St Albans Mayor Liz Gamache. Photo by Randolph T Holhut
by Joyce Marcel Vermont Business Magazine It takes a village to revitalize a village. It also takes positive leadership and the willingness to take risks. St Albans’ mayor, Elizabeth “Liz” Gamache, has won high praise for the way she uses her political skills to lead the revitalization of her city. Gamache, 53, is one of the very few female mayors in Vermont’s long history — and shame on you, Vermont! Since 2012, she has been elected mayor of St Albans three times; one indication of the respect she’s earned is that she’s always run unopposed. Her current two-year term is up next year and she plans to run again.
Vermont is a state dominated by community governance. It has only eight mayors, and only two of them — Burlington’s and Rutland’s — actually run their cities.
Being a mayor is not a full-time job for the mayors of St Albans, Vergennes, Montpelier, Barre, Winooski and Newport. The way each one does his job is different, but for political punch, all eight mayors are organized into a political arm called the Vermont Mayors Coalition, which advocates for such issues as addressing the opioid addiction, reforming police training, a “common sense” approach to clean water, tax exemptions for municipal parking garages and public safety.
Gamache is the mayor of the City of St Albans, which has roughly 7,000 people living in about 2 square miles. The Town of St Albans, roughly 70-plus square miles, surrounds the city and, with a population of about 6000 leans more towards the agricultural. They are separate municipalities. The town has a select board and a town manager and the city has a mayor, a city council and a city manager. Increasingly, the town and city have partnered — the city provides police services to the town and both fire departments work together. A recreation program run by the city is widely used by the town.
Since the day-to-day running of St Albans is done by city manager, the office of mayor is a volunteer position. But the mayor is certainly not a figurehead. Not this mayor, anyway.
“The city manager is the COO,” Gamache said. “I’m the CEO. I’m the lead of the city council, which is a policy board. We set the priorities and the agenda for the city manager and his staff.”
Gamache laughingly says that being mayor is a 24/7 job, but it’s also a volunteer one. So she just recently became the vice president for grants and community investments of the Vermont Community Foundation.
On Gamache’s watch, St Albans has gone from being a forlorn pass-through on the way to Canada — a place with crumbling sidewalks and empty storefronts —to being a tourist destination of its own. Its downtown is full of shops, cafes and restaurants. There’s a new parking garage and even a brand new downtown, 84-room Hampton Inn.
And all of this with a Wal-Mart that opened just to the north of town in the Fall of 2013 — a development that was contentious, to say the least.
“We wanted to create a thriving, vibrant downtown so we wouldn’t be damaged by Wal-Mart,” Gamache said. “The coming of Wal-Mart was a catalyst to drive us to not only create a vision and a plan, but to look for federal grants to dress up Main Street.”
The vision seems to have worked.
“The city of St Albans is a vastly different city than the one Liz took over,” said Emerson Lynn, the editor and co-publisher of the St Albans Messenger. “And the transformation of St Albans has been one of the true success stories in Vermont.”
It’s hard work to revitalize a town, but St Albans found an ally in then-Governor Peter Shumlin, a big supporter of downtowns.
“Liz has a very keen political awareness,” Lynn said. “Before we had conversations with Governor Shumlin, she was able to articulate the case. We had the right governor and the right needs. When we began this, the vision, we thought our .300 game was the streetscape project. But a parking garage and a state office building and our largest employer able to expand? And on top of that, we’ve added an 84-room hotel. Who does that? We have a renovation of our city hall. Then, because of all this success, Liz has the vision of reaching out and extending the project to outside the downtown. City taxpayers are now voting to spend money to replace all the city’s sidewalks. That’s 13 miles of sidewalks. It’s all about leadership.”
The original debt ceiling for the revitalization was approved for around $43.5 million, but St Albans has only spent about $16 million, Gamache said.
Lynn is a strong cheerleader for Gamache and St Albans.
“If the wrong people, negative people, were in leadership positions, people would still be writing to complain about the sidewalk cracks,” Lynn said. “Liz, in coordination with the city council and the city manager, has done an absolutely outstanding job articulating the vision for the city of St Albans and then following through and putting in place the various practices that made it all happen.”
Gamache is inclusive but also thorough, Lynn said.
“She understands the need for making sure people understand the direction she’s going in, but at the same time her enthusiasm is really contagious,” Lynn said. “She’s been mayor for quite some time. and when you track her progress with the progress of the city, it’s incredible. Outstanding!”
St Albans City Manager Dominic Cloud, who has worked closely with Gamache since 2008 — the two rarely pass a day without speaking — said, “Liz is a lot like the city of St Albans, frankly. One of her most defining attributes is her authenticity. She knows who she is and what she believes. She has a real strong sense of her identity and that of the community, and that is reflected in her leadership style. And authenticity is very refreshing in today’s climate. We’ve worked together for about four years and it’s been a real pleasure. Liz has a good sense of her vision for the town and the city council has been lock-stepped with that vision. It’s the staff’s job to implement that vision and make the trains run on time.”
Cloud offered some hard numbers by which to measure St Albans’ success.
“Our tax base was diminishing for decades, but in the last five years it’s increased by $60 million,” Cloud said. “That’s a compelling number. It’s a 40 percent increase in the tax base. St Albans is a great all-American story and Liz is at the heart of it. I trace it all back to that authenticity.”
The vision for St Albans itself was meat-and-potatoes basic, Cloud said.
“If we want others to invest in ourselves, we need to invest in ourselves,” he said, “We needed to fix our streets and sidewalks and create a compelling place in the downtown. These were ideas that had been talked about for decades. In fact, there was a plan to revitalize St Albans that was published in 1980. Nearly everything we accomplished was laid out then — a new hotel, a new parking garage, renovating city hall. Liz’s leadership style made it happen. She and the city council have worked really hard for consensus. So when the council puts their name behind something, it’s a 7-0 vote. And that’s why we’ve been successful in selling it to the voters.”
In person, Gamache is an extremely attractive woman: bright, energetic and elegant, with radiant skin and a clear and unwavering sense of confidence. She laughs easily and often. She doesn’t seem to take herself too seriously. She’s the kind of woman you might want to have as your best friend.
She’s married; her husband works for GlobalFoundries. The couple have five children — Gamache has three stepsons from her husband’s first marriage and there’s an 18-month-old grandson as well.
“All the older boys left Vermont for college and they’re all back in Vermont now,” Gamache said. “So we’re really thrilled to have them all together. My daughter is headed to the University of New England in Maine. That leaves one kid at home.”
Gamache has put together the perfect political resume.
Before the Vermont Community Foundation job, which lets her dive into the world of philanthropy, she was executive director of Efficiency Vermont (saving energy.) Before that she spent eight years as the manager of corporate services for the Vermont Electric Co-op (delivering energy).
Even before she became mayor, she was working in St Albans’s government in paid as well as volunteer positions (politics, small-town governance). She’s also worked on the manufacturing floor of IBM (manufacturing). And before all that she had enough creativity and gumption to buy a pushcart and sell cow-related tourist items on the Church Street Marketplace, even in freezing December weather (retail).
So she’s had entrepreneurship, working for one of the world’s largest corporations, working for the largest nonprofit in her county and lots of municipal experience inside city hall.
“I wasn’t doing these things by design,” Gamache said. “My interests led me to try different things along the way.”
It may not be by design, but there’s certainly method. Gamache is a 2015 graduate of the Vermont branch of EmergeAmerica, a national organization created in 2005 devoted to changing the face of politics by recruiting, training and providing support for Democratic women who want to run for office. Emerge now has branches in 22 states. Its Vermont program was started by former Governor Madeleine May Kunin, Vermont’s first female governor, and, if Emerge has its way, certainly not its last.
“I joined Emerge as one of the original board members and served a two-year term,” Gamache said. “During the second year, I participated in the program because I was interested in seeing first-hand how the program was delivered. I had already been through one or two mayoral elections at that time, but I found it useful to hear from other individuals with campaign experiences about how they developed and launched campaigns and what tools are available. When we are able to drive civic engagement that brings voices to the table that reflect the diversity of our communities, I believe we will see better outcomes — especially when people are able to clearly articulate their views and provide voters with good information about their values, positions and interests — and about how they operate.”
More than men, Gamache said, women do not generally believe they are qualified to run for office.
“Yet they have a wealth of experiences and perspectives that most certainly make them qualified,” she said,
Governor Kunin herself has high praise for Gamache.
“She’s a very serious and competent person,” Kunin said. “We wish there were more women like her because it’s so rare to have a female mayor in Vermont. She has real leadership skills and serves as a role model for others. There’s still a difference between a legislative and an executive position. While it’s become more common for women to run for the legislature, it’s hard to get women to run for executive positions. I’m just proud of her achievements and her ability to inspire other women.”
Just to be fair, it should be noted that the first female mayor of St Albans was Janet Smith, a Republican alderwoman elected in 1980. Six days after she was sworn in, however, she was sadly shot and killed by the family gardener — with whom she was reputed to be having an affair — just after she fired him.
These are not the kinds of mistakes Gamache will be making.
“My husband and I made a commitment that we would always do our own gardening,” she said with a laugh.
Early Life
Gamache was born in Binghamton, New York, into “a family with an IBM father so we lived in different places.” She has one younger sister; her mother was a stay-at-home mom.
From Binghamton, the family moved to White Plains, NY, where Gamache went to elementary school, and then to Morgan Hill in California “in the Silicon Valley area, when Silicon Valley was in its earlier stages.”
She went to junior high school and did most of her high school training there.
She started working early, first doing babysitting and then, when she was 16, working in the local music store.
Then the family transferred again, this time to Burlington, which is how she arrived in Vermont. She graduated from Burlington High School in her junior year and took a business degree from the University of Vermont with a minor in German. She did a year abroad at the University of Salzburg in Austria but says her German is “very, very rusty now.”
When she was younger, Gamache said, she wished she had had more confidence in herself and pushed herself more.
“One of the things I didn’t do when I was younger was overcome my fear of failure,” she said. “There have been times when I haven’t tried things and I’ve regretted that. When I wish I had pushed myself to be bolder. So I’ve tried pushing myself and taking different jobs and trying different things. In my younger days I didn’t have the confidence. I’m glad I did the things I did, but it might have been different.”
Cow Crazy
After graduating from UVM, Gamache wanted to put her business degree to work. She was thinking about retail, but didn’t have much start-up capital.
“I had enough to buy a pushcart, so that’s what I did,” she said. “I was on the Church Street Marketplace selling Vermont souvenir-type items. And it didn’t take long for me to realize — just a couple of weeks — that anything that had black-and-white spots on it flew off the shelves. So I took that cue and renamed it the Cow Cart, painted the canopy with black and white spots, and I would scour the marketplace for anything with cows on it. Cow socks, cow magnets, cow t-shirts, you name it. Anything with black-and-white spots on it.”
She never wore a cow costume “contrary to some reports,” she jokes. “Occasionally I sported a denim jacket with black-and-white spots, but no ears. No udder. I drew the line.”
She worked the cart for close to eight years. It became so profitable that she was able to expand. She bought — and stocked with other types of merchandise — other pushcarts. December’s Christmas shopping season was her busiest time of year, but it got really cold out there on Church Street.
“I would thaw out in the winter months,” she said. “January and February I used the time to travel to warmer places. Then there came a point, probably after a very cold winter, when I decided it might be time to try working indoors.”
On The Shop Floor
Gamache applied for and got a job in production at IBM.
“I was in the very first wave of new hires at IBM after they had had a hiatus bringing on staff on the production line,” Gamache said. “I took a manufacturing job not necessarily knowing it would be a longer-term thing. But I was at IBM for seven or eight years. I started on the manufacturing floor. Then I became a process technician. I took Vermont Technical College courses to learn more about the technical side of the business. And the last years, I transitioned off the manufacturing line and worked in supply chain management, watching the products and making sure they met the deadlines for delivery to customers.”
Gamache was excited by the work.
“This was fascinating to me — to learn about the process for creating these chips,” she said. “You could only see the details through a microscope, and even then there were things you couldn’t fully see. But to process those wafers through these machines, you know, it was magic. Technology was happening.”
She had gone from a pushcart to one of the largest companies in the world.
“I was so glad to have the flavor of what a corporate environment was like, and it gave me a chance to take college courses in an area that wasn’t comfortable to me,” she said. “When I was in college, I focused on business and German. So I was more interested in literature and history. This job gave me a chance to focus on math and science. So I really enjoyed that and the support of a corporate environment that enabled me to do it. That was great.”
St Albans
While Gamache was still at IBM, she met, married and had her first child, a daughter. Then, while she was pregnant with her second child, a son, the family decided to move to St Albans.
“We looked in St Albans often,” Gamache said. “We were struck by the friendliness of the people. And we loved the architecture; I’m a lover of downtowns since my Church Street days, and I saw downtown in St Albans and thought it was just waiting to be polished and come to life. The architecture was great, the store owners were friendly. I loved moving into a neighborhood of mixed generations, a mix of renters and owner-occupied homes was appealing to us. We wanted our kids to experience that. Especially the multi-generational thing —young families, single people, older residents. We really liked that feeling of community that we gained in St Albans. We loved living in Chittenden County too, but the small town feel felt right for us at the time, so we moved on up.”
Even though St Albans is only a 35-minute commute from IBM at Essex Junction, Gamache wanted a job where she could spend more time with her children.
“So I left IBM and took a part-time job working for Franklin-Grand Isle United Way,” she said. “That gave me a chance to get to know my new community, the social service agencies and the community leaders.”
A new project was unfolding at United Way.
“I raised my hand to be part of it,” Gamache said. “It was to determine whether the community wanted a community justice center. There was a network of community justice centers that offer restorative justice services across the state. I led an exploratory process that determined that there was interest. Then I became the founding director of the Community Justice Center. I got it up and running, and that was under the umbrella of the City of St Albans, so at that point I was working for the City of St Albans.”
When the job of assistant city manager came open, Gamache was asked if she was interested. She was.
“One of the themes of the work I was doing was around community involvement,” Gamache said. “And I thought, ‘What better way to serve my community?’ So I said yes and joined the administrative staff first as assistant manager and then served as interim city manager when a vacancy came up. I did that for nine months or so. That was enough to know that at that time, I was not interested in that position. But I was thrilled to be involved with municipal staff to understand the workings and the finances and to reorganize and recover financially from some challenges the city was faced with.”
Vermont Electric Co-Op
From there, Gamache went to work for Vermont Electric Cooperative as its corporate services manager (now called manager of government affairs and member relations). She began on May 1, 2008, and stayed until January 2015.
“VEC had just implemented a 10-year capital plan to upgrade its infrastructure with the aim of reducing the number of outages and optimizing our smart meter infrastructure,” said Christine Hallquist, the CEO of VEC (and the subject of last month’s VBM cover story).“It was now time to focus on improving our relationships with our members, the state regulators, and the legislature.”
Hallquist said she was immediately impressed by Gamache and liked her growing resume.
“Liz worked her way through college and beyond growing a cart business on Church Street, which she later expanded to the University Mall,” Hallquist said.“She then took time out for her family and also became involved in a number of community organizations. This background, along with her commitment to Vermont and her business degree from UVM was just what VEC needed at the time.Liz was concerned that she did not have utility experience. We let her know that VEC had a lot of utility experience; we really needed someone who could help us improve our relationship with our members.”
Liz was a fast learner.
“She dove into the job head-first and never looked back,” Hallquist said. “Her relationship skills, combined with her commitment to learning, fostered an atmosphere where her peers were happy to help her learn the business. Liz then engaged with the legislature, regulators and members and helped VEC to be trustworthy and credible —just like her. I am very proud to have worked closely with Liz and to call her a friend. She went from being a newcomer to the industry to someone who is highly respected for her knowledge today.I am sure that she will continue to grow personally and professionally.She will continue to contribute to the growth of Vermont as a state.It is people like her that make me proud to call Vermont my home.”
Gamache was at VEC when a major storm approached the service area; it was close to Christmas and the challenges Gamache faced were great.
“It became clear on Christmas Eve that the storm would hit in the heart of the service territory and that it would be an ice storm,” Gamache said. “This meant we had to call out to hundreds of contract line workers and tree crews to supplement our crews. This in itself was not unusual during a major storm, but what we quickly discovered is that it posed some major issues due the timing. We needed to find lodging and food for several hundred workers over a multi-day period beginning on Christmas Eve. They would be working long hours in frigid conditions in very tough conditions. Keeping them fed was essential.”
This was no easy task. Most restaurants and grocery stores were getting ready to shut down for the holidays.
“As the day progressed, I was calling everyone I could think of and finding it impossible to find even gas station restaurants that could accommodate the amount of food we needed,” Gamache said.“We were up against a wall until someone suggested that hospitals don't close down for the holidays.”
Gamache called local friends at Northwestern Medical Center and within an hour they were putting together a plan to offer hot meals and companionship for the workers on Christmas Day.
“The hospital staff and many of their family members came in on Christmas Day to prepare and serve the workers,” Gamache said. “Not only was it a fabulous Christmas meal, but they decorated and some even wore elf costumes. They wanted to help boost the morale of these workers who were not with their families on Christmas in order to help restore power. We received lots of thank-yous from the line workers' families who were glad to know the workers were being taken care of. And a few other local restaurants and fire departments also came through with food in other parts of the service territory.”
There was a lesson in this, Gamache said.
“I —or we —found ourselves in a challenging situation and needed to get creative,” she said. “Having relationships and connections in place before a crisis strikes makes it that much easier to find solutions. It's why collaboration is so important. And it’s a reminder of how great our local communities are.”
Moving On Again
A large amount of time at Gamache’s VEC job was learning the complicated language of energy. That led to her next job.
“So someone thought the work I do would be valuable to Efficiency Vermont, that we might have some synergy,” Gamache said. “So conversations ensued and I was intrigued and moved over there. I became the director of Efficiency Vermont, which reduces energy costs — both economic and environmental —for Vermonters.”
She remained at Efficiency Vermont for two and a half years.
“Then I became aware of this new position at the Vermont Community Fundation,” Gamache said. “It’s everything I love and everything I do well. So I took the job as vice president of grants and community investments. For me, I don’t evaluate my decisions by the salary. I’ve been motivated to make these changes because I feel like I’ve been able to deliver impact to Vermont. And I’m highly motivated by that.”
Meanwhile, Back In St Albans
When Gamache moved to St Albans she thought the downtown was ready to bust out.
“And it wasn’t,” she said. “It was ready to bust. I went on to VEC, but I remained a volunteer. I chaired the downtown committee that was looking to revitalize downtown. Shortly before I left the city I worked with Representative Peter Welch’s office to get funding to help us do some streetscape improvements on Main Street. Shortly after I left, we got word that the funding — about $300,000 — was secured. That was the start of a lot.”
The fight over Walmart had been fierce, but those opposed to the development had lost. It was time to move on. So the city began shifting from resistance to wary acceptance.
“We engaged in dealings with Wal-Mart,” Gamache said. “They agreed to contribute around $400,000 to use in revitalizing the downtown, and the developer agreed to buy and revitalize four buildings in downtown. So he was committed to downtown. So instead of thinking that if Wal-Mart won the downtown would lose, we cut the ribbon on our streetscape work the same month Wal-Mart opened its doors. And we’ve been thriving. It’s not easy, but we’re a pretty vibrant place these days. So there was an important turning point.”
Another turning point came when the city grabbed a difficult-to-get designation as a “tax increment finance community,” or TIF.
TIF is an economic development tool based on the idea that if public dollars are used to develop infrastructure that invites private development and investment, then the grand list will grow more than it would otherwise. This would bring in additional property tax revenue. The additional revenue is the "tax increment.”
In Vermont TIF municipalities would typically use bonding to pay for the infrastructure improvements. A portion of the increase in property taxes collected — both education and municipal — can then be used over a period of up to 20 years to make the bond payments.
It’s a mechanism to help cities drive public infrastructure investment in order to invite private investment and economic development.
“This was the real game changer,” Gamache said. “We were able to fix our streets, improve our sewer lines, do some brownfield remediation and build a parking garage. To pay for it we put out for bonding, of course, but if you have the tax increment finance program, it allows you to, over a 20 year period of time, take a look at how much your tax base has increased. Then you’re able to divert a portion of school taxes to pay for the bond.”
According to Gamache, the latest grand list (FY18) reflects an increase of $48.9 million in increment since the beginning of the TIF.
Madame Mayor
Gamache was working at VEC, chairing the downtown revitalization effort, and being a wife and mother when the next challenge came around.
“Lo and behold, I was trying all these different things,” she said. “And the current mayor had decided he wasn’t going to run again. One thing led to another and I was encouraged to think about running. It was not something that I ever dreamt of doing. It was not on my radar. But I was thinking about the difference experiences I’d had working with the town, and I thought I might have something to offer that the community might be interested in. I got my application, got my signatures, took a deep breath and won.”
Of course, Gamache was running unopposed.
“But even when you run unopposed, it’s not easy,” she said. “You’re putting yourself out there in a way that’s different from serving in an appointed capacity. It’s a little bit of a leap, but it’s such an important one.”
As the development money came in, it was used to fix the sidewalks, clean the facades, put flowers and flags on the streets, support such things as outdoor cafes, and clean up the park in the heart of downtown.
All these changes came with challenges. For example, “We had a location on Main Street where there were several properties next to each other,” Gamache said.“One was an auto care business. We were able to purchase the lot and tear the buildings down. We had access to brownfields funding, so we were able to clean it up and make it viable for a developer to come in. It went from a group of properties in decline to an Ace Hardware —a great business that brings great traffic to downtown. The auto place moved to another location and they’re still going. So that public investment — putting the resources of the taxpayers and residents into improving our community — was quickly followed by private developers wanting to invest.”
When a state office building in one part of downtown was repurposed, it was snapped up by Mylan Pharmaceuticals, one of the city’s major employers.
Mylan was pleased with the result. On September 4, 2013, it issued a press release that said, in part, “Mylan Inc (Nasdaq: MYL) today announced the completion of an 85,000-square foot, three-story expansion project at its transdermal patch facility, operated by Mylan Technologies Inc (MTI), in St Albans, Vt. Through Mylan's investment, including funding for expanded research and development (R&D) capabilities and additional manufacturing and laboratory space, the company is in the process of adding more than 160 new positions to its St Albans-based workforce... In conjunction with the expansion project, Mylan today hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony to commemorate the occasion. Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin as well as a number of local officials, community members and employees, attended the event.”
Then the state constructed a new building in the heart of downtown.
“So hundreds of workers were eating, shopping and making the downtown vibrant,” Gamache said. “To make that happen we needed parking, so we were able to construct the parking garage.”
The parking garage led to the hotel.
“It was also in our sights to invite a hotel developer to do a hotel in St Albans, adjacent to the parking garage,” Gamache said. “The hotel pays for a certain number of parking spaces for its guests. We took our time, put out an RFP, evaluated the proposals and celebrated the ribbon cutting of the hotel just a few months ago. My husband and I stayed there the first night they were opened.”
A hotel means guests, which means people are visiting St Albans.
“We’re conveniently located between Burlington and Montreal,” Gamache said. “For people who are coming up from Boston and New York City, there are not a lot of hotels in the area. And sometimes all the hotels in Burlington are booked. St Albans is the next logical place for people to consider. The second weekend the hotel was open they sold out. And they’ve had other sell-out weekends already.”
Looking back, Gamache praises the community effort it took to turn St Albans around.
“Different community members played important and strong roles,” Gamache said. “As a volunteer early on, I was part of the team that helped create the vision and develop some of the plans. And as mayor, my role is to paint this vision and explain and bring people on board to see the value of what we can do. My role has been to create the spaces where we can be hopeful, be smart, where we have talented people who can bring their strengths to the table and to be a broker of good information so tax payers and voters can be well-informed.”
Each step of the bonding process required a vote from city residents.
“And we’ve had many, many votes throughout the years,” Gamache said. “This kind of thing doesn’t happen unless you have community approval, and the voters have strongly supported our vision. I work with a city council that puts the community’s need first. There’s a talented staff. The city manager and many others within city hall are dedicated to making this a better place. We love our community. And people have rallied, to dare to have the hope that it could be better.”
The project was risky, to say the least.
“How do you find appropriate levels of risk?” Gamache said. “Not crazy risk taking, but there are risks in doing a revitalization effort. But the risk of trying to stay the same was so much greater.”
Gamache has put in her share of hours over the last few years, but she’s very pleased with the result.
“I believe I helped to cultivate in St Albans the idea that it’s really important to create space to have respectful civil discourse,” Gamache said. “We certainly don’t need to agree on everything, but if we can agree to disagree and have constructive conversations and turn that into action, really great things can happen.”
The Opioid Crisis
The opioid crisis is a national problem. It has had a devastating impact everywhere, and St Albans is no exception.
“I first became familiar with this as an emerging issue about 10 or 12 years ago,” Gamache said. “A local pediatrician, Dr Fred Holmes, who also happened to be our pediatrician, was raising the red flag when he started to see more children in his practice that were struggling with addiction. Around the same time we were seeing an increase in property crimes that were related to drug use. The issue was moving beyond individuals who were addicted to the community at large —many people were feeling the impacts.”
Gamache was interim city manager back then. In collaboration with the police chief, she convened a community forum to discuss the issue.
“As I recall, around 250 people from St Albans and other Franklin County towns showed up — and this is big number for public meetings in our area,” she said. ”There was some resistance by some community members to talk so publicly about this. They were concerned that it would make St Albans look bad; it would be bad for business. I'm glad we didn't buy into this. I think we were one of the early communities to dig in on this issue.”
Around this time, Vermont-based filmmaker Bess O’Brien’s documentary about the opioid crisis, “The Hungry Heart,” was released.
“It featured Dr Holmes and several addicts in Franklin County,” Gamache said. “It was attention-getting for many reasons. One of them was that it showed that addiction is not someone else's problem.”
St Albans decided to adopt the three-legged stool approach: prevention, treatment and recovery, and enforcement.
“From a municipal perspective, we've said that we can't ‘arrest our way’ out of the problem,” Gamache said. “Law enforcement plays a key role, but it can't tackle it alone. Collaboration and partnership with other stakeholders is essential. Fortunately we have a collaborative spirit amongst our social service providers so this has helped.”
The police department has regular meetings with social service providers and other key stakeholders to make sure all three legs of the stool are equally nurtured.
“We now have an NCSS (Northwestern Counseling and Support Services) counselor embedded within our police department,” Gamache said. “Our first responders deal with a high level of mental health-related issues when responding to calls. Taking this approach has been effective. Our police work collaboratively with other law enforcement agencies — state and federal — on enforcement. Data sharing has also been very important. Our police department is well managed and this helps as well. Community-based policing has played a key role. And we now have a treatment center in St Albans. For years, people have been traveling to Chittenden County and Newport on a daily basis for treatment and the waiting lists have been long.”
A variety of prevention programs are in place under the social service umbrella.
Gamache believes that the city’s revitalization will, in the end, play a big part in handling the drug crisis.
“First, by building a stronger economy, we are creating more job opportunities,” she said. “The social fabric of the community is stronger. There is more hope that we can face up to problems and work together to find solutions. Second, with strong community support we have developed a recreation program for citizens of all ages. We have great recreational assets in St Albans and the area. There are dozens of programs for our youth including a summer day camp which keeps kids active and positively engaged throughout the summer.”
Having an opioid/heroin issue should not define St Albans as an undesirable community, Gamache said.
“Rather, we are a caring community that pulls together to face challenges,” she said. “This is a multi-generational problem that impacts individuals, families, communities, the economy, and our overall quality of life. In Vermont and the nation, we'll be dealing with the impacts for years to come. I believe Vermont provides a good example of best practices and how important it is to face this issue head on.”
The Future
If you don’t hear the voice of the future governor of Vermont — the second female! —in this story, then you’re probably deaf. But Emerson Lynn disagrees.
“Liz isn’t someone who needs that adulation,” Lynn said. “She’s about results, about taking something and making thing better. She’s confident. She likes to be involved in something workable. She’s creative, and St Albans is actually a product she’s created. The problem with higher office, the focus is on you but it’s more difficult to achieve material gains. If it’s only about you, then you’re going to struggle. If you make it about people, you have a chance. And that’s Liz.”
Gamache herself denies any interest in a job — other than the multiple ones she already has.
“I am focused on St Albans and doing the work of the Community Foundation.” Gamache said. “It’s a wonderful way to have a broad-based, state-wide impact. So I have no plans to run for anything beyond a local office. And people do ask me that question. Who knows what the future holds 10 years out? Now my focus is my kids. Right now I have a good balance with my work life, my family life and my community service life.”
The revitalization of St Albans isn’t over. Far from it. Remember those 13 miles of sidewalks, most of them outside the downtown area?
“We recently put forward a proposal for a $5 million bond initiative to rehabilitate the sidewalks in the neighborhoods that surround the downtown,” Gamache said. “So we did outreach to answer questions about what’s involved, how it will affect the tax rates, why does it matter, what are the pros and cons. The fun part is to be involved in community events and be the face of St Albans. The perk is to see that people love where they live.”
Gamache describes herself as “such a nerd.”
“When I’m not working I’m being a mayor and when I’m not being a mayor I’m being a mom,” she said. “I lead a pretty simple life. I’m trying to enjoy the moments as they come. I have a new puppy. I’m learning to speak dog. I have a non-linear approach to life. I’m still figuring out what I want to do. If someone had told me I could be a mayor I wouldn’t have believed it – but I would have loved the thought of it.”
Gamache encourages people to get involved.
“Civic engagement is very important and you don’t have to know it all to get involved, to take the first step,” she said. “We all have a certain amount of potential we can give. With the challenges we have today, I don’t think we can squander that. Take chances, support each other, take steps to make things better.”
Joyce Marcel is a journalist who lives in southern Vermont. She is currently writing a memoir covering six generations of her family caught in the sweep of history across the 20th Century. She is writing another book about Vermont businesses. More of her work appears at her Web site, joycemarcel.com. This article first appeared in the September 2017 issue of Vermont Business Magazine.