Trustees Meeting 11/10/25

Web version

SWANTON VILLAGE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

SWANTON VILLAGE MUNICIPAL COMPLEX

120 FIRST STREET

SWANTON, VT 05488

REGULAR MEETING

Monday, November 10, 2025

6:00 PM

PRESENT: David Winchester, Village President; Suzie Kelleher, Trustee; Neal Speer, Trustee; Adam Paxman, Trustee; William “Bill” Sheets, Village Manager; Dianne Day, Village Clerk; Josh Serpe, Friends of Northern Lake Champlain; Dan Chevalier, Hydro Plant Supervisor;  Damon Broderick. Via Teams: Lynn Paradis, Assistant Village Manager.

To watch this meeting in its entirety, go to Northwest Access TV on YouTube. The video will also be posted on the Village’s website once available. Unless otherwise noted, all motions carried, unanimously.

1. Call Meeting to Order at 6 p.m.:

David Winchester, Village President, called the Regular Board of Trustees Meeting to order at 6:00 p.m.

2. Pledge of Allegiance:

Everyone in attendance stood for the Pledge of Allegiance.

3. Agenda Review:

Bill Sheets, Village Manager; said he needs an executive session for legal. Dianne Day, Village Clerk, stated she needs to add a 4a. for a Validation Resolution pertaining to the Electric Facility Bond Vote.

4. Public Comment:

None.

        4 a. Validation Resolution:

Dianne Day, Village Clerk, stated she needs a validation resolution signed for their May 6 electric bond vote. She said she published the warning in the St. Albans Messenger on April 11, 18 and the 25^th so they fell at 11 days instead of 10 days. This resolution just recognizes that error, the vote still stands, and the warning stands. Adam Paxman made the motion authorizing Village Clerk Dianne Day to sign the validation resolution pertaining to the May 6th, 2025 Electric Facility Bond vote. Neal Speer seconded the motion. Motion carried.

5. Approve and Accept Minutes from Tuesday, October 27, 2025 as presented:

Suzie Kelleher made the motion to approve and accept the minutes from Monday, October 27th, 2025 Neal Speer seconded that motion. Motion carried.

6. Approve and Accept Village Warrants through Thursday, November 6, 2025:

Adam Paxman made the motion to approve Village warrants through Thursday, November 6th, 2025 as presented. Neal Speer seconded. Any further discussion: None. Motion carried.

7. Update on the Maquam Beach Project with Friends of Northern Lake Champlain:

Josh Serpe, Friends of Northern Lake Champlain, said before I share some pictures on the final product that we've really come to, I do want to thank you for my first year of dealing with friends. And I just, I can't thank them enough for the communication and just how easy it's been to really see this project through the finish line.

You can see the final product of the rain garden that we were developing beyond my time. I think this really originated in 2023 thanks to Ken Henderson and other members of friends that are not with us currently. But yeah, this is the final product. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. We were able to get some shrubs in there, which really adds to the aesthetic value and really having them in there will really give us some of that initial beauty that we really hope to see. I know we're going into winter and they'll just be sticks and maybe people aren't going to enjoy the beach as much as they did during summer, but it really should take shape nicely.

Josh said the rain garden, which is going to capture some of that runoff that's coming off of the driveway, said you can really see the purpose through this picture of what we're trying to convey and really capturing that runoff, channelizing it into a ditch. We replaced some of the soils with a more well draining substrate that will really allow for this and allow some of the water to come in.
I also have to thank Dean for donating that culvert to us for this project. And then, yeah, so any excess water that isn't going to be taken up by that rain garden will then spill out in that grass area.
Rather than having it flow across the parking lot and down into the lake. So really it's like a compounded project. It really provides that aesthetic beauty as you're first coming up to the beach. It's just a beautiful area, having the localized artwork and then having that rain garden that will really come in over time. It will really create that nice visual.

Josh showed before and after photos and said he’s really excited to get back there next spring and see how it all fills in because in addition to the shrubs, we did add a wetland seed mix. So just other perennial flowers that will come in over the next few years to just really enhance that beauty.

So the hope is that any water that sits in that basin for too long is infiltrated out into that grass area. Again, we did change those soils to add for that extra infiltration. Josh said he has been working with Dean and he knows there was a sign that was installed before that was taken out and it has to go back. So I actually linked him and our consultant Jesse up and e-mailed him yesterday just so they can figure that out.

Josh said there was an educational signage component that was part of this project. Now because it was scoped in 2023, the grant prices for implementation didn't really match up with 2025 prices. So while our grant or the Lake Champlain Basin program was absolutely amazing in allowing us to shift some funds around and actually add some funds to see this project to the finish line. It did have to come at the expense of taking the educational sign component out, but we did apply for Lake Champlain Basin Program National Heritage Grant. So maybe if you've driven around and you've seen some of the wayside exhibits, there's like a standardized template where you have the outline of Lake Champlain on the left side and some text about the area. So in the coming year, we do hope that this grant will be accepted and that we'll actually be able to come back here and talk about installing a sign at the beach to describe the best management practice of the rain garden.

Josh said this has been a great partnership. I've really enjoyed working with the village. He said this is his first project that where shovels have hit the ground. So it's also exciting for me. We certainly appreciate it. People love that area.

Adam Paxman, Village Trustee, asked if the town did not go forward with their portion of the project. Josh said there was some confusion on the right of way parcel and just how the project components integrated into that area. He said there was a lot of turnover with friends over the last three years. There was like 3 project coordinators handling this project from start to finish so I think there was just some communication breakdowns that really occurred and like there's no ill will towards the town for not wanting it to go through. We understand exactly what their positioning was.

The Board thanked Josh for his presentation.

8. Swanton Village Hydro Plant Update with Daniel Chevalier:

Dan Chevalier, Hydro Plant Supervisor, said 2025 was definitely a unique year for them at the Hydro Plant and he gave a brief overview of the different things that happened so far and for the general public. The water removal started on time, the removal went well and the biggest component is all the rubber that was removed from the dam is all gone. The general public businesses and all kinds of people, just as soon as the word got out, they gobbled it all up. We do have some rubber that we retained for ourselves that we would like to use for future purposes and whatnot. But other than that, it’s all gone.

Dan said earlier this year we had water that was seeping through the floor in between units one and two. I believe Bill briefed you on that. We believe this was the culprit. What you're looking at is inside the scroll cage that is part of the conch shell that spins around the unit to introduce water to the turbine. That is approximately 3/4 inch deep section of it. The engineers weren't sure what it was. I'm not sure it wasn't like an Adobe or anything like that, but it wasn't concrete. It was something else. With that piece missing, it was allowing water to get introduced to areas that it wasn’t supposed to get into and then make its way to the floor. It was a good find. We weren't expecting something like that, but it was definitely a good find thanks to the investigational processes. The middle picture is another crack that we found that was introducing water into the foundation. And then the third picture top right is a separate one. So we hired Noel's Industry. They are the subject matter experts for fixing leaks in concrete. They came in and they were able to find those three. That is just unit one. They also found some in unit 2. Unit one is up and running even as we speak. It's the workhorse to the plant. The new normal you're going to hear me say a lot is that unit 1 now operates at 300 kilowatts less than what it was used to. That's due to the lack of head pressure with the pond elevation being lowered.

It's on the list to be overhauled and cleaned, but there is no obvious catastrophic issues with Unit 1. Just to kind of recap, Unit one, I believe it was last year and this year the control ring had snapped. We were able to send that out, have it 3D scanned and have another one made. That fix has been phenomenal and it really is one of the best units we have running right now, so we're just not able to produce what we normally were. Unit 2 is down for the foreseeable future. Just to recap on that one, thrust bearing, upper guide bearing, lower guide bearing have all been replaced through the last approximately 2 years now and the vibration is still there.
 

Dan then showed pictures of all the sludge they found in the penstock because of the low water level of the pond. The problem was that having that amount of sludge in the penstock, our plant shutdown is usually only a week. That caused us to have to go into two weeks and we're going to try to find a way to get it back down to a week. He said they will more than likely have to deal with this much sludge every year now.
 

He then showed a generation chart showing the amount of energy generated in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Dan said 2025 isn’t too bad right now but next year may be worse. He also showed the 7-year average of the generation for the board to see. He said he likes keeping track of these numbers.
 

Dan then talked about the amount of debris they need to rake off the dam each day. He said the maintenance crew is having to do this every other hour and it takes about 45 minutes. The Board was concerned this was going to be too much for them and talked about potentially hiring a part time person to do this rake job. Dan said he would keep that in mind. It's the same amount of debris if you think about it, because the same amount of leaves fall in, the same amount of brush, the same amount of everything falls in. It's just before it had that whole area to distribute everywhere, logs could float around wherever they wanted. The channel's so narrow now that, like I said, it either goes to the dam or goes to the racks. There's no other place for it to funnel to. You're going to see maintenance take a big hit in making sure that we keep the racks clean. Dan pointed out another issue he heard about from Velergy is the amount of mud and twigs getting into the turbines. He said they need to make sure we're not eroding these turbines to the point to where we're just pushing them past their lifespan.

A lot of discussion took place regarding VPPSA and purchasing power over the next couple of years as well as all the work that needs to be done at the Hydro Plant. Bill said RFP’s will go out and hopefully grant funds are awarded to the Village. They also talked about the new security cameras being installed and how they are now getting up to speed in that area. The Board thanked Dan and his crew for everything they’re doing at the plant now with the rubber bag gone and all the other issues.
 

9. Review and Approve Letter of Support for Maquam Bay of Missisquoi for Additional Funding Request for Building Grant:

Bill Sheets, Village Manager, said the Village is the requester for the grant for the Abenaki food pantry. So in the process, just like any other project, they identified that the costs were more than they thought. So they've come back to us and asked if we can, on their behalf, request an additional $120,000.
Again, we are just doing a good deed for them because they didn't have the capability of doing it themselves and it's just candidly the right thing to do like we discussed before. Neal Speer made the motion to authorize the village manager to provide a letter of support to the State of Vermont, requesting an enhancement of $120,000 in grant funding to support the completion of the Maquam Bay of Missisquoi Abenaki Food Pantry Project. Adam Paxman seconded. Motion carried.

Suzie Kelleher, Trustee, stated she is abstaining from this as she is on the Maquam Bay Board.

Bill Sheets requested the Board hear #11 first, then #10.

10. Approve Hiring PLM Electric Power Engineering for an electric system study:

Adam Paxman made the motion to authorize the Village Manager to enter a contract with PLM Electric Power Engineering to complete an Electric System Study for Swanton Village Electric. Suzie Kelleher seconded the motion. Discussion: Lynn Paradis, Assistant Village Manager, stated this would cost approximately $45,000. Motion carried.

11. Approve Hiring PLM Electric Power Engineering for a solar study to be paid by the developer:

Suzie Kelleher made the motion to authorize the Village Manager to enter a contract with PLM Electric Power Engineering to complete a Solar Study for Swanton Village Electric, to be paid for by the Developer, MHG Solar. Adam Paxman seconded the motion. Discussion: Adam Paxman asked what this would cost out of pocket, Bill said zero. Motion carried.

12. Review and Approve Northwest Access TV’s Financial Funding Request of $4000:

Neal Speer made the motion to authorize annual funding, in the amount of $4,000 to Northwest Access Television, in support of their coverage of Swanton Village Trustee Meetings. Suzie Kelleher seconded the motion. Discussion: Bill Sheets said this is an ideal way to meet the Open Meeting Laws criteria. Lynn Paradis said she has this accounted for in her 2026 budget. Motion carried.

13. Proclamation of the Village Board of Trustees for Clayton T. Bouchard Day:

Suzie Kelleher read the following Proclamation:

Proclamation of the Village Board of Trustees

Clayton T. Bouchard Day November 30, 2025

WHEREAS, Clayton Thomas Bouchard was born on November 30, 1924, in St. Albans, Vermont, and grew up in the Franklin County communities of Highgate and Swanton; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Bouchard answered his nation’s call to service during the Second World War as a member of the United States Army Air Forces, serving honorably at Kirkland Air Field, New Mexico; and

WHEREAS, following his wartime service, Mr. Bouchard returned home to Franklin County, married in 1957, and has been a proud resident of the Village of Swanton since; and

WHEREAS, over the decades, Mr. Bouchard has been a steadfast member of our community, embodying the quiet strength, humility, and civic spirit that define the Greatest Generation; and

WHEREAS, on November 30, 2025, Mr. Bouchard celebrates his one hundred and first birthday, marking more than a century of life, service, and dedication to family, community, and country;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT PROCLAIMED that the Board of Trustees of the Village of Swanton, Vermont, hereby designates November 30 of each year as “Clayton T. Bouchard Day” in recognition of his exemplary service and enduring contributions to the people of this village and to the United States of America;

BE IT FURTHER PROCLAIMED that the Village Board encourages all residents to join in honoring PFC Clayton T. Bouchard on this and each future November 30, reflecting on the values of duty, community, and perseverance that he represents.

Adopted by vote of the Village Board of Trustees

Village of Swanton, Vermont this 10th day of November 2025.

Adam Paxman made the motion to adopt the Clayton T Bouchard Day Proclamation as presented. Neal Speer seconded the motion. Discussion: Suzie said she has reached out to the Governors office and the Town of Swanton as well. She encourages families with loved ones reaching 100 to contact her so they can have recognition as well. Motion carried.

14. AMI Project Update:

Our AMI work continues with more than 900 water meters and 3,300 electric meters installed. The front office crew continue to go above and beyond to get the water meter exchanges scheduled and Dianne created a mailer to educate our customers. We are hoping to add some after hours and weekend availability to the schedule soon to assist customers who are unavailable on weekdays. We are seeing some progress on the software side and are in the process of fine-tuning processes and communication between all involved. We have two primary residential routes left and most of the others are three phase and solar, which require different types of meters.

15. Orman E. Croft Hydroelectric Generating Facility Dam Repair Update:

None, covered under #8 tonight.

16. Village Manager Update:

Electric: The Electric Department continues to exchange electric meters while balancing their day-to-day activities and we are well on our way to being done with the AMI project.

Note: The 2026 Energy Efficiency Charge (EEC) set by the Public Utility Commission (PUC) has been established and those rates are going down, with a 2.9 percent decrease for residential customers.

Public Works: Public Works continue to prepare for winter, and it looks like they will not have to wait long as there is a strong likelihood of them dealing with some snow and ice tomorrow on Veterans Day.

Water: Water missed a testing deadline for Disinfection Byproducts. This should have occurred in July, and the test was not completed until September, with acceptable results. The test also should have been completed in October but was not completed until early November. This will result in a Notice of Alleged Violation from the State of Vermont, and we will be required to send out notification to all customers within the next couple of months. We have adjusted internally to avoid this mistake from happening in the future. The water testing was completed with no negative results, but our sequencing was off.

Wastewater: We are still on schedule to substantially complete in January. The roofing and siding for the new filter building remain the priority as does the work on the second clarifier.

Brush Pile: As part of the resolution with the State of Vermont they want to know what future plans are for the operation of the brush pile. They will be looking for who will be using this site and when they will be using it.

Reminder: We will be hosting a Joint Special Meeting of the Swanton Selectboard, here at the Village Complex on November 12^th at 7 PM. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss Local Option Tax.

17. Any Other Necessary Business:

Adam Paxman said he just wanted to thank all the Veterans past, present and future and said if you see a Veteran tomorrow to make sure you thank them. He said they put up 173 flags in the park and said he would support this project every year.

Suzie Kelleher said she wanted to thank Brian and Christina at the Town also for their help in putting on Mr. Cheney’s flag in the park today and she also wanted to thank the Town highway crew.

Neal Speer said he also wanted to thank our Veterans for their service.

18. Proposed Executive Session to Discuss Legal:

Suzie Kelleher made the motion, seconded by Adam Paxman, to go into Executive Session at 7:20 p.m. to discuss legal matters where premature general public knowledge of the subject matter would place the Village or person involved at a substantial disadvantage. Motion carried.

Suzie Kelleher made the motion to exit Executive Session at 8:08 pm. Adam Paxman seconded. Motion carried.

19. Adjournment:

Neal Speer made the motion to adjourn the regular board of trustees meeting at 8:09 p.m. Suzie Kelleher seconded. There being no further business at hand, David Winchester, Village President, adjourned the meeting at 8:09 p.m. Motion carried.

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David Winchester, Village President                  Date

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Dianne Day, Village Clerk                                Date