By Mike Donoghue, Vermont Standard Senior Correspondent
The Woodstock Village Trustees, after listening to nearly 14 hours of testimony and legal arguments this week, are expected to rule within two weeks on whether their municipal manager is properly demoting Police Chief Joe Swanson to patrol officer.
As the hearing ended late Tuesday afternoon, attorney Kendall Hoechst, on behalf of the village, and attorney Linda Fraas, representing Swanson, were given one week to submit legal memorandums supporting their cases, or proposed findings of fact.
Attorney Brian Monaghan, who served as the hearing officer for the village trustees, said the board is expected to rule by March 17 on whether to uphold or reject Municipal Manager Eric Duffy’s proposed disciplinary action. Two village trustees, chair Seton McIlroy and member Frank Horneck, are not seeking re-election and will leave the board that day so the decision must be completed.
Fraas made it clear that she believes the village trustees will just rubber-stamp Duffy’s actions last year. Both in her opening and closing statements, Fraas said she expects the trustees to support their manager, who last week they agreed to provide a $25,000 annual pay raise and additional benefits that other Woodstock employees do not receive.
She also noted that while Duffy was able to recruit his various employees to testify on his behalf — and against Swanson — at the first demotion hearing, the manager had refused to make Woodstock municipal employees available for the chief’s defense this week.
It was just one example of the uneven field she said Swanson faced at the hearing. There was no subpoena power to force testimony for the hearings.
Fraas said she was at the hearing under protest. She was going through steps in the demotion hearing process again with the trustees in order to be able to appeal the case to Vermont Superior Court.
After the first appeal to superior court, a state judge ruled on Dec. 2, 2025, reversing the earlier demotion. Judge H. Dickson Corbett noted the village trustees had failed to follow Vermont law during their similar day-long hearing on March 19, 2025, and subsequent order. The village opted for a new hearing.
Fraas said that instead of doing the right thing by restoring Swanson as chief, the board members believe they will need to try to protect the Village from the $5 million civil lawsuit filed by the chief against it, Duffy, McIlroy and others.
The court determined four of the five trustees to have absolute immunity from the lawsuit, but McIlroy is still a named defendant. Fraas has said McIlroy had considerable involvement with Duffy in the matter before the first hearing, including her publication of a list of “falsifications” that she shared with the media, maintaining the claims were falsely made by Swanson’s husband.
Fraas sat at the defense table by herself during the hearing this week because Swanson is out on medical leave. She had attempted to get a delay of a couple of weeks in the hearing because Swanson underwent lumbar fusion surgery on Dec. 22 for injuries received during a shootout in the line of duty with a homicide suspect. The board refused the delay.
Hoechst, who was representing the village, had Duffy at her table for the hearing.
The village trustees have said they do not plan to publicly announce their findings, but will provide their written decision to Swanson and Duffy.
“Any decision will be a personnel record that the village will not disclose,” according to the hearing rules the board issued.
The trustees took the same position last time, and the Vermont Standard filed a Public Records request. The village eventually released its 47-page ruling.
During the hearing this week, the trustees prohibited anybody from entering or leaving except when there was a break. The village hired two deputy sheriffs from the Rutland County Sheriff’s Department to stand guard at the hearing.
The issue of police getting haircuts on village time was one of several ironic incidents during the hearing.
Fraas noted that Duffy had cited Swanson for getting his hair cut on village time at a shop in Hartford as a reason to fire the chief. Yet Duffy said when O’Keeffe was caught on video getting his haircut while on duty at the salon operated by trustee Blakeman, he provided “counseling” to O’Keeffe not to do it again.
Duffy acknowledged under oath that he did provide 5 stars for the only online review he has ever submitted in his life and it went to Blakeman’s salon. Later during the hearing, Duffy had to ask the name of her hair business.
Fraas noted one other town hall employee, Kitty Mears Koar, also offered a 5-star review at the same time, but Duffy claimed she did not work directly for him.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Fraas attempted to call two village trustees to the witness stand, but Monaghan said the board would not allow them to testify.
Fraas had said she wanted trustee Brenda Blakeman called to the stand because she had relevant information concerning a haircut that Sgt. Chris O’Keeffe, the interim police chief, received at her salon while in uniform and on duty last summer. When Swanson’s husband shot video of O’Keeffe’s haircut, Blakeman used an obscene gesture toward him, which was caught on camera and publicized, Fraas said. She said it calls into question Blakeman’s ability to be fair and neutral. Color pictures of the haircut and obscene gesture were introduced as evidence in the hearing.
Fraas also tried to call vice chair Jeffrey Kahn to the stand because she said he was involved in a road rage crash and faced possible court action. She said Swanson asked his husband, Nicholas Seldon, a lawyer, to review the video of the incident to see which driver should be charged. The village maintains that was improper sharing of confidential police information, but Fraas provided an affidavit from retired Woodstock Police Chief Robbie Blish indicating he had used Seldon in the past for legal reviews.
The road rage video shows one driver committing an unlawful pass, with trustee Kahn “rapidly speeding up to prevent the pass (also illegal), thereby resulting in impact,” Fraas said in her pre-hearing memo to the trustees.
The case was later dropped, she said.
While the hearing a year ago had about a dozen witnesses jammed into a one-day 14 ½ hour marathon session, this week’s hearing had just two witnesses, Duffy and a police expert from Georgia hired last week by the village to try to bolster Duffy’s case.
Like the first demotion hearing, Duffy became the center of attention this week, spending much of Monday and most of Tuesday morning on the witness stand. And like last time, Duffy at times appeared evasive, took time to answer, had questions read back, and provided answers that were unresponsive to the questions asked. It helped drag out the hearing.
The hearing at the Masonic Temple on Central Street had plenty of other bumps and was contentious at times. The hearing was available to the public on Zoom, but it shut down repeatedly due to a disruptive construction project next door.
The construction work, including pounding, banging and digging with large machines left the hearing room shaking, and at times participants could not be heard.
The construction also knocked out the Zoom link for the public at various times. More than 90 computers were online during part of Duffy’s testimony on Monday, but the system was knocked offline multiple times. When Duffy resumed testimony on Tuesday morning, the link went down three times in the first half hour, a spokeswoman for the local cable access channel reported.
At one point on Monday, Monaghan admonished a woman in the audience for making faces during the testimony. He warned that such conduct would not be tolerated and could lead to ejection.
Fraas later objected to frowning, eye rolling and other distracting conduct by members of the village trustees.
The trustees received from Fraas about 200 pages of exhibits and affidavits in support of Swanson. A majority were accepted, but a large chunk of public complaints — about 60 pages — concerning Duffy were rejected by Monaghan. He noted that some had come from a local listserv.
Fraas made copies of her exhibits for the hearing available to the press.
The village and Duffy, who have cited their belief in transparency in the past, balked on Monday when asked by the Vermont Standard for copies of the exhibits they submitted for the hearing. Hoechst said she feared complaints from Swanson if she released the exhibits.
A second request for the public records was made by the Standard to the trustees on Tuesday during the hearing, but Monaghan said the board would not release them. He said the trustees considered them personnel records. The Standard maintained they were used as public exhibits at a public hearing.
Fraas said on behalf of Swanson there was no objection to the release of the public exhibits submitted by the village and offered to share the copies she was provided. She said Swanson has insisted from the first day that he wanted everything in the open.
Among the Swanson exhibits was an affidavit from retired Lebanon, N.H. Police Chief Richard Mello, a 30-year veteran who is now a consultant on police operations based in Hartland.
Mello said he believed there was a lack of reasonable grounds to remove Swanson.
Mello also criticized the internal police report by private Investigator William Burgess of Lebanon, N.H. ordered by Duffy in October 2024 and used as the basis for the demotion.
Mello said he also reviewed the 1,200-page transcript of the first hearing and all the other relevant documents and found the case was lacking. He said the “scope of work and report were unconventional, lacking thoroughness, context and best-practice methodology for internal investigations.”
He added, “The report should not be relied upon as a finding of fact, as it did not thoroughly and completely investigate the allegations presented. In numerous instances, Mr. Burgess failed to seek potential exculpatory information that would mitigate the concerns and allegations, and in some instances would have cleared Joseph Swanson of policy violations.”
Mello, in his 5-page report, noted, “In fact, much of the Burgess report is nothing more than recounting rumors from unnamed employees.”
He wrote Burgess failed to interview O’Keeffe, “a key primary witness,” and did not do follow-up interviews based on information obtained from his investigation.
The village never called Burgess as a witness in either hearing.
Instead, they relied on retired LaGrange, Ga. Police Chief Louis Dekmar, who said he spent much of last weekend going over the records in the case. He said he was being paid $400 an hour and had done about 7 or 8 hours of work before he was called to testify.
He was on the witness stand for about 2 ½ hours, fielding questions from Hoechst and later from Fraas. The question-and-answer sessions were disjointed at times because of the freeze frame that frequently happened. Many of the questions had to be started with, “Can you hear me now?”
Dekmar said he has been involved in over 700 disciplinary actions and has helped train more than 2,500 police chiefs.
Dekmar, who kept calling Woodstock a “city”, was critical of Swanson’s performance based on the claims in the Burgess report and at the first hearing.
Under questioning by Fraas, Dekmar admitted he was never provided Swanson’s rebuttal affidavit that was filed last Friday, or Chief Blish’s affidavit.
During the first hearing, Duffy said he was concerned that he would lose a lot of employees if he reinstated Swanson. However, Duffy acknowledged this week that seven full and part-time police and dispatch employees have left since O’Keeffe was placed in charge.
Hoechst did get a late start on the case, which actually began on Oct. 13, 2024 due to a traffic incident on High Street. Swanson was a passenger in a car operated by Seldon, who had a confrontation with a second driver, police said. Duffy opted to place Swanson on paid administrative leave two days later.
Both the Vermont State Police and Vermont Criminal Justice Council cleared Swanson of any wrongdoing, but Duffy opted for a third investigation by Burgess. Duffy encouraged employees to offer comments about Swanson’s management style.
After the first hearing, Duffy sought alternative counsel in late January when Fraas insisted his initial attorney, John Klesch, had a conflict of interest. Fraas said Klesch was representing Duffy and/or the village at the demotion hearing, while also defending the village and the five trustees and others in the $5 million lawsuit filed by Swanson for unlawful discharge.