Randolph Tax Rate
Will Climb 5%
By Pamala Yerrington

The Randolph selectboard Monday evening voted to approve the town rax rate as submitted by Town Assessor Pat French. The rate will increase by nine to 16 cents, depending on whether the property is homestead or residential and whether it is in the police district.

A 10-cent increase in the tax rate results in a $100 tax increase for a home valued at $100,000.

The townwide tax rate is set at $1.7066 for homestead properties and $1.7597 at the non-residential rate.

The townwide tax rate plus Police District tax rate is set at $1.99 for homestead and $2.0431 for non-residential.

For comparison, the previous tax rates were $1.6136 for homesteads and $1.6159 for non-residential; with Police District inclusion the rates were $1.8777 for homestead and $1.88 for non-residential.

Police District

If the town determines to pursue change to the police district structure, Town Manager Peter Butterfield outlined two methods available.

To expand the district to a larger part of the town would require two separate votes, the first taken of the voters already within the district and the second of the voters proposed to be added to the district.

The other method would be to create a new police department and dissolve the existing district. This method would require only one vote, that of all parties within the proposed new police district.

Butterfield was asked to review the policing model of Woodstock and Bristol.

The Selectboard also requested Butterfield to contact the Orange County Sheriff, Bill Bohnyak, as to the cost of expanding contractual agreements currently in place.

The possibility of replacing the Village district police with expanded Sheriff coverage is another option being explored with an eye to streamlining and creating greater efficiency.

Energy Committee

The initial focus of this newly-formed volunteer group will be on reducing energy consumption of buildings owned by the town. They will be touring various buildings as well as gathering information from a variety of sources including Efficiency Vermont. The Selectboard will be given regular reports on recommendations.

WRV Ambulance

Barbara Springer outlined the state of affairs at the ambulance service as showing steady progress and improvement over the past months.

The service is still under severe budget constraints and is requesting Randolph consider increasing payments for the balance of the fiscal year.

Other items of note include the planned purchase of a new ambulance next year (existing ambulances are aging and requiring more and more servicing) and the search for an executive director.

There have been meetings with the hospital and long range fiscal planning is a strong focal point, Springer said.

A variety of ways to help the service were discussed by the Selectboard, including helping with maintenance of rolling stock. The possibility for a town vote on drawing additional funds from the surplus in Randolph’s general fund for the ambulance service was noted.

Water & Sewer

ClearSource, Inc. will be contacted by Randolph’s attorney as to their default in a payment plan ClearSource had agreed to earlier in the year.

The payment plan came about when it was discovered that ClearSource had dramatically exceeded their sewer allocation with a usage rate of greater than 20,000 gallons.

The W&S Committee had worked with ClearSource to resolve the issue, the board was reminded by Steve Springer, who chairs the committee and is its selectboard representative. ClearSource installed equipment to reduce usage, and was allocated an additional 10,000 gallons. This brought their allocation to 13,310 gallons.

Payments were agreed to by the selectboard, totaling $50,000, and were to be made to Randolph over a five-month period in the amount of $10,000 monthly plus interest. Additionally, monitoring reports were scheduled to be made to the committee.

However, only two payments of the five have been made, Springer said Tuesday evening, and those were months ago.

In another development, ClearSource has contacted the committee regarding the installation of more equipment that the company says has reduced its peak usage to 6539 gallons. ClearSource is requesting its allocation now be reduced to 8310 gallons.

The W&S Committee is concerned with the situation, as there are only three weeks of data available on this new usage rate for the Commission to work with.

ClearSource had stated a payment of $10,000 would be made by September 4 but that payment failed to materialize.

A recording of metered usage problem came to light during a recent real estate transaction in Randolph Village. Usage was recorded into the computer system at only 10% of the actual rate some time ago. The attorney representing the property owner concerned has requested that no back bill be issued. The Board tabled further discussion until the next meeting.

Fee Schedule Changes

As submitted by Mardee Sanchez, Zoning and Planning permit fees were approved by the board. The proposed changes had already been published and are in many cases reduced from the previous schedule.

Meeting Times

Selectboard meetings will now change to Monday evenings, scheduled for 6 p.m. on the first and third Mondays of the month. Chair Jim Hutchinson noted the 6 p.m. start time will be evaluated at the end of November.