Agenda item poses whether to shift town clerk, treasurer roles from elected to appointed
Aug. 4, 2026 | By Lisa ScagliottiUpdate Aug. 5: The Waterbury Select Board will discuss the topic of making the clerk and treasurer positions appointed rather than elected at its next meeting on Aug. 18. The board did not take a position on the issue. They agreed to look into the process that would be involved to present this issue to the voters at a future Town Meeting.
At its meeting tonight, the Waterbury Select Board will continue its check-ins with various boards and commissions, including the Town Meeting Study Committee, a group formed in 2025 to evaluate the annual town meeting process with an eye toward making recommendations to increase participation.
The committee, chaired by Town Meeting Moderator Rebecca Ellis, has been meeting monthly and is expected to report back to the Select Board in the fall with suggestions. Another topic on tonight’s agenda could have a bearing on next year’s or future Town Meeting Day elections as well.
Up for discussion and marked as a potential action item for tonight is an item regarding the positions of Town Clerk and Town Treasurer, noting “transition process from elected to appointed.” If that were to occur, the select board would be the body to name the clerk and treasurer, rather than those offices being elected by voters.
Waterbury’s clerk and treasurer positions are both elected roles in town government with three-year terms. This year’s local election on Town Meeting Day in March had an unusual set of events unfold, resulting in the appointment of Wesley Pollock as the new Town Clerk on June 2 and Bill Shepeluk, the former municipal manager through 2022, as interim treasurer earlier in the year.
Those moves came after previously elected Town Clerk and Treasurer Karen Petrovic resigned from both offices at the end of December, citing workplace issues with former Municipal Manager Tom Leitz, who also stepped down, leaving his position at the end of January. Former Assistant Town Clerk Beth Jones was appointed Interim Town Clerk and served in that role until Pollock’s appointment.
No one filed in January to run for the one year remaining on Petrovic’s unexpired terms as clerk and treasurer, leaving the March ballot empty for those offices. Voters, however, had the option to write in choices for clerk and treasurer. When ballots were counted, Petrovic won election to her former roles with 254 write-in votes for clerk and 87 write-in votes for treasurer. Petrovic did not actively campaign as a write-in candidate ahead of the election, however, and had already taken a new full-time position with the state of Vermont in Waterbury.
The unusual turn of events played out as the Waterbury Select Board also saw significant turnover with all three of the incumbents whose terms ended in March – former Chair Alyssa Johnson and members Mike Bard and Tori Taravella – not running for re-election. New members Sandy Sabin and Martha Staskus were elected to the open one-year seats; Don Schneider won a three-year term as a write-in candidate.
A fourth board member, former Vice Chair Kane Sweeney, announced he would resign on Town Meeting Day, which was too late for his position to be on the March ballot. On April 7, the new board filled his seat until next March by appointing Evan Karl Hoffman, who was an unsuccessful third candidate in the race for the board’s two two-year terms in the March election.
Board member Roger Clapp was the only member from the 2025 group to remain on the board through the March election. His three-year term comes to an end in 2027.
As the Select Board members settled into their new roles, they chose Staskus as chair and Schneider as vice chair. Petrovic, by law, had 30 days to decide whether to accept the offices she had won as a write-in candidate. That process included communicating with the board regarding details such as salary, benefits and leave that would be involved if she was to return. The board’s response to her inquiries on those issues was decided in executive session and not shared publicly. Also on April 7, Petrovic officially declined to accept the positions, leaving the select board to advertise for appointment applicants. Pollock was the lone applicant that the board interviewed and chose for the clerk position.
Scarce applicants
Select board member Hoffman said the notion of moving to an appointed clerk in particular briefly came up during the springtime process that failed to recruit many applicants to fill Waterbury’s vacant clerk position until next March.
“The uncertainty of having to run for election might turn some people off, and allowing non-residents to hold the position would widen the candidate pool,” Hoffman said in an email to the Roundabout. Avoiding elections may also allow the town to retain clerks for longer periods than an election cycle, which would be a benefit as they build experience, he suggested. “There are an awful lot of laws and regulations and best practices that go into running elections, and the idea of potentially losing all that experience every three years is concerning.”
Discussing this topic now would allows the select board time to potentially tee up a vote at Town Meeting next March, Hoffman explained. “I feel strongly that questions like this should be voted by Australian ballot for the greatest possible number of people to get their say,” he said.
That would require a special meeting to put such a question on the March paper ballot. “To have that all settled before the Town Meeting Day planning process starts, and to avoid budget season and the general election, we would need a special meeting around mid-October, which would have to be warned around the beginning of September, which means starting the conversation now,” Hoffman said.
Liz Schlegel chairs the Waterbury Board of Civil Authority, which works with the town clerk to run local elections. In an email to the Select Board ahead of tonight’s meeting, she said she believes that Waterbury’s lack of an elected town clerk this year resulted from “managerial missteps, not a repudiation of the role of the Town Clerk.”
Schlegel said of all the duties of a town clerk, the role of overseeing elections and protecting voter rights is most important. “That is why the position is an elected one and why accountability is made directly to the voters,” she wrote, calling it “extremely concerning” that the select boad would consider such a change as concern around upcoming national elections grows. “As a member of the Board of Civil Authority, I will always advocate for more democracy. Reducing the ability of voters to choose the person in the position most responsible for protecting democracy in this town is profoundly undemocratic and I cannot support it,” Schlegel said.
Elected vs. appointed: Vermont clerks and treasurers
In 2017, state law changed to allow municipalities to appoint rather than elect town clerks and treasurers. Making such a change would involve either a vote of the community -- not just a select board or city council -- at an annual meeting or special meeting called for that purpose. The new law also mentions whether such a change would conflict with a town charter. Waterbury’s charter does not address the offices of clerk and treasurer.
A legislative summary of Act 27 of 2017 states:
“This act… allows a municipality to vote at its annual meeting to authorize its legislative body to appoint the municipal clerk or treasurer, or both. A municipality has this new appointment authority so long as it does not have a charter that specifically provides for the election or appointment of the applicable officer. The act also addresses the procedure for a legislative body to remove such an appointed clerk or treasurer; the ability of a municipality to vote to rescind the appointment authority; and the term of office of an elected clerk or treasurer in office on the date the municipality votes to appoint the officer.”
The Vermont League of Cities and Towns regularly surveys municipalities about compensation and benefits and asks whether clerks and treasurers are elected or appointed. So far, it appears that elected clerks and treasurers are still far more common than appointed ones, based on responses to that inquiry.
In 2025, 191 municipalities responded to the league’s survey. Of those, 154 or 80.6% reported having elected clerks; 19.4% of the clerks were appointed. Likewise with treasurers: 66.5% of the responding municipalities had elected treasurers; 33.5% had appointed ones, according to data provided by the league’s Director of Communications Elena Esteban.
Moving to appointing individuals to these roles rather than electing people to fill them would allow for people living in other cities and towns to apply. Elected officials must reside in the community where they serve; the same goes for those appointed to fill a vacant elected office in between elections.
Since the state law changed nine years ago, some communities have shifted to appointing their clerks and treasurers. Just last year Barre City voters were asked to consider shifting to an appointed city clerk. Carol Dawes was Barre City’s elected clerk and treasurer for 16 years and also served as president of the Vermont Municipal Clerks and Treasurers Association. The town of Waterbury hired the veteran clerk temporarily in January to assist after Petrovic’s resignation and ahead of and for Town Meeting Day.
Writing in the Times Argus in April 2025 ahead of the Barre City vote on the matter, Dawes urged voters to reject the proposed change and keep the Barre City Clerk position elected. (The city had already moved to an appointed treasurer.) Dawes framed her position based on the clerk’s role as the city’s top election official.
“As the elections officer, their responsibility is to the voters and state law, but as an appointed official, the clerk would be under the supervision of the city council — the very people being chosen on the ballots. Entrusting oversight to an independent clerk ensures our elections remain impartial, transparent and accountable to the voters — not to elected officials,” she wrote. “An independent, elected clerk works with the city councilors, not for them.”
The Waterbury Select Board has no formal proposal to consider on this topic yet. Tonight’s discussion may determine whether it wants to pursue the idea or not.
Tonight’s Waterbury Select Board meeting is at 6:30 p.m. in the Steele Community Room at the municipal offices and streamed online via Zoom. Link is in the meeting agenda.