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  Town Administrator

The selectboard is at the center of Vermont's local government. It is the body that has general supervision and control over the affairs of the town. 24 V.S.A. 872. The selectboard performs three functions: legislative (enacts local ordinances, regulations and policies); administrative (prepares and presents the budget, oversees all town expenditures, supervises personnel and controls town buildings and property); and quasi-judicial (determines private rights in such areas as laying out, discontinuing and reclassifying highways and hearing appeals as the local board of health and as the local liquor control commission).

Running a town is not growing easier. Municipal officials must keep track of personnel laws, water quality, water supplies and wastewater disposal, public safety departments; solid waste; tax payments and schedules; highway maintenance; thick books of environmental and labor relations; housing; land use planning and zoning; and budgeting under new GASB standards, to name only a few responsibilities. Each of these responsibilities must be undertaken under public scrutiny and with input from citizens and neighboring communities. It is more and more true that the decisions you make in your community will affect your neighbors, and so those impacts must be addressed as part of the decisions made in your town. How is a volunteer selectboard possibly going to find the time to address all those issues in a timely and complete manner?

For these reasons as well as a host of others, many local governments are deciding that a professional administrator or manager is the only way to assure that the municipality carries out its responsibilities completely and in accordance with the thousands of laws and regulations that accompany those responsibilities. In Vermont cities, towns and villages today there are 46 municipal managers and approximately 22 administrative assistants or town administrators who serve in a position similar to a town manager. There are only 25 towns or cities of more than 2,000 in population without a municipal manager or administrator. In terms of population, the largest town with a municipal manager is Essex, with a population of 18,626. The smallest manager town is Winhall, with 702. (vlct.org)

Bradford is a very active and growing community. According to the Vermont Department of Health Bradford's 2005 estimated population is 2,716. This is a growth rate of 3.8% from the year 2000 to 2005. Bradford is the 68th largest Town out of a total of 253 communities. Bradford has 19,152 Acres which equals 29.93 Square Miles and has approximately 54 miles of roads.

There are a number of projects and changes in the community including the updating of the Town Plan, economic development activities, downtown revitalization projects and planning, as well as municipal infrastructure improvements. All of this can seem a bit overwhelming and consume large amounts of the Selectboard's time. Through the coordination of activities Bradford is able to maintain high quality services to its residents.