Five candidates for two open seats on the Woodstock Town Selectboard will vie for election on Tuesday, Aug. 11, coincident with Vermont’s primary balloting for state and county offices. Voting is being conducted via Australian ballot. Absentee and early voting began last Friday, July 10.
The two selectboard slots under contention in Woodstock are both for unexpired terms. Susan Chiefsky and Byron Kelly are running for the board seat that former selectboard chair Ray Bourgeois vacated in April. The candidate elected will serve the remaining year of Bourgeois’ unexpired term until Town Meeting on March 2, 2027. Three candidates are seeking to fill the unexpired seat of former Woodstock Selectboard vice chair Laura Powell, who stepped away from the local governing body in May. Marybeth DeFalco, Clayton Reed, and Mary Ann Sweeney are running to fill Powell’s term, which concludes at Town Meeting on March 7, 2028.
To help voters learn more about each of the five Woodstock Selectboard candidates, including their qualifications and positions on critical issues facing the town, the Vermont Standard distributed a 10-question survey to each contender last week and compiled profiles of each candidate derived from their responses to the survey, which asked about their backgrounds and their viewpoints about issues such as government transparency, financial management of the Woodstock Village and Town budgets, the demotion of Woodstock Police Chief Joe Swanson to patrol officer and the subsequent civil suit, and a proposed town/village merger.
For more on this story, and to read the profiles, please see our July 16 edition of the Vermont Standard.
