,” Feccia said.

Feccia, Mazzilli and the other officers will have to find new jobs, even as they continue to do their current ones.

“People came up to me on the street today” to offer support, he said Tuesday. “One woman I’d been working with said, ‘I’m sorry for what you’re going through.’”

What’s next?

The town select board now has about six months to prepare for the transition with the main question being how to address public safety when the village police department’s funding ends.

Still in place is the arrangement for the Vermont State Police to cover all of Waterbury but the 2 square miles of downtown now patrolled by the village department. That area contains many homes and many of the town’s retail businesses, banks, restaurants and pubs, and the roughly 400-student Thatcher Brook Primary School.

At recent public meetings, select board members said they want to involve the community in considering future police coverage and its funding.

“The select board desires to have some form of police coverage,” board chair Chris Viens said last week. “I want the town voters to know that this discussion is coming.”

Viens said that, in past votes to merge town and village governments, “people came down out of the hills” to oppose a town police department, primarily because they opposed the tax increase it would require.

Village resident Everett Coffey, former president of the village trustees, said the opposition was more complicated than that.

“The reason the town rejectedthe merger before was because it was this police department they didn’t want, not that they didn’t want law enforcement,” Coffey said.

Trustee Lefty Sayah said he was encouraged by a recent Vermont State Police presentation about increasing the coverage it provides. “We wouldn’t need to go to a full-blown townwide department of our own,” he said.

Many Vermont towns operate without police departments of their own. In Lamoille County, for example, Stowe and Morristown have their own police departments; the other eight towns do not.

Select board members have mentioned forming a special committee and conducting surveys this fall. Board member Marc Metayer said he hopes for involvement similar to efforts after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, when the community organized group conversations to discuss priorities for the future.

“If we can encourage and utilize feedback from the community, we can chart the path forward,” Metayer said.

Some are already imagining the possibilities. At last week’s pre-vote public meeting, Waterbury Best Western Plus manager Melissa Moore said she and other business leaders in town want to learn about and consider alternative taxes if it could mean affordable, reliable police coverage.

“If you could present a really good townwide police department, sign me up,” she said.