Elmore residents back in tune for annual meeting

Assistant town clerk Sandra Lacasse, in a chat during the waning hours at the polls, chuckled recalling how someone came up and threw a dollar in Gailmor’s guitar case after his ditty was done.

Elmore voters approved all town meeting articles this year, including the decision to make the town clerk and town treasurer appointed posts ultimately decided by the selectboard, rather than the Elmore body politic.

Sharon Draper, who has been Elmore’s town clerk since the late 1980s, hopes to retire soon, and she said this is an opportune time to make the job more of a professional position without term limits rather than an annually elected one.

With the residents’ blessing, Draper said the plan is to, in the next month or two, have Lacasse be appointed to Draper’s seat, and Draper be her assistant. Draper would likely be appointed treasurer, with Lacasse being assistant treasurer.

A slightly more discordant tune came during discussion about what to do with next year’s town meeting. According to Draper, there was some back and forth about whether to continue holding it on the first Tuesday of March or switch the day or the time, and whether to continue to keep the annual meeting an in-person affair with floor votes or move to Australian ballot.

Ultimately, it was decided to keep things the same — the first Tuesday in March at 9 a.m. — and have the selectboard conduct a survey of residents sometime in the coming year and be ready for a discussion next March.

Draper said there was some discussion about the $979,805 operating budget and whether the town was getting its money’s worth when it comes to coverage by the Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department. She said Elmore pays for just 20 hours a week of traffic patrol only, and some residents remarked that “patrol” often means posting a cruiser for long stretches of time at a couple of spots on Route 12.

Then again, she noted, you only get so much for roughly $17,460 a year, the amount Elmore has budgeted for patrol services — the Vermont State Police is the primary agency that responds to 911 calls in Elmore.

Compare that to a small town like Wolcott, where full-time patrol service from the sheriff’s department runs a little over $258,000. Other towns with full patrol coverage include Johnson, which will pay $546,000 next year, and Hyde Park, which will pay $468,000.