PLAINFIELD — Nearly 60 voters packed the Town Hall in Plainfield Tuesday night for a special Town Meeting, overwhelmingly approving the purchase of a $200,000 dump truck for the Highway Department, and a $50,000 increase to the Police Department budget.
“It’s a brighter new day for Plainfield,” Select Board Chairman Howard Bronstein said.
Bronstein said that he has been working with Police Chief Justin Litchfield for months trying to resolve the issue of understaffing and limited scheduled work hours on the department, which is currently a department of three part-time personnel including Litchfield.
He said that understaffing was not only impacting public safety, but was also preventing the department from keeping up with current state requirements and training.
With a Police Department budget of only $20,000, Bronstein said it was obvious that the necessary improvements could not be made on such limited funding.
“This will allow us to build a schedule around the minimum appropriate levels for a police deptartment in a small town like ours this day and age,” he said.
Part of that schedule will include 16 hours of actual patrol time, and 20 to 25 hours of administrative work. This, he says, will help balance the daily activity and responsibilities of officers and the availability for immediate response calls.
“Officers will be able to respond to a call while they are at work rather than from a warm bed, which of course they will continue to do when they are needed,” Bronstein said.
According to Bronstein, the need for increased work hours has definitely been a issue for public safety.
“There have been 128, 911 calls in town just since July 1,” he said.
Assistant Fire Chief Dave Alvord said that he was pleased with the strong support for public safety in town.
“I come from the fire and EMS side of things and we have been very fortunate in Plainfield where police and fire have a very strong and close relationship,” Alvord said. “This was exciting for me, we have to work with each other, we always have, but it is encouraging to see the town moving in this direction.”
Also passing by a large majority was the approval of $200,000 for the purchase of a new dump truck for the Highway Department. This will replace an older vehicle that has become too expensive to repair.
Once the vehicle is purchased, the Highway Department will then have two functioning dump trucks.
As the funding for these expenses will be coming out of the Town’s stabilization fund, both articles required a two thirds vote to pass, which was easily surpassed on Tuesday night.