Newly elected select board picks leaders, changes meeting night to Tuesday
March 10, 2026 | By Lisa ScagliottiThe newly elected Waterbury Select Board held its first meeting on Thursday, two days after the Town Meeting Day election and ahead of its regular schedule.
Rather than wait for the third week of the month, the board, down one member due to Kane Sweeney’s resignation after town meeting, looked to get started by reorganizing and covering the usual housekeeping business following the election.
The group unanimously chose Martha Staskus as its chair and Don Schneider as vice chair for the next year. Both were elected on Tuesday. New member Sandy Sabin was named secretary, should that role be needed. A longtime member of the Waterbury Planning Commission, Staskus said she intended to step down from her position on that body, where she has been serving as chair.
The Waterbury Select Board holds its first meeting following the March 3 election. Counterclockwise from the top right: Board member Sandy Sabin, Chair Martha Staskus, Interim Treasurer Bill Shepeluk, Interim Assistant Town Clerk Carol Dawes, board member Roger Clapp, Vice Chair Don Schneider, Interim Town Manager Bill Woodruff, and Cheryl Casey, taking minutes. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Moving meetings to Tuesdays
The board made one significant change to its meeting schedule going forward, took steps toward announcing its vacant set, and addressed the town clerk and treasurer roles following the election.
Chair Staskus said there had “been some discussion” of possibly meeting on a night other than Mondays, and the group considered moving their regularly scheduled meetings to Tuesdays instead.
For decades, the board’s custom has been to meet on Monday nights, typically the first and third of the month. In 2025, the board added meetings on fifth Mondays when they occur on the calendar to their regular schedule.
Board member Roger Clapp, whose job is executive director of Revitalizing Waterbury, said he has upcoming work meetings on Tuesday evenings, which were scheduled so as not to conflict with the select board’s Monday schedule.
The board agreed to begin meeting on Tuesdays starting on Tuesday, March 17. They set their start time as 7 p.m. for March 17 and April 7 to accommodate Clapp’s conflict. Starting with the second April meeting on April 21, the board meetings will begin at 6:30 p.m. during the first and third weeks of the month. Aside from skipping the fifth Tuesday this month, the group did not address whether it would add meetings on fifth Tuesdays when they occur on the calendar.
Filling the select board vacancy
The board unanimously agreed to put out a call for applicants to fill its vacant seat after member Kane Sweeney stepped down earlier in the week. The group agreed on a deadline of April 3 for interested applicants to submit a letter of interest, with the goal of holding interviews and making an appointment at its April 7 meeting. Interested applicants are to submit a letter of interest to Town Clerk Beth Jones either in person or by email to bjones@waterburyvt.com.
Although Sweeney’s term still had two years remaining, the board’s appointee would only serve until the Town Meeting Day election in March 2027. At that time, the remaining one year on that term would be on the election ballot, and the individual in that position would have the option to run for election to continue. Other candidates would also be able to run for that office at that time.
The announcement of the vacancy and application procedure is posted in full on the Waterbury Roundabout Public Notices page. It also notes that citizens may petition to hold a formal town vote to fill the board opening, in which case the winner of a special election would serve the full remainder of the term. That would require a citizen petition with signatures of 5% of the town’s registered voters. The voter checklist for last week’s election had 4,578 voters; 5% would be 229 names.
Town Clerk & Treasurer positions
The board asked Assistant Town Clerk Carol Dawes, who was in attendance, for an update on the Town Clerk and Town Treasurer positions, which were both on the March 3 election ballot with no announced candidates. Former Town Clerk and Treasurer Karen Petrovic resigned from the posts on Jan. 2, and both offices had one more year remaining on their terms.
Dawes told the board that “someone” was elected by write-in votes to the two offices on Town Meeting Day and has 30 days to decide whether to accept the positions.
The official town election results show that Petrovic won both of the offices through write-in votes last week. Petrovic was the top write-in choice of voters for both offices, with 254 votes for clerk and 87 for treasurer. Reached soon after the election results were announced last week, Petrovic told the Waterbury Roundabout that she was not ready to comment on the results or her plans yet.
The board discussion ensued, however, without mentioning Petrovic’s name.
Dawes explained the process whereby if an elected individual declines to take an office or waits until the 30 days run out, the select board must warn and hold a meeting giving the elected individual an opportunity to take their oath. Should that not happen in this case, the select board would treat the clerk and treasurer positions as vacant and advertise for applicants to choose an appointee to serve until the next Town Meeting Day election, Dawes explained.
In the meantime, the individuals serving in the two roles in an interim capacity would remain in the positions, Woodruff noted. Former Assistant Clerk Beth Jones was appointed as Town Clerk to serve until a permanent replacement was either elected or appointed. Likewise, former Municipal Manager Bill Shepeluk was tapped to serve as interim Town Treasurer until a permanent replacement is elected or appointed. Waterbury Roundabout confirmed with the Vermont Secretary of State’s office that the appointed officials remain in office after the election until a permanent replacement is determined.
Once Petrovic left office, Dawes was brought on staff as assistant clerk to work with Jones during the run-up to Town Meeting Day. Her contract with the municipality ends at the end of this week. Woodruff said there would likely be some reduced hours for the town clerk’s office until both a permanent clerk and assistant are determined. The position of assistant clerk has been a part-time town employee, not an elected role. For the 2026 budget year, that position was redesigned as a full-time staffer with both clerk and other administrative duties. The town has posted that position for applicants, although Dawes noted that by statute, town clerks choose the assistant clerks. The process will also need to take into account the municipality’s new collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees labor union. The assistant clerk position is included under the new union contract that went into effect in January.
Board member Clapp proposed that Staskus contact Petrovic to discuss the matter to determine the next steps; the group unanimously supported that suggestion.
Budget update
Interim Town Treasurer Bill Shepeluk joined the select board for an update on the town budget, sharing two printed handouts that are now linked to the March 5 meeting information on the board’s webpage.
Shepeluk called the board’s attention to discrepancies between budget data in the town’s accounting program and the printed presentation of the budget in the town annual report that was used at town meeting.
“Tom [Leitz], for reasons that made sense to him, decided to present the budget in the book very differently than in the budget software,” Shepeluk said, referring to Waterbury’s Municipal Manager Tom Leitz, who resigned in January.
Shepeluk said he would like to do a detailed review to match the printed version of the budget with data in the town’s accounting program, noting that various categories financial details were arranged and formatted differently in the official printed account from what is being used in daily operations, making it hard to follow. Some data printed in the town report were also in draft form taken from 2025 information, he noted.
One concerning example Shepeluk offered was a preliminary 2025 fund balance being reported as -$477,000; but a closer look determined it to be about that much to the positive.
Shepeluk proposed that he assemble a revised budget pulled from the town’s accounting records to present to the board. The board agreed, and Staskus suggested that the board receive quarterly reports going forward.
Committee liaisons
The board discussed the practice of assigning roles for each member to be a liaison with various town boards, committees and commissions to keep up with the work of the various appointed bodies and share updates with the full board.
Conservation Commission Chair Amy Marshall-Carney was attending the board meeting and commented that the Conservation Commission has been providing quarterly reports on its work to the select board. She suggested that community members and the select board would have a better familiarity with board and commission work if they provided updates similarly.
Schneider commented that he thought having board liaisons, along with periodic committee chair visits with the select board, would be effective.
Staskus suggested that the board wait to fill its vacant seat to assign liaison roles. Committee and board positions also are typically filled in April when terms expire. At its next meeting, the board said it would address putting out a list of openings to be filled and a call for people interested in serving in those positions to apply.
Being the only member of the board who has been serving since prior to Tuesday’s election, Clapp shared his update from the Recreation Committee, for which he has been the board liaison for the past year. At the committee’s recent meeting, Clapp said it discussed its work in 2025 to explore plans to build a recreation field house facility. A study done last year resulted in preliminary site plans and design, with more work needed before it would be presented to the select board, but for now, Clapp said, the project is on hold. Waterbury’s new Recreation Director Erika Linskey told the committee her focus is on operating the current recreation facilities, and more work would be needed to determine what revenue a new field house might generate, he said.
Staskus asked about the 2025 field house study. Voters on Town Meeting Day in 2025 approved allocating $17,500 for the project, but no report has been shared with the select board yet. Waterbury Roundabout recently inquired about the report to Recreation Committee Chair Frank Spaulding. He said he did not believe a report has been posted online yet. Woodruff confirmed that he believes there is a report, but agreed that he did not know if it was available on the town website.
The Recreation Committee is also working with Revitalizing Waterbury and the National Park Service Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance on a project focusing on recreation trails and flood mitigation, Clapp noted.
Other business covered:
The board postponed acting on most of the agenda’s consent items because they did not have time to review them before the meeting. The list was mostly liquor licenses and minutes from the Feb. 17 meeting. One liquor license for Paprika Catering was approved, given that it was time-sensitive.
The board named the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus newspaper and the Waterbury Roundabout online news site as the town’s newspapers of record for publishing public notices.
The board voted for all members to be authorized to sign town warrants for paying bills. Schneider offered to take on that weekly task with other members filling in as needed.
Woodruff pointed out where some key policies are posted in the meeting room and online, such as the Vermont Open Meeting Law. He told the board about training opportunities, including a mandatory ethics training required by elected officials every three years.
Clapp shared with the board that he has addressed his potential conflict of interest given his employment with Revitalizing Waterbury. The nonprofit economic and community development organization receives taxpayer funding in the annual town budget. This year’s allocation is $96,650. Clapp said he filed a statement saying he would address potential conflicts given his dual roles by not participating in board discussions or decisions involving Revitalizing Waterbury. He said he shared that statement with former Town Manager Tom Leitz and believed the town attorney and the town’s Ethics Officer Ingrid Jonas had received it as well.
A recording of the Waterbury Select Board’s March 5 meeting will be posted online by ORCA Media soon. The board meets next at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 17.