Select Board to review ideas for major changes to town governance

September 15, 2026 | By Lisa Scagliotti 

Should Waterbury end its custom of electing its town clerk and town treasurer every three years?

Should Waterbury voters have the power to remove their elected officials from office by petition?

Those are some of the ideas that Waterbury’s Select Board tonight will review in a presentation that explores wide-reaching changes to local town governance, with suggestions about making changes as soon as January and at Town Meeting Day in March. 

After some initial discussion by the board this summer, member Evan Hoffman has prepared slides to share tonight that begin by looking at the process to change Waterbury’s current elected town clerk and treasurer positions to appointed/hired staff positions in town government. 

It also suggests that voters consider allowing those roles to be filled by individuals who do not live in Waterbury. Currently, as elected officers for the town, those positions must be filled by town residents. 

Along the way, it outlines steps that would include a special in-person town meeting in early January for voters to decide if they would like to pursue these changes and if they would prefer to be voted on by paper ballot on Town Meeting Day in March. Such questions would otherwise automatically be decided at the regular in-person Town Meeting, which typically sees far less participation than Australian (paper) ballot voting.

The presentation also raises the possibility of town voters considering adding a provision to the town charter that would allow any elected official to be removed from office by popular petition. Currently, elected officials in Waterbury can only leave office by resigning or when their elected term ends. 

The proposal comes just two years after Waterbury’s town clerk and treasurer positions became three-year elected offices. Voters on Town Meeting Day in 2023 by voice vote agreed to lengthen the elected clerk and treasurer positions from one-year terms to three-year terms, and the longer terms went into effect with the March 2024 election. 

Hoffman’s presentation is on the Select Board’s agenda for tonight’s meeting that begins at 6:30 in the Steele Community Room and is accessible online via Zoom. It is not marked for action tonight, indicating that this is a discussion item. 

The board has recently discussed whether to consider changes to the clerk and treasurer selection process after unusual circumstances played out early this year for the local election and in the subsequent weeks. 

Hoffman’s presentation opens with a section titled “How we got here” that recaps those details. 

For the March local election this year, no candidates filed to run for town clerk and town treasurer despite there being one-year unexpired terms on the ballot. That was because former Town Clerk and Treasurer Karen Petrovic resigned from those positions at the end of December, just short of the end of her second year in her three-year terms for those offices. At the time, Petrovic cited an untenable working relationship with then-Municipal Manager Tom Leitz, who also stepped down from his hired position at the end of January. 

The Waterbury Select Board appointed former Assistant Town Clerk Beth Jones to the Town Clerk role to serve until the March election and former town manager Bill Shepeluk to the Town Treasurer role. 

With no candidates listed on the ballot, Waterbury voters then wrote in Petrovic for both clerk and treasurer spots on the March ballot and she was declared the winner in both cases. She received 254 write-in votes for clerk and 87 write-in votes for treasurer.

Also during the March election, three new members were elected to the select board, and a fourth new member was appointed soon afterwards to fill a vacancy after Kane Sweeney resigned on Town Meeting Day. 

Although she had already taken a new job with the state of Vermont, Petrovic and the mostly new board conferred on what the terms of her employment would be if she agreed to return to the clerk and treasurer roles. They ultimately did not reach an agreement. In April, Petrovic said she would not be accepting the positions. 

The board then had to advertise to fill the clerk and treasurer positions by appointment through the March 2027 election. Shepeluk agreed to remain in the treasurer role. The board interviewed one town clerk applicant and hired Wesley Pollock in early June. 

The board this summer has since discussed how that situation played out and has questioned whether shifting to appointed/hired clerk and treasurer positions may be a better approach rather than relying on elections. In Vermont, state law was changed about a decade ago to allow for municipalities to hire/appoint clerks and treasurers rather than have them strictly be elected officers.

Switching from one format to another, however, requires voter approval. And if voters at a special meeting agree to put the question to a vote, it could be placed on the Town Meeting Day ballot. 

If voters approve the change, appointing candidates to the roles would be done by the five-member select board in a job-interview process rather than voters casting ballots on election day. It would leave the time of service open-ended and at the discretion of the select board, and it could be structured (with voter approval) to allow non-town residents to be appointed. 

Town clerks in particular have a wide range of responsibilities in town government, from overseeing vital records like birth and death certificates, to recording property records, managing dog and marriage licenses, and most importantly, being the town’s top elections official. 

Moving to having an appointed clerk and treasurer would consolidate all municipal staff to report to the elected Select Board. Waterbury’s system also elects members to the Library and Cemetery commissions, the Board of Listers, Justices of the Peace, and the Harwood School Board. Volunteers on other town boards and commissions are appointed by the Select Board, which also hires the municipal manager.

Hoffman’s presentation also throws out for consideration a notion that the board so far this summer has not discussed publicly: the idea of adding to the town charter a provision allowing the voters to recall by petition any elected official in town government. A charter change needs approval by the Select Board to put it up for a vote, then voter approval, then review and approval by the state Legislature and the governor’s signature to go into effect. 

All of this consideration of changes to town governance comes while a special committee formed to review Waterbury’s Town Meeting process is preparing recommendations for the Select Board. Formed in January, the Town Meeting Study Committee was charged to look into ways to improve Town Meeting participation. Its members have been meeting monthly this year, hearing from people from around Vermont about how other communities run their town meetings in search of new ideas. The committee is expected to report to the Select Board this fall, It’s possible that some of its recommendations also may require voter approval in March. 

The focus on these town governance proposals also comes as Waterbury’s new Municipal Manager Graci Zeiger has just joined the town staff in late August. Zeiger, who moved to Vermont from Iowa, is the newest of numerous town staff members who have been hired over the past year following a wave of resignations in 2025. Looking ahead to Town Meeting Day in March, four of the Waterbury Select Board seats will also be on the ballot for election. 

Tonight’s Select Board meeting also has action items related to updating some board rules of procedure regarding timing for putting meeting agendas and related materials together, discussion of the schedule for drafting the 2027 town budget, work updates on ongoing municipal projects including the Randall Meadow flood mitigation project, housing initiatives for the Stanley-Wasson and Woody Avenue properties downtown, FEMA buyouts of flood-impacted properties, and improvements to the audio/video system in the Steele Room.

The full agenda with a Zoom link is posted online here. Meetings are recorded by ORCA Media and posted online as well.