SHELBURNE — The Police Department will soon have new town-issued cellphones, allowing full-time officers to keep work material off their personal phones.
Police Chief Greg Bardwell said at Monday’s Selectboard meeting that each of the six full-time officers would receive a work cellphone, while there would be a seventh cellphone that would stay at the station and be available for part-time officers to use on the weekend. After a 15-minute discussion, the Selectboard unanimously approved the request.
Currently, all officers use their personal phones as their work phones, meaning all material on the devices would be subject to public records requests.
“In this day and age, with cellphones and how they’re used in our profession, I think that it might not be a bad idea to address this,” Bardwell told the board. “I’m proposing this because … we’re going to have department-issued phones that are used for department purposes that will be privy to public records requests, and officer and family private stuff stays aside. … It’ll also protect the sensitive information we receive from [the Shelburne Control Dispatch Center].”
According to Bardwell, the department currently has one phone line at the station, which was inherited after purchasing the building from Buckland. This is an AT&T line that costs the town around $1,500 per year. After getting a quote from Verizon, Bardwell said the cost for a plan for seven phones would be around $2,400 each year.
Selectboard Chair Andrew Baker asked Bardwell if the department had budgeted for this increase in the yearly phone bill, with Bardwell saying he always budgets for some miscellaneous expenses, which include these new phones.
“The $900 increase, give or take, we could absorb to address this situation,” Bardwell said. “It’s not uncommon for police departments to do it; in fact, the State Police [are] migrating over to this right now. We receive so much information via Shelburne Control over our cellphones. … I’ve been working on a policy that we would implement.”
Selectboard member Rick LaPierre said having work cellphones makes “perfect sense,” and he was surprised that the town hadn’t done something like this before.
“To put all of the sensitive information into town-owned property that’s linked to secure storage, etc. [makes sense],” LaPierre said. “The fact that we are out shooting accident scenes, domestic abuse scenes, with our personal phones just seems not right. Public records requests have almost become a sport. … Unbeknownst to me, the personal phones of every officer we have using their personal phones can be subpoenaed. … Everything on their phone now is exposed for no good reason.”
Town Administrator Terry Narkewicz likewise said she has no concerns about town-issued cellphones, saying it makes “perfect sense, especially given all the calls they handle and the sensitive matters they handle.”
Auction planned for October
In other business, LaPierre provided an update on auctioning off a series of properties that were taken by the town for back taxes.
LaPierre said that he, Narkewicz and Town Treasurer/Collector Angel Bragdon met with representatives from Sullivan & Sullivan Auctioneers and toured the six properties. Only five properties will be bid on, however, as Sullivan & Sullivan recommended merging two of the lots into one parcel due to their size.
LaPierre shared that each property would require a $5,000 deposit, so if one person wants to bid on all five, they would need to bring five separate $5,000 checks.
There are two types of auctions that the town could hold: an “absolute auction” and a “minimum bid auction.” An absolute auction means that the property could sell for any amount of money, with LaPierre sharing that if someone bid $500 for a property and no one matched it, the town would be obligated to hand over that property for $500. On the other hand, the minimum bid auction, which is what Shelburne has opted to have, sets a minimum bid for each property, which in this case is $5,000.
Narkewicz clarified that the properties would go back onto the town’s tax roll based on their assessed values, not the prices that they sold for at auction.
The Selectboard voted 2-1, with Baker dissenting, to move forward with the plan presented.
