GOSHEN — After the annual potluck Monday evening, Goshen residents passed every item on the ballot in a relatively tame town meeting.
Voters will go forward with a general fund spending plan of $242,753, which represents a $9,936, or 4.2 percent, increase from last year’s approved budget of $232,817. Voters had thought they were voting on a $229,253 spending plan; the extra $13,500 will cover a new stainless steel sander and a new moldboard (the curved metal on a snowplow’s front end used to move snow) to improve care of town roads.
Voters also passed the $207,700 highway spending budget — a $1,500 or 0.7 percent decrease from last year’s road budget.
All town officials ran unopposed. Kevin O’Classen, selectboard chair and town moderator, left a gaping hole when he died this past Dec. 25. Jeff Whiting, who served as moderator at last year’s town meeting when O’Classen was unable to lead the meeting, will take his place. Diane O’Classen, Kevin’s widow, will fill in as the trustee of public funds, and she also won a spot on the selectboard via a write-in vote.
Current Second Constable Shawn Martin’s secured enough write-in votes to stay in his current post, though his name was not on the ballot.
No one stepped forward to represent Goshen as a representative to the board that oversees Otter Valley Unified Union School District, which includes the towns of Goshen, Brandon, Pittsford, Sudbury, Leicester and Whiting. Write-in candidates needed at least 30 votes to legally qualify. Town Clerk Rosemary McKinnon last week said that if no one is written in for the spot, she may consider offering herself to the school board to be a school director for a year.
By Australian ballot on Tuesday, OVUUSD residents approved $19,243,835 OVUUSD spending plan, which represents a roughly $550,000 cut in spending, or 1.22 percent, from the current budget. The vote was 772-356.
In other OVUUS voting, Leicester resident Greg Bernhardt won re-election, uncontested, to a three-year term on the school board as an at-large member.