| Understaffing has gotten so bad at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department that Chelsea, the county seat, is contracting its police services to the sheriff from Windsor County, the county to the south. Also, county official refuse to pay the salaries of some Sheriff’s Department administrative staff working in the county courthouse, meaning their pay comes out of the beleaguered departmental budget, or not at all. After Sheriff George Contois, a longtime deputy, was elected in November, most of the deputies quit. Contois has been laboring ever since to cover shifts with a handful of deputies. Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer, however, is among the few county sheriffs with a full roster of deputies. A meeting on the Sheriff’s Department final budget for fiscal year 2024 will be held at the Orange County courthouse in Chelsea at 4:30 p.m. this afternoon. The meeting is in person with no remote option. “The proposed 2024 Orange County budget does not appear to be a good thing for an already beleaguered Orange County Sheriff’s Department,” wrote Journal Opinion reporter Linda Buermeyer in the Jan. 24 edition. “The new budget removes $172,000 from the OCSD and has Orange County Sheriff George Contois concerned.” Representatives from several area towns and selectboards held a virtual meeting last week to discuss how best to support OCSD, although no formal actions were taken. Chelsea, the Orange County seat, has opted to contract with the Windsor County Sheriff’s Department for patrol services, according to The Herald of Randolph. The town selectmen made the extraordinary move January 23 after a crime spree left residents feeling unprotected. Contois rejected an offer to split the services among the two departments. Palmer was asked in November at a Barnard selectboard meeting how the Windsor County department has been able to afford the expansion. The Vermont Standard and VDC reported his answer. “We’re just taking on more contracted work,” Palmer explained, saying the new efforts extend beyond the contracted services, predominantly for traffic enforcement, that the department provides to eight Windsor County communities: Rochester, Sharon, Barnard, Pomfret, Plymouth, Reading, Cavendish, and Hartland.” Palmer added that his team is also providing additional services to the communities with which it holds contracts, beyond the customary traffic enforcement and issuance of speeding citations. “We’re trying to be more responsive to community issues such as drug houses, that type of thing,” the sheriff noted. “We’ve done a couple of search warrants; we’ve recovered stolen guns. We’re really branching out and doing more full-service law enforcement types of things.” – much of the above news sourced from Journal-Opinion |
| Rescue on icy Connecticut River – A man walking his dog across the bridge between McIndoe Falls and Monroe was in the right place at the right time on Sunday when he heard an ice fisherman call for help, Monroe Fire Chief Russell Brown tells the Caledonian-Record in an amazing story. The fisherman had broken through the ice and floated in the water for 20-30 minutes while calling for help until the pedestrian heard him and called 9-1-1. Weakened by the cold temperatures, the fisherman was pulled to shore by rescuers and community members using a kayak, a rope, and some elbow grease. He was taken to Cottage Hospital for treatment. – Journal-Opinion |