Town candidates step forward

Barring a write-in campaign, voters on March 4 will cast a ballot for either Marina Meerburg or Willie Noyes to determine who will be the only new face on the select board. Incumbent Neil Van Dyke is up for reelection but is unopposed.

Noyes and Meerburg are running for a seat currently held by select board chair Larry Lackey. He is stepping down after Town Meeting, having served eight years on the board.

“I’m a lame duck select board member now,” Lackey chuckled Tuesday. “I’m already wondering what it’s going to be like to pick up the Stowe Reporter and read about board meetings.”

New faces

Both Meerburg and Noyes bring current experience on municipal boards. Meerburg is chair of the Stowe Conservation Commission, and Noyes chairs the Lamoille Regional Solid Waste Management District board.

Meerburg is a freelance translator fluent in Swedish, French and German, and holds a degree in international business from the Stockholm School of Economics. Swedish-born, she moved to Vermont in 1986, first living near the Morristown-Stowe border on Randolph Road and in Stowe proper since 1999.

Skilled with numbers, she said she “tend(s) to be fairly conservative and look at value” when she looks at the budgets over the years as a resident. She said listening is one of her strengths.

“I think the current board and town manager have done a great job dealing with the big issues,” she said. “I’d like to have a conversation about what we’d like Stowe to be like 10 to 20 years from now.”

Noyes has owned Willie’s Village Auto since 1975, itself a microcosm of town hall, with residents of every socio-economic and political bent coming in to talk about the issues of the day while Noyes and his mechanics work on their cars. He has heard from voters over the years on both sides of the major capital projects, such as the public safety building and Stowe Arena.

He said if the rink “was still in limbo” this year he’d be asked as a candidate to say whether he was for it or against it. But, without any single polarizing issue on the horizon, he said “it’ll be more freeing” to be on the board now.

“I don’t know if I bring any expertise other than common sense,” Noyes said.

The incumbents

Van Dyke said he’s got a little more unfinished business to attend to, which is why he’s running for his third two-year term.

The board has looked at reconstruction of the Route 108 bridge near downtown and replacement of village sidewalks, and Van Dyke wants to shepherd those projects through to completion. He said there’s also the task of “finding that balance” between projects and everyday things like water and sewer lines.

“The rink, frankly, took up a lot of bandwidth for the town, and a lot of other projects had to sit on the sidelines for a bit,” he said.

Lackey thinks the town is in good hands with a capable town manager and public works staff. In fact, when asked what he thinks was the most significant change he’s seen in his eight years on the board, he said it was to “hire a first-rate municipal manager … one of the best in the state,” in Charles Safford.

“For a time it seemed the way to plan and execute major projects was to get a rough plan, ask for voter approval, and go back and implement it,” Lackey said. “(Now), town government is more methodical and better prepared.”

Other races

Stowe School Board members Cameron “Cam” Page and Susan Segal are running unopposed on the Town Meeting ballot.

Leo Clark, chair of the Board of Listers, is running unopposed for another three-year term.