See what Sheldon residents will be voting on for Town Meeting Day
Sheldon’s town clerk, Kim Dufresne, poses for a photo outside Sheldon’s polling place for voting in August.
SHELDON — Prepare for Town Meeting Day to look different this year: Drive-up voting and Australian ballots will mark what is usually a communal affair.
Next Tuesday, Sheldon voters will vote on the designation of a Sheldon Town Forest as well as the traffic of All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) on town highways. These two ballot items are “trying to get the pulse of the townspeople, whether they think it’s a good idea,” said Stephen Dodd, vice chair of the Sheldon Selectboard during an informational meeting last week.
The town-owned land on Sweet Hollow Road, if approved Tuesday, would be Sheldon Town Forest. The article on ATV traffic would advise the selectboard to open town highways to use by ATVs.
More steps would be necessary to get both plans into place if they are approved.
“We’d still have to do an ordinance on [ATV traffic and Town Forest designation],” said Dodd. “It isn’t set in stone that that’s gonna happen on either of those.”
During the informational meeting, resident Jeffrey Kittel questioned what it would mean to designate the town land as a Town Forest and what it would be used for. He wanted to know if this would limit development on the land.
Dodd responded that there was no specified use other than the forest designation, and it would limit development.
“At the most there was three [or] two possible building lots based on the terrain and everything else there,” according to selectboard member Seth Hungerford, who said they were relaying information from the county forester.
“I thought solar panels, maybe, on that land,” said Kittel as an alternative to a Town Forest. “It’s ideal for that, it’s pretty close to the power grid … I was thinking close to the village setting like that it would be more useful maybe for development of some sort.”
Dodd cited a potential benefit of having a Town Forest being that there are “grants and other possibilities out there when you have it designated as a Town Forest to do projects.”
Budget
Also on the 2021 Town Meeting Day ballot is a just under $1.5M million town budget. A little over $1 million of that budget will be raised by taxes, according to the released warning. This budget is down a little over $5,000 from the budget approved during last year’s Town Meeting.
In response to COVID-19, the 2020 budget was cut $81,000 by the selectboard. The proposed 2021 budget is $34,404 more than last year when taking the budget cut into consideration.
Notable differences in the budget for 2021 include about a 40% decrease in the total library allocation. A little over half of the budget is allotted to the total highway department expenses.
“Trying to plan for the unknown after what everyone’s been experiencing, staying at home, and it hasn’t been business as usual for a lot of people, so you know some of those considerations played into how much to set aside for the unknown of next year,” said selectboard member Nicholas Norris during the meeting. “It’s a little bit different too trying to plan for whatever next year may look like after the year that we all just had.”
Voters will also be asked to approve of a compensation rate of $18 per hour for elected town officers, not full-time employees.
Election
All of the positions up for election are running unopposed, with three of these seven positions listing no names on the ballot. Town Moderator, Lister, and the five-year term Library Trustee currently have no one running.
Where to vote
Sheldon has opted to move to Australian Ballot this year due to COVID-19 safety concerns. Town Meeting Day will still be on Tuesday, March 2. You can vote in person via drive-up polling from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Town Office on 1640 Main St. Absentee ballots should be returned by mail or placed in the drop box by the town office front door.
You can find this story published in The Saint Albans Messenger.
