A sign directs voters to the polling place in the municipal building in Windsor on August 11, 2026. Photo by Noel Clark/VTDigger Town politics in Weston have been contentious in recent months, with the selectboard and residents pitted against each other in recent meetings over ethics and open me eting law complaints.  Now, Weston is holding a special election on Sept. 26 to fill empty selectboard seats after two members of the five-member board resigned this summer amid rancorous meetings. Some residents have even called for the remaining selectboard members to resign.   The board vice chair says the issues residents have brought up are mostly procedural and that the board is working on addressing complaints. Residents say board members are slow to respond to the ethics and open meeting law complaints. Weston resident and attorney Susan Morris said the board has failed to take accountability when responding to complaints. “The dysfunction, infighting and disregard” are blatant and seemingly driven by some personal motives, said Morris when calling for members’ resignation on Aug 11. “The board is not functioning responsibly.” The brouhaha escalated after resident Kenneth Hall filed several open meeting law and ethics complaints against the selectboard beginning in May, including alleging the board did not properly call for a special election in an open meeting.  There has been a minor outbreak of town dysfunction in Vermont, and several other towns have similarly tumultuous local political landscapes. In Killington this summer, a selectboard member faced ethics complaints, and the former town manager faces potential disciplinary action after a monthslong gridlock over removing a staff position from the town budget. Woodstock, Weathersfield and Waterbury are all facing their own versions of political upheaval in town governance.  Some of the infighting in Vermont towns has come in the wake of legislation passed in January 2025 adopting a Vermont municipal code of ethics. Before the legislation was passed, there was no uniform mechanism for town residents to file ethics complaints against local officials, according to Christina Sivret, the executive director of the Vermont State Ethics Commission.  Municipalities had to adopt a process for investigating ethics complaints after the statute passed, Sivret said, which Weston did during the Tuesday selectboard meeting, giving the town clerk the role of complaint receiver. “It’s not uncommon that municipalities didn’t put this in place immediately, so there’s varying levels of knowledge in terms of what the requirements were and how to go about it,” Sivret said. Vermont municipal strife may be a reflection of broader trends, according to Christina Barsky, professor and director of the Masters in Public Administration program at the University of Vermont. She said some of the discord may reflect the national political landscape and the public’s attention to ethics and accountability. She also sees Weston’s situation as indicative of a possible enforcement gap, because towns can adopt their own ethics complaint procedures, potentially amounting to “self-policing,” she said. Weston is an early test of this new law and system, Barsky said, as residents are using the complaint process the law has given them to address concerns and shine a light on what’s happening in their community.  “Many small towns are running on really thin administrative capacity, and the Weston case maybe gives us a reminder that governance basics — things like trainings, procedures, independent ethics review — are sort of infrastructure to governance in the same way that we could think about, you know, roads or bridges as physical infrastructure,” Barsky said.  Jim Lindville, vice chair of the board, said board members chose to call for the special election in September rather than appointing new members in order to avoid selecting “winners in a situation where people are looking at our actions with critical microscopes,” as well as to give other candidates time to step forward.  Lindville said he wants to see “peace in the village” and for the board to no longer be shorthanded so that it can take on town matters, including infrastructure projects aimed at improving Weston’s flood resiliency. Read the story on VTDigger here: Its selectboard mired in controversy, Weston to hold special election. ...read more read less