WILLIAMSTOWN — When it comes to Vermont weather, there are worse times to be losing your road foreman than the first week of May. But the current hiring climate, coupled with budgetary constraints, could pose a challenge as the Select Board looks to fill the soon-to-be-vacant position.
During an emergency meeting Monday night the board voted, 4-1, to accept Road Commissioner Michael St. Lawrence’s resignation and unanimously agreed to advertise the job that will be open when he leaves on May 6.
The good news is mud season is all but over and, while it may not have looked that way Tuesday morning, winter is, too.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t work for the road crew to do, but it isn’t the mission critical, all-hands-on-deck variety required to keep local roads passable through winter and spring.
St. Lawrence is leaving to take a higher-paying job driving for Federal Express and towns are fiercely competing for a shrinking pool of qualified road-crew members. Some are paying a premium to poach from others and at least one — Calais — is offering a $2,000 “sign-on bonus” as a recruitment tool.
Board members acknowledged money could be an issue as they look to replace St. Lawrence, whose hourly pay is slated to increase from $23.18 to $24.18 on July 1.
Select Board member Chris Wade said St. Lawrence is leaving to accept a $30-an-hour job with a more predictable schedule, and if the board wants an experienced replacement, it will likely come at a cost.
“If we want experience, we’re going to have to pay for it,” he said.
Town Manager Jackie Higgins said that is probably true in what has become a seller’s market for those with commercial drivers’ licenses and experience driving plow trucks, operating graders and other heavy equipment.
Higgins cited a recent conversation she’d had with an otherwise qualified town resident who said he couldn’t afford to leave his $30-an-hour job with the state to work closer to home in Williamstown.
Board member Christopher Peloquin suggested the board cross that bridge when it comes to it, noting compensation wasn’t part of the planned advertisement, but a reference to it could be tweaked to indicate “pay will be based on experience.”
That said, Peloquin acknowledged the board would have to live within the constraints of its voter-approved budget.
Hoping to expedite a search that will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled, Peloquin suggested the town emphasize most of its roads — more than 52 miles — aren’t paved, and experience with gravel roads is a must.
That wasn’t clear to the only two applicants for the job when Ed Farnham, the town’s long-time road foreman retired in October 2020. Both of those candidates were passed over in favor of offering the job to St. Lawrence, who was a member of the road crew at the time.
Peloquin suggested a little clarity with respect to the town’s road network would save prospective applicants and the town time.
“Let’s cut right to the chase and tell them what we’re looking for,” he said.
“I think that’s an exceptional idea,” board member Clayton Woodworth replied.
Woodworth, who earlier in the meeting seconded Peloquin’s motion to accept St. Lawrence’s resignation, was questioned moments later by board member Rodney Graham.
Graham voted against accepting St. Lawrence’s resignation, and asked Woodworth what he meant when publicly suggesting after town meeting last month that “things would be done right” with respect to roads under the “new board,” after Peloquin and Wade won contested races.
The implication, Graham said, was that “things were being done wrong” and he wanted to better understand expectations of the position before advertising it.
Graham’s question to Woodworth produced a brief, but awkward back-and-forth a month after Peloquin requested an executive session that St. Lawrence asked be held in public. That request was ignored, the board adjourned without taking action following a brief closed-door meeting.
Flash forward four weeks and St. Lawrence resigned, putting the board in the market for a road foreman for the second time in fewer than two years.
Prior to St. Lawrence being hired, Farnham had served as road foreman for the last 20 of the 31 years he served on the road crew.
