At a time when most people can earn less than one percent from their savings accounts, the Town of Randolph has done very well with its investments, Town Clerk and Treasurer Joyce Mazzucco told the selectboad last week.

Mazzucco introduced Hank Elitzer of the Burlington office of Moran Stanley Smith Barney, which has been handling some town investiments since 1999.

The bulk of the long-term investments are in two funds left over after Randolph closed its lined landfill, which was located at the other side of the railroad track near the current solid waste transfer station..

Led then by Town Manager Gwen Hallsmith, with expertise brought to the project by Frank Reed, the lined landfill left the town with a fund of about $2.7 million when it was filled up and closed after just a few years of operation.

The landfill was controversial for a while, because it involved tons of trash trucked here from Chittenden County, but Hallsmith and Reed persuaded the town selectmen at the time that it was more cost-effective to run a landfill for the short term, and fill it fast from a paying customer, than to reserve the landfill for locallygenerated trash and keep it open for 20 years or so.

The reason, they said, was that the operational expenses of a lined landfill become prohibitive over time.

That decision, and the landfill fund that resulted from it have “served us well,” Mazzucco told The Herald last week.

Some $721,314 of the total is currently in the Landfill Closure Fund, reserved for the ongoing expenses after the closure of the landfill, such as monitoring and testing of soils and water.

$50,000 from the closure fund was spent last year for that purpose.

The remainder is in the Landfill Depreciation Fund, which currently stands at $1,078,359. This has been invested in several kinds of funds, and a limited amount is taken out ever year to help pay for capital projects. Last year, for instance, it was $100,000.

The investments recommended by Elitzer and his firm have “performed well,” Mazzucco remarked. “We got in at the right time.”

That was confirmed by Elitzer’s report to the board. The annualized rate of return for one of the town funds has been around $6%. A second has been invested in three funds that have given annual returns of $11.9%, 15.5% and 19%, with the three funds as a group returning 17%, he said.

Elitzer characterized all the money management as being on the “conservative” side.

Upon recommendation of Elitzer and Mazzucco, the selectboard Tuesday night agreed to transfer $153,000 in landfill funds from a cash account into investments. It also followed his recommendation in two other investments.