General Town Contact Info:

Town Hall (802) 785-2922
Fax (802) 785-2031
Email town clerk at
townclerk@thetfordvermont.us

Thetford is a town made up of five and a half villages on the Connecticut River, where the East and West Branches of the Ompompanoosuc River collect the watershed from hills descending from the ridges running north of the White River to the Green Mountains. About 2,500 people cohere around those villages, mostly in the lower reaches of these hills. About half of the working townspeople work in town, with the others mostly commuting about 20 minutes to the south to the business centers in Hanover and Lebanon, NH.

The small size of the individual villages gives Thetford a very small-town feel, even as it has grown to the size where other more centralized Vermont towns often see a lessening of this sort of close and personal identity with the common sense of place. Thetford has been layering newcomers alongside long-time residents for 250 years, as Dartmouth College, a major local employer, has been around for about the same amount of time, producing something close to a consistent ratio of newcomers to oldtimers for eight generations. If you are new to town, you’ll likely find that Thetford is fairly welcoming, and that’s probably because those eight generations have long been accustomed – and in fact prefer – the fact that these small communities enjoy a diversity of the old and new.

This Guide is designed to give people a quick overview of how the community and its government work, hopefully encouraging involvement and better enjoyment.

Thetford is run by its voters. They elect a selectboard of five members that acts collectively as a mayor or town manager in addition to being the town’s law making body. No one selectboard member has the power to make a major decision without first getting a majority of the board to agree on the matter in a public meeting. The relatively weak form of power ensures that the voters have the greatest control over their local government.

To help it govern the town, the selectboard appoints people to a series of committees that deal with specific topics, such as conservation, budgets and recreation. Those committees will often directly control specific issues (such as scheduling recreation events) while coming back to the selectboard for some key decisions (such as setting enforceable policies or spending town funds). These committees will elect a chair each year after the Town Meeting, who will act as the committee’s chief administrator and make sure that the meetings are run well.

Any member of the public has a legal right to be present at the committee’s meetings and to have an opportunity to provide input to the body for consideration. That’s a legal requirement, but even more importantly, it’s an ingrained part of Thetford’s public culture that people should be encouraged to give input so that decisions can be made with the widest interests of the town in mind.

It is typical – and good – for people with certain interests to want to be on the committee most relevant to their personal passion. Over time, such committee members often find that they have to make an especially deliberate effort to remain open minded to the less experienced views of townspeople. That genuine showing of respect is a key ingredient, though, to making good policy and having that policy stick.

The selectboard will designate specific members as liaisons to committees. These people act as eyes and ears for the selectboard on a particular topic, but they should not be seen as an exclusive point of contact. One of the great things about having five selectboard members is that particular citizens are probably going to feel comfortable with one of them, perhaps a near neighbor or someone with whom they’ve had contact previously. Liaisons will likely not attend many committee meetings, and important interactions between a committee and the selectboard should be coordinated with the two chairs and the liaison.

Aside from the selectboard and its various committees, there are several independently elected offices, a few appointed by the state, and several hired employees.

The townspeople directly elect several important people, and because they are elected directly by the voters, the selectboard does not have direct control over their management. These include the Town Moderator, who runs the annual meeting; the Town Clerk, who records documents and does innumerable other things; the Treasurer, who is responsible for town accounting and collects taxes; and the Listers, who set the assessed value of all real property in town so that it can be taxed fairly.

The selectboard also hires people to fill the roles of Road Foreman, Zoning Administrator and Recreation Coordinator along with several others.

The Thetford School District is administered by its own School Board that has authority independent of the town, although it still falls under town governance as any other corporation or land owner would. The School Board is not one of the committees formed by the selectboard. It has its own elections, its own annual meeting and asks voters to approve taxes for its own separate funds.

Below is a table of some of the more common town functions with which citizens need help, and the most appropriate people to contact.

A majority of households in town subscribe to an online email forum called a listserv that allows for discussions and questions and answers between residents. Information on the Thetford Listserv, which has no relationship with the town government, can be found here.

For people on Town committees and commissions, the following brief guide gives a good overview of the various ways things operate and some rules by which public officials must abide:

Related Files

Thetford Business Directory

Committee Member Handbook 2011