Royalton Decisions

Royalton voters have two complicated and contentious issues to decide at Tuesday's Town Meeting. Perhaps unfortunately, the issues will be decided by Australian ballot and thus won't benefit from full face-to-face discussion on the Town Meeting floor.

Both propositions, as stated on the ballot, sound a little ominous—but both represent good sense and the consensus of an thoughtful and reasonable selectboard. Both deserve to be passed.

First, Royalton voters will be asked to eliminate the position of elected auditor. That sounds on its face like a bad idea, but on closer inspection, it's not. The Town is already required to hire professional auditors, who really know their business, to go over all the books and make sure they're in good shape. This has been true for a number of years, leaving little useful work for elected auditors to do. As a result, it's been difficult to impossible to find people willing to run for auditor; and during the last year only one of the three slots has been filled.

The position of auditor is a crucial one, all right, but it's a complicated one that calls for professional expertise, not ordinary citizens who may have their own agendas or simply not be correctly informed about accounting procedures.

For more information, we refer Royalton voters to Town Clerk/Treasurer's letter in this issue of The Herald.

Second, Royalton voters will be asked to prohibit town constables from performing any law-enforcement duties. This, too, sounds counter-intuitive, but there are good reasons for it.

Royalton last year formed a police department, and thus has found itself with two law-enforcement agencies—police and elected constables. Complicating the matter is that the chief of police, Bob Hull, and the first constable, Marc Nemeth, do not see eye-to-eye on much of anything, as Nemeth's letter this week makes clear.

Nemeth is clearly the more aggressive of the two, in terms of his larger vision for the role of law enforcement in Royalton. Hull is more relaxed and laid-back in his attitude. However, when push came to shove in 2006, the Royalton Selectboard lined up unanimously in favor of the vision and personality of Bob Hull. They made him chief over Nemeth and moved to cut off resources from the constable's budget.

No town needs two police agencies. No town should want anything to do with two police agencies that are feuding with each other. The proposition for the voters next Tuesday would affirm that there's only one law enforcement outfit in town and that is the police force. It would also confirm that the selectboard —a civilian board, not a police board—should have final say in such matters, and that's the way it should be.