RANDOLPH — Rebuffed at Town Meeting, the Selectboard is going back to voters this week for approval to establish a police force in town, only this time with a slimmed-down budget that is meant to allay prior concerns over cost.
Whether the smaller proposed budget will be enough to sway voters to change their minds remains to be seen, but the makeshift police department the town quickly cobbled together in the wake of the county sheriff canceling its policing contract earlier this year could leave Randolph in a lurch when the money runs out at the end of June, according to the Selectboard chairman.
Voting on the latest proposal is Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Town Offices.
“There will be no money come July 1 to pay for police if this budget does not pass,” Randolph Selectboard chairwoman Trini Brassard said, adding that the town is looking at whether it could legally declare an “emergency situation” and “assess a fee per property covered” to pay for policing should the proposal again fail at Tuesday’s voting.
“That is something we need to do more research on,” said Brassard, who added some have jokingly taken to calling it “the nuclear option.”
The issue over policing in Randolph was triggered when a $349,000 annual contract to provide patrolling service with the Orange County Sheriff came to an abrupt halt in February after an exodus of deputies forced the newly elected sheriff to pull out of the contract due to lack of manpower.
Randolph’s town manager and Selectboard quickly drafted a proposal to put on the warrant for voting at Town Meeting a few weeks later that proposed a $771,000 budget to staff and run the police department, of which $499,000 would have been raised through taxes and the rest by transfers from the general fund and tapping federal pandemic relief funds.
That budget would have paid for a chief plus four full-time officers and an administrative assistant and operations for the first year.
Voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal, 227-136, criticizing a cost that would lead to higher property taxes and questioning how big a police force is required to cover a town of nearly 5,000 people spread over a 50-square-mile area. Randolph had disbanded its town police department in 2018 in favor contracting with the sheriff’s department.
Randolph has been using the money that previously paid for the sheriff’s contract to hire a police chief, former Orange County Sheriff’s deputy and Randolph resident Scott Clouatre, in addition a second officer and administrative assistant.
That money will run out on June 30. The town has also hired former Orange County Sheriff Bill Bohnyak, a Randolph resident, as a consultant on police matters.
After the article was defeated at Town Meeting, the Selectboard directed the town manager to redraft a smaller proposal, this time calling for a budget of $524,102, which includes $324,000 in money to be raised by taxes, which would pay for three full-time officers, including a chief and an administrative assistant and a part-time officer.
Town officials say the impact on taxes would be nil — even a hair less of a decrease.
But the issue is complicated due to the bifurcated structure of the Randolph tax map.
Decades ago, Randolph designated a so-called “police district” that encompasses roughly the center of town where the bulk of policing is directed and whose property owners bear the brunt of the taxes for the service. Although the proposed budget includes a $100,000 appropriation from the general budget for policing outside the police district, residents of the respective districts have different views about how much tax they should be paying and how much policing they require.
The police district encompasses about 1,568 voters — the only residents eligible to vote on the proposal — and only 23.2% of then cast ballots on the article at Town Meeting. The total number of registered voters in Randolph is 3,720.
It includes the former Village of Randolph, and its boundary line is roughly defined by roads that transition down to a speed limit of 25 mph.
That gives it the aspect of a gerrymandered congressional district, with Gifford Medical Center on South Main Street, Randolph Union Middle/High School on Forest Street and the Youth Baseball Field on Park Street all within the police district.
But the boundary line bisects Beanville Road, so that such employers as Applied Research Associates, Freedom Foods and New England Precision all fall within the police district, but the Vermont Castings foundry a little ways farther down Beanville and the nearby town transfer station on Landfill Road fall outside of it.
And business along Vt. Route 66 such as The Barn gas station and convenience store and McDonalds off Exit 4 on Interstate 89 also fall outside the district, as do many of the businesses on Route 12 heading south beyond Gifford Medical Center.
Much of the debate in Randolph over whether the town should re-establish its own police department has been unfolding on the online social media platform Front Porch Forum, where pro and con posts have been running almost evenly since the proposal was defeated at Town Meeting in early March.
Brassard, the town manager, said she doesn’t have a sense how the re-vote will turn out. “I think it can go either way,” she said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
