The Windham County Law Enforcement Governance Council: An update for Guilford Residents. 09.28.26

To the Citizens of Guilford,

I would like to take a moment to explain what the Windham County Law Enforcement
Governance Council is, why it was created, and what Guilford’s involvement means for our
community.
Approximately two years ago, Guilford voters agreed to budget $68,000 toward regional law
enforcement services through the Windham County Sheriff’s Office. At that time, however, a
regional program had not yet been developed to the point where Guilford could use those funds
for the level of service that had been envisioned.
The idea of regional policing itself is not new. Sheriff Mark Anderson has been working on the
issue for years, along with municipal officials, members of the public and legislators, including
former Windham County Senator Jeanette White. The Sheriff’s Office formally launched its
current regional-policing project in 2022, although Sheriff Anderson has described his work on
the concept as extending further back in his career. That work eventually led to S.255, now Act
104, which was signed into law in May 2026 and created the Windham County Law
Enforcement Governance Council pilot. Sheriff Anderson and former Sen. White was among
those who worked directly with legislative committees as the bill moved through the General
Assembly.
Our Council is continuing to work directly within that legislative framework. We are not simply
creating a policing program on our own. This is a state-authorized pilot, with accountability and
reporting requirements, intended to determine whether a regional model can provide more
consistent and affordable law-enforcement coverage to rural towns that do not maintain their
own police departments.
The Council has already adopted shared principles and bylaws. We are now working through
perhaps the most important part of the process: determining what level of service is actually
needed, what it will cost, and how those costs should be divided among participating towns.
We are reviewing calls for service throughout the region — what kinds of calls are being made,
how frequently they occur, where they occur, and what level of law-enforcement response they
require. Those calls can range from suspicious activity, domestic disturbances, threats and
harassment, welfare checks and motor-vehicle incidents to serious emergencies involving
violence or situations where a person’s life may be in danger. Existing town reports from the
Sheriff’s Office show exactly this wide variety of calls across rural Windham County
communities.
Those emergency calls are particularly important to this discussion.
Many of Windham County’s smaller towns do not have their own police departments. When
someone calls 911 during a violent or potentially life-threatening situation, the question is not
simply whether law enforcement will respond — it is how quickly an officer can get there and
which agency has an officer available. Sometimes people are re-routed on the phone several
times. Now, many calls are not even coming in, because people know that it will take too long to
get help. Unfortunately that is creating vigilantism and people are feeling like they need to take
matters into their own hands. This is dangerous on so many levels.
The regional model is intended to create more predictable law-enforcement capacity for
participating towns. As the Council and Sheriff’s Office develop the operational model,
dispatching and emergency response are part of that discussion so that deputies assigned to
participating communities can be incorporated into the response system rather than
communities relying solely on whatever distant law-enforcement resource happens to be
available.
That is one reason staffing is such a major part of the budget we are developing.
The Sheriff cannot responsibly say, “We will provide full-time regional coverage,” without
knowing how many towns are participating and how much coverage those towns expect. If, for
example, ten towns elect to participate in a full-service regional model, the Sheriff can determine
how many deputies, vehicles, supervisory personnel and other resources are required to
provide that coverage.
From there, we can determine the total cost and develop a fair per-capita amount — essentially
a cost per resident — for participating municipalities.
There is also an economy-of-scale component. The more municipalities that participate in a
shared system, the more broadly the fixed costs of staffing and operating that system can
potentially be distributed. That is one of the reasons it is important to develop the regional plan
before giving individual towns a final price.
Right now, there is no final price for Guilford or any other town, but there will be.
The Council is working toward having a proposed budget by the end of November. That
proposal should give towns a much clearer picture of the staffing model, the proposed services,
the overall cost and the per-capita amount that participating municipalities would be asked to
consider.
It is important to understand that participation is voluntary. Act 104 created an opt-in framework
for Windham County municipalities. The Council’s responsibility is to do the work now —
examine the data, understand the calls, establish appropriate staffing, develop a budget and
present towns with enough information to make an informed decision. We also report directly to
the state for approval. This is a pilot program, but we are confident that it will gain the support of
the state and surrounding towns to become a permanent regional law enforcement service
For Guilford, this conversation is ultimately about a very basic question: What level of
law-enforcement response should our residents reasonably be able to expect when they need
help, particularly when someone’s safety or life may be at risk, and how can rural towns provide
that service in a financially sustainable way?
That is what we are working to answer.
I will continue to keep Guilford residents informed at selectboard meetings, as the Council
develops the proposal, particularly as we approach the proposed budget at the end of
November.

Tara Cheney
Vice Chair, Guilford Selectboard
Vice Chair, Windham County Law Enforcement Governance Council

Resources: Windham County Law Enforcement Governance Council meetings, Vermont
Legislation establishing the WCLEGC pilot, Act 104 (S.255) and Windham County Sheriff’s
Office about the regional-policing project.