The Woodstock Town Selectboard has authorized sending a letter to the Woodstock Village Board of Trustees, proposing a joint meeting of the two governing bodies to review a requested report from the trustees and municipal manager Eric Duffy “specifically related to payments by the Town of Woodstock for expenses which have been characterized as ‘Village legal expenses’ associated with a personnel issue at the Woodstock Village Police Department.”
The “personnel issue” in question is the demotion by Duffy of former Woodstock Police Chief Joseph Swanson to patrol officer, which resulted in elected officials of the village, Duffy, and acting police chief Christopher O’Keeffe being embroiled in multiple hearings, legal disputes and a civil lawsuit for the past 18 months. “It is understood that disbursements of Town of Woodstock funds have been made to pay legal and other expenses attributable to administrative hearings and processes involving the demotion by the Village of Woodstock of Joseph Swanson,” the missive being sent to the village trustees this week states.
The Town of Woodstock contracts annually with the Village of Woodstock for police services. The requested report and subsequent joint public meeting about the town’s expenditures related to the Swanson case could result in the town being reimbursed for those expenses by the village trustees or in the selectboard formally ratifying, in a public vote, Duffy’s decisions made during the 2024/2025 fiscal years to transfer those payments to the village coffers. The issue that has embroiled the public and the two Woodstock governing bodies in heated controversy over the past twelve months is whether the transfer of those funds to the village by Duffy without specific authorization via a public vote of the Woodstock Selectboard was legal. The town governing body is asking the village trustees and Duffy to compile a full report detailing the disbursement of all town funds to the village relative to the Swanson case.
The town selectboard is giving Duffy and the village trustees until Sunday, July 26, the day before the board’s next regularly scheduled meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday, July 27, to provide a full accounting of town expenditures related to the legal proceedings involved in the Swanson case.
For more on this, please see our July 9 edition of the Vermont Standard.
