DUMMERSTON — At the 2019 Annual Town Meeting, voters in Dummerston and Putney might vote on whether the municipalities should enter into a partnership to co-own the Renaud Gravel Pit.
The pit, on Route 5 in Dummerston, supplies both towns with gravel.
During Selectboard meetings in September in both towns, board members respectively introduced the proposal, after receiving the offer from Mike Renaud, the gravel pit's owner.
Renaud confirmed with The Commons that he is interested in selling the gravel pit to the two towns.
“People have asked me about selling it. If I ever wanted to, I'd give the towns the first option on it,” he said. “It's only fair. They were awful good to me - very helpful and supportive when I was getting my [land use and Act 250] permits,” Renaud added.
Now, Dummerston Town Attorney Robert Fisher and Putney Town Attorney Larry Slason are researching the legal details of the potential partnership and purchase.
During the Sept. 12 Putney Selectboard meeting, Chair Josh Laughlin offered details on the legal process.
Attorneys Slason and Fisher are working together “to explore all the legal details involved,” said Laughlin, such as inter-town agreements, permitting, the purchase-and-sale agreement, bonding requirements, and the timing of public meetings and their warnings.
Town officials, including a few Selectboard members, Dummerston Road Foreman Lee Chamberlin, and Putney Highway Superintendent Brian Harlow, recently conducted site visits to the gravel pit, including at least one with Cory Frehsee, a civil engineer and principal of Stevens & Associates, a Brattleboro architectural and engineering firm.
Frehsee worked with Renaud on the land-use permit application for the pit, which was submitted to the Dummerston Development Review Board in 2012.
Potential savings for towns
In early September, both Selectboards approved a joint $3,000 contract with Stevens & Associates for Frehsee to conduct an engineering and feasibility study of the gravel pit.
Putney Board Chair Josh Laughlin noted, “That's both a fiscal and physical evaluation of the quantities [of material] that are there,” such as sand, gravel, and material to create riprap, and the potential cost of permitting and harvesting those resources.
If the sale goes through, each town, with its many miles of dirt roads needing in-fill and ditch work, could greatly reduce its gravel budget.
Renaud sells each town about 5,000 yards of gravel per year and 50,000 yards per year to other customers, said Dummerston Board Vice-Chair Hugh Worden. Dummerston's gravel budget this year is $25,000.
Exact figures on Putney's annual gravel budget were unavailable.
“We're hopeful that [the purchase] will make good financial sense. It's not something we're likely to tremendously benefit from in the short run, financially,” Laughlin said.
For Dummerston voters, the decision is a little more complicated. Because purchasing the gravel pit, even jointly with Putney, will take the property off the Grand List, the town can't collect taxes on it.
According to Renaud's 2018 Dummerston tax bill, the real estate, with an assessed value of $694,500, will bring the town $12,867.70 in property taxes.
It's not just the financial benefit town officials are considering. Gravel and other rock products coming from that pit, such as riprap, are not an unlimited resource.
“Over the longer haul, we think it will definitely be in the town's best [fiscal] interest and in the security of having access to the gravel,” said Laughlin.
The current commercial draw on the pit, said Worden, “is probably going to limit that pit to less than 20 years from now.” If Putney and Dummerston buy the pit and limit its draw to municipal use, “we're potentially looking at pushing that resource [...] to 40 years, and most likely, more than that,” he added.
“The gravel pit is currently permitted to extract 60,000 yards a year,” Worden told The Commons. “If the two towns approve the purchase, that extraction rate will drop to 15,000 yards [per] year, ensuring many years of locally sourced material.”
Mike Renaud confirmed that “gravel prices are only gonna go up” because of the expense and challenge of establishing new gravel pits.
If the Renaud pit were to close, or some other entity purchased it and decided not to sell gravel to Putney and Dummerston, both towns would incur a great expense to truck the rock product from elsewhere, and they would likely have to secure permits to bring the heavy loads across other towns' bridges and highways.
'A lot of work to do'
The two towns have experience working together on their sand and gravel needs.
Worden told The Commons, “We have a history of working with Putney on the Carpenter sand pit and are using that model to develop our working agreement of utilization and sharing responsibilities for the Renaud pit.”
The sale is not a done deal. This purchase must be approved by voters. Because of the great deal of preparation - site and feasibility studies, legal research, drafting of agreements between all parties, and state approval - town officials estimate the earliest time for voters to make a decision will be at Annual Town Meeting in March.
Until then, the public will have opportunities to weigh in.
“We have a lot of work to do and will be discussing the steps at our Selectboard meetings as information becomes available,” said Worden, who noted he will also share findings with The Commons “so our residents have another means of getting information.”
“All of this is just to get all the ducks in a row, so then it can go to the townspeople for a vote on whether they'd like to proceed with this or not,” said Dummerston Board Chair Zeke Goodband.
Likewise, Laughlin assured residents the Selectboard will discuss the matter once they receive the Stevens & Associates feasibility report.
He invited the public to direct their questions to Town Manager Karen Astley at 802-387-5862, ext. 11, or at [email protected].