What’s a Charter anyway?
Every City, Town and Village in Vermont has a Charter. So what is it? For a village, the Charter is a list of all the things the State of Vermont gives the village permission to do. Think of it like a driver’s license. The State gives you the right to drive on the road. But all licenses are not the same. One person’s license may allow them to drive a school bus, another may be allowed to drive a motorcycle or a tractor trailer, and some people may be allowed to drive all those things.
The village charter is like that. One village may be able to operate a water system, another might be able to build and maintain roads, and another might be allowed to do both. This would all be in the document given to the village by the State. If your driver’s license doesn’t say “motorcycle” you are not allowed to drive a motorcycle.
If the village charter doesn’t say water system, it cant own or operate one. Right now, we are looking through many of the 34 village charters to see what things could help Westbury if they were included in a charter. Our goal is to look at things that the Co-op already does that might be more efficiently done by a village. We also want to make sure the Town can still continue to do things for us like fire or ambulance services. So how do you get a charter?
In deciding if we should become a village, we will have to decide what services would be better provided by the village than the co-op. Items that may need significant repair like our leach fields would be good things to review.
We will look at the costs if the co-op kept them and we will look at the costs if they belonged to a village and make a case for both. The list could include things like: roads, water, wastewater, electrical and wiring.If we find that we are better off with some or any of these things being transferred to a Village, we would make a list of them and ask for them to be put in our proposed charter.
The next step would be to make a petition requesting the Town of Colchester create the village. Although all residents need to help if we are to have the best plan, the petition and voting would be done by registered voters that live in Westbury. Once the Town accepted the petition and created the village, we would vote on the proposed charter to say it is just the way we would like the State to approve it.
After that, the Secretary of State would give the proposed charter to the legislature for them to approve. Once approved, we would be a village with a charter that could do the things spelled out in the Charter (and nothing else.) Discussions are the only way to find solutions! The Village Project Team