Montpelier to Pay City Manager $240,000 for Early Termination

The City of Montpelier will pay longtime city manager Bill Fraser nearly $240,000 as part of a separation agreement that calls for him to leave his post a year before the end of his contract.

The panel ratified the agreement by a 4-2 vote, though a few members said they thought it was overly generous. The agreement includes $161,255 for one year’s salary, $41,160 for a year’s health insurance and $1,000 in exchange for Fraser waiving the right to bring an age-discrimination claim. In addition, the city will pay $33,360 in payroll contributions to the Social Security Administration, Medicare and the Vermont Municipal Employees Retirement System.

Terms of Fraser’s employment contract guaranteed the “golden parachute” for early termination, Councilor Adrienne Gil said.

Fraser, 65, will stay on the job until June 30.

The six-person city council surprised many Montpelier residents, including Fraser, when members voted unanimously on February 12 to terminate Fraser’s contract, which was to run until March 1, 2026. Mayor Jack McCullough — who can vote only when a tiebreaker is needed — was the only city official present who disagreed with the decision to remove Fraser, who has held his position since 1995.

But on Wednesday, two of the councilors who had voted to end Fraser’s contract expressed regret, saying he didn’t deserve to be removed so suddenly. Many people in town have expressed surprise and concern over the ouster.

“By taking this approach, it means that rather than working with Bill, we’ve divided the community around how it was handled,” Councilor Lauren Hierl said. She voted against the separation agreement.

Councilor Cary Brown said she voted on February 12 to end Fraser’s contract in order to show unity with the rest of the city council and has since concluded that was a mistake.

“I don’t wish to see Bill terminated, and I never have,” Brown said. “I’ve always been in favor of giving Bill the respect of retiring on his own terms, on his own timeline, which we knew he was working on.”

For his part, Fraser — who has survived other ouster efforts over the years — was sanguine, saying on Wednesday night that he plans to continue living in Montpelier, start a band and spend more time with his kids.

“This isn’t how I had expected my time here in Montpelier to end,” he told Seven Days after the vote. “I put my heart and soul into it, and I had hoped I’d be able to leave on my own terms.

“It’s hard to think people want you gone and are willing to pay that much money to have you gone,” he added.

But he noted that residents have shown support.

“I’ve been overwhelmed with calls, texts, emails, with people stopping me on the street, in stores. It’s been very heartening,” he said. “I suspect the people who agree with me leaving just aren’t talking to me.”

Locals who have supported the council’s decision in Front Porch Forum posts have steered clear of criticizing Fraser himself. Instead, they’ve talked about difficulties that the Capital City has faced over his tenure, including road and infrastructure issues, financial problems, and a precarious local retail economy.

Potholes have been the subject of fierce complaints for years.

“There is clearly no plan for fixing the roads. And the roads are abysmal,” said longtime Montpelier resident Peter Sterling, who supported the council’s decision. “I had to spend $500 replacing a blown tire after hitting a pothole one night.”

Montpelier has also faced a stream of economic challenges, some of which extend well beyond the city manager’s reach. In recent years, the historic, pedestrian-friendly downtown area was hit by the pandemic-era flight to online shopping, as well as a major exodus of state employees who once traveled into the city for their jobs but are now working at home. Advocates regularly plead with the city for help in sheltering homeless people on freezing nights.

The devastating flood of 2023 caused millions of dollars in damage. Many people blamed city hall for the lack of coordination in the aftermath, when mountains of garbage were piled on Montpelier’s main streets. Several business owners never returned to their retail storefronts, and some property owners are still remediating flood damage.

Asked about the roads, Fraser conceded on Wednesday that they’re in poor shape.

“No one has ideal roads, and ours are bad. I’m not going to say they aren’t,” he said. But the city council, he said, played a role in limiting Montpelier’s infrastructure budget.

“We’ve paved the roads to the extent they were funded,” he said. “I was certainly part of those decisions, as were the elected officials every single year.”

Tom Greene, an author and longtime resident who started the Vermont College of Fine Arts and Hugo’s Bar and Grill, a restaurant on Montpelier’s Main Street, said on Wednesday that Fraser has worked hard to manage the city’s day-to-day business. But in the face of a housing shortage, an aging population and the challenges faced by small, historic towns, he said, Montpelier needs a manager who knows how to create public-private partnerships that will spur real estate growth and business development.

“Bill’s good at making sure the trains run on time, but he’s not the kind of entrepreneurial city manager I think Montpelier needs,” Greene said.

Brown told her city council colleagues that Montpelier has been lucky to have Fraser in charge for the past 30 years and his rapid removal comes with a cost.

“We now have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars …. and we’ve lost the opportunity to have a smooth, well-planned transition to a new city manager,” she said.