Policy to pavement: How towns make state rules work

On a soggy Saturday last May, Pomfret Road disappeared under a landslide near the post office, cutting the community in two and stranding dozens of residents. Suddenly, Pomfret was juggling emergency protocols, state funding formulas, and calls from anxious neighbors. We quickly got to work, coordinating with emergency responders, our road crew, engineers, and contractors while navigating a thicket of regulatory and public safety concerns.

This is local government in action, where abstract policy meets on-the-ground reality.

As a selectboard member who is also an attorney, I expected some day-job skills would be useful here. Parsing legal language seemed transferable. Less so my knack for using fifty words when five will do. But I didn’t anticipate how much the job was like being a translator — taking state and federal rules and adapting them to serve real people in real places.

Consider Pomfret’s landslide response. To receive state emergency aid, competitive bidding and local matching funds are required. Sensible policies on paper, but in practice, they transform urgent repairs into complex puzzles. We were racing to restore school bus routes, avoid peak foliage traffic, and finish work before the ground froze, all while navigating procurement rules and safety concerns.

The puzzle pieces multiplied when we learned our contractor could not begin work until September. Construction rules tighten in October. Meanwhile, for two dozen families, the only way home remained a single lane over potentially unstable ground. In these moments, you appreciate that good governance isn’t about applying abstract rules as one-size-fits-all, but about adapting them to actual circumstances.

This balancing act happens everywhere in local government. Environmental protections are essential, but so is repairing roads quickly so residents can get to work and their kids can get to school. Vermont’s tourism economy is vital, but so is preventing leaf-peepers from paralyzing local traffic or impeding emergency responders. Statewide infrastructure standards are critical, but so is ensuring they work for bicycles, farm tractors, and logging trucks alike.

Even competitive bidding requirements work differently in rural Vermont. Finding multiple contractors quickly is a struggle under the best of circumstances. But after the same weather that washed out our road also upended construction schedules throughout the area? A challenging process became even more difficult, leaving residents with long delays and longer detours, testing everyone’s patience.

Doing this work well requires both technical expertise and deep community knowledge. Sure, you need to understand funding formulas, but also which neighbors are most vulnerable — older residents needing groceries, or expectant mothers preferring not to travel to the hospital by UTV.

In Pomfret’s case, success came through teamwork and trust. First responders secured the scene while the road crew cleared debris. Our road foreman worked closely with contractors to keep repairs on track. Selectboard members drew on prior experience managing similar challenges. Residents remained flexible, accepting delays as part of getting the job done right (and perhaps rediscovering forgotten back roads in the process).

So much of this work also depends on partnerships – with state officials helping navigate bureaucracy, contractors understanding technical requirements and on-the-ground realities, and engineers designing workable solutions that preserve local character. All of this rests upon residents trusting their representatives to make difficult decisions.

See TRANSLATING POLICY - Page 5D

Benjamin Brickner

From Page 2D The landslide repair is now nearly complete. But this wasn’t just a feat of engineering or excavation. It required hundreds of small “translations” that turned regulations into workable timelines, fit state rules to local needs, and ensured urgent action didn’t diminish what makes our community home.

Vermont’s tradition of local democracy thrives because municipal officials take this role seriously. We’re not just implementing mandates from Montpelier. We’re adapting them so that policy serves the people who choose to live in places like Pomfret, with all the challenges and opportunities that choice entails.

This is the essential work of small-town governance. Municipal officials may not make headlines like their state or federal counterparts, but they ensure the gap between policy and practice doesn’t leave local communities stranded.

In Vermont, this translation is still done by neighbors serving neighbors. That’s a legacy worth preserving, and a responsibility worth taking on.

Benjamin Brickner is a Pomfret resident, practicing attorney, and chair of the Pomfret Selectboard. The views expressed are solely those of the author.