Voters 3:1 say ‘yes’ to Randall Meadow bond

March 5, 2026 | By Lisa Scagliotti 

Randall Meadow on the left fills with floodwater during the July 2024 flood. Photo by Gordon Miller

By a margin of precisely three-to-one, Waterbury voters on Town Meeting Day gave their approval to authorizing future bonding of up to $4.3 million if necessary for a major flood mitigation project in the downtown cornfield that’s recently become known as Randall Meadow. 

Town officials have set their sights on the 48-acre site between the Winooski River and the Randall Street neighborhood for an excavation effort aimed at creating more room for future floodwater before it spills into nearby homes and the South Main Street corridor. 

Voters on Tuesday voted 1,081 to 360 to authorize the Waterbury Select Board to bond for up to $4.3 million, the estimated total cost of the project. 

Outgoing Waterbury Select Board Chair Alyssa Johnson said she was grateful that voters agreed to take on this effort. “I'm thrilled by the overwhelming community support, which highlights the shared priority of building a more flood-resilient Waterbury,” she said. “And I’m excited to see the next steps move forward for this critical project.” 

The request was a challenge to convey to the community because it was made as a requirement of the town’s recent award of a $2 million federal disaster recovery Community Development Block Grant. The state in early December announced nearly $50 million in the federal grants tied to the 2023 flood damage that hit Central Vermont, including Waterbury, particularly hard. 

Dana Allen is the town’s Flood Grants Management contractor who worked on the grant application for the federal funds. Allen said he appreciates that moving ahead with a concept such as this can seem risky to many.  

“I'm really happy to see that Waterbury's voters recognized the value of this long-term investment in our community's collective flood resilience. I recognize that it's a big ask at a time when many are feeling economically uncertain,” he said after Tuesday’s vote. “To commit to a visionary legacy-building project like Randall Meadow is forward thinking and will hopefully give our town some respite from future flooding.” 

Waterbury requested the full amount estimated for the project cost, but the award will cover less than half. As a result, a condition of the grant is for the town to demonstrate that it could fund the entire project if necessary, triggering the request to voters to authorize a potential future bond. 

Town officials say they don’t anticipate that the town will need to borrow the full amount as long as the $2 million grant remains part of the package. They also are seeking additional grant funding to reduce the balance that taxpayers would need to pay for. 

Allen said one option may be state grant funding aimed at reducing phosphorus in Lake Champlain and its tributaries. “We're hopeful that, given the scale of this project, that we can obtain significant additional funding to reduce the bonded amount that taxpayers will ultimately need to repay,” he said. “This project will also have an impact on reducing phosphorus, a primary driver of harmful algal blooms, in Lake Champlain.” 

The grant application outlines the concept for the project and it acknowledges that it needs greater analysis, engineering and planning before any work might commence. 

In general, project planners have described how removing some 100,000 cubic yards of earth from about 40 acres of parcel would provide additional floodwater storage to mitigate impacts on nearby homes and businesses. 

The land is owned by the state of Vermont as part of the State Office Complex campus. The state has agreed to transfer ownership to the town for the project to proceed.  

Project planners to date have suggested the effort could lower flood levels by several inches to one foot, which could make a difference in whether flood damage is contained to the basement levels of nearby homes rather than reaching first floors and destroying vital living spaces. 

The concept was met with some skepticism at the Feb. 17 public hearing before the bond vote as multiple residents questioned the analysis done to date. 

“I recognize that this project has elicited a lot of questions,” Allen said. “This next phase of work is where we get to find answers to those questions, dig into the details, and make sure that we're creating the best possible outcome for the greatest number of people.”

Town officials emphasize that a detailed study will be the starting point of the “diligence phase” using the federal grant funding. The next steps for the project will be to hire a consultant to perform the environmental review as required by the grant, Allen said. “We're also planning on issuing a request for proposals for a survey, modeling, and design consultant to refine the preliminary modeling and design work that we already have.”

So far, the project plans envision construction as soon as summer 2027 with completion in 2028. The federal CDBG-DR grant funding comes with a requirement that the money is spent on projects within six years from the awards. 

“This is a big project with an impact that will span decades, and we're just starting the work of making it real,” Allen said. 

More information about the Randall Meadow project can be found onthe town website with the Feb. 17 Waterbury Select Board meeting information (presentation slides and video). More is under News & Initiatives labeled Flood Mitigation. Also on the Roundabout in the Opinion and Town Meeting sections, see a piece from the Waterbury Select Board on the project as well.