The Woodstock Town Selectboard and Village Trustees on Monday evening approved an updated, open-ended, employment-at-will contract with municipal manager Eric Duffy that calls for the town official to be paid a salary of $176,000 for the 2026-27 fiscal year that gets under way on July 1 — a hike of just under 24.3% over the $141,620 Duffy is being compensated for the current year.
The Woodstock governing bodies okayed the new contract with the manager in a public vote following a brief executive session at a joint meeting of the two boards Monday night — the last of a series of closed-door sessions at which the employment agreement was hammered out over the past several weeks. The decision came as the village trustees and Duffy continue to contend with legal maneuvering and a $5 million civil suit concerning Duffy’s demotion of Woodstock Police Chief Joe Swanson last year.
In addition to setting Duffy’s pay at $176,000 for the 2026-27 fiscal year, the updated contract also offers the manager six weeks of paid vacation — equivalent to the amount of time off afforded in the town’s personnel policy to employees with 20 years of service to the town. Duffy is wrapping up just three years of work at the helm. Duffy began working for the town and village on Feb. 1, 2023, under an initial, open-ended contract at a salary of $130,000 for his first year. For the past three years, Duffy has received the same annual cost-of-living allowance (COLA) as other non-union employees of the town.
The vote regarding Duffy’s updated contract was not unanimous, although all members of the two five-member boards were uniform in their praise of his work over the past 36 months. Woodstock Selectboard vice chair Susan Ford and village trustees vice chair Jeffrey Kahn both abstained from the vote on the contract, while the eight other members of the joint boards voted to approve the agreement. Both Ford and Kahn spoke favorably of Duffy’s work, but opted to abstain from the contract vote because of objections to some stipulations in the new accord.
Contacted for his own reaction to the updated contract, Duffy responded to the Standard’s inquiry in an email Tuesday morning.
“In my three years as Woodstock’s Municipal Manager, we have professionalized town staff, received over $2.2 million in community grants, bought a water system, took steps to address decades of delayed maintenance, and overcame past financial challenges with a more forward-thinking approach that has helped to create long-term financial stability for Woodstock,” Duffy wrote. “Working with our staff, and both boards, we have slowly turned Woodstock away from being reactive and focused on the shiny object of the day to being proactive and prioritizing the long-term needs of the municipalities,” he added.
For more on this, please see our Feb. 26 edition of the Vermont Standard.
