FERRISBURGH — There will be a new face on the Ferrisburgh selectboard after Town Meeting Day elections.
Selectman Steve Gutowski, 65, has decided to step down after almost six years on the board and roughly three decades in all serving the town in various positions.
Before being appointed to the selectboard in December 2015 and winning election to the board since then, Gutowski served on the Ferrisburgh Zoning Board of Adjustment from 2001 to 2012. And before that Gutowski estimated he was Ferrisburgh’s representative to the Addison County Solid Waste Management District for about 15 years.
Gutowski, who spent a year as chairman of the selectboard, said he will also be slowly phasing out his work as the operations and yard manager of Charlotte’s Point Bay Marina over the next few years as he devotes more time to his family and his own pursuits.
“There are a lot of things that I want to do and need to do for myself,” he said.
Certainly, Gutowski said, he has been happy to serve with the board, and he praised its chairman, Rick Ebel, and the rest of the board members.
“I think the board is in good hands, and all the other people on the board are excellent people,” he said.
But Gutowski said he has been planning to simplify his life a bit, and the time has come.
“It just a lot of that stuff. I turned 65 in November,” he said. “I just want to not think about meetings and site visits and all that.”
Gutowski will remain on a town advisory committee studying zoning bylaws, but said someone else can emerge and take his place on the selectboard.
“I’ve done my share,” he said. “It’s time for other people to step up and do their part in town,”
Zoning board member Clark Hinsdale III — a former Charlotte selectman and Vermont Farm Bureau president — filed before Monday’s deadline for petitions, and he will face no challenge on the ballot.