Following a unanimous vote last friday the Roxbury road crew will be represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 300 of South Burlington in all future labor dealings with the Town's selectboard.

Timothy Noonan, Executive Director of Vermont's State Labor Relations Board supervised friday's election with Selectboard Chairman Frank Morgano and Matt Lash, Attorney for the Union witnessing.

Roxbury's road crew and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 300 first sought permission of the Vermont Labor Relations Board to unionize the employees in the summer of 2008.That Board held a hearing in December, 2008 to determine whether the Town had the threshold number of employees (5) state law requires before union representation is allowed.

The Board ruled in February, 2009 that there were 5 Town employees, rejecting the Selectboard's contention that there were only 3 qualifying employees (2 full time road crew, members and a parttime Assistant Town Clerk). The Board concluded that a call in seasonal snow plow operator and the part-time Town Librarian would be counted for this purpose. The Vermont Labor Relation Board's Decision and Findings of Fact can be found on the Board's website for those seeking more detail.

Town Clerk Tammy Legacy said today that there will be a re-count of Town Meeting ballots on the Roxbury School budget request of $1,679,249 at the Town Office on Monday, March 9 at 3 pm.

Town Meeting voters turned down the budget by 2 votes and Mrs. Legacy said she was responding to a citizen request for the re-count.

The board agreed to a format for development of 5 year plans for bridge, culvert, buildings, roads and equipment repairs/replacement.

Mr. Morgano said the process would allow the board to be pro-active in managing the Town's infrastructure in the future.

Road Commissioner David McShane told the board that Roxbury attempts to use a 20 year replacement cycle for highway maintenance equipment. he said he has checked with other Towns and found that most operate on much shorter replacement cycles. he added that Roxbury has a 1987 John Deere loader , a grader, a 1989 Mack truck and a 1993 International truck that are approaching the 20 year threshold.

He said that pushing the life span of equipment leads to breakdowns and repair needs but acknowledged the high replacement costs involved.He said the recent purchase of a backhoe has taken some pressure off the usage of the loader and grader and thought that both machines had another 10 years in them.

He advocated establishing equipment replacement funds that could be added to annually to lessen future borrowing needs when big purchases are made.