HARTFORD — Voters will elect candidates to four Selectboard seats at this year’s Town Meeting, with three of those contested.

Ashley Andreas and Patrick Danaher both hope to complete the final year of Sue Buckholz’ two-year term. Buckholz, elected last March, resigned from the board in October. The board decided to leave her seat vacant until Town Meeting.

Incumbent Lannie Collins and newcomers Miranda Dupre and Erik Krauss are competing for two three-year terms.

Incumbent Mary Erdei, 74, who has served on the board since 2022, is running uncontested for a two-year seat.

The successful candidates will join board Chairman Mike Hoyt and board members Ida Griesemer and Brandon Smith. Kim Souza, who joined the board in 2018, is not running for reelection.

One-year term

For Andreas, 37, the one-year term is an opportunity to get a sense of the level of commitment involved in serving on the Selectboard.

With a background working as a home ownership advisor, Andreas wants to explore ways that the Selectboard can encourage new development of affordable housing geared toward local families and employees, she said by phone recently.

“We’re up against a lot of challenges,” she said. “People are stressed and scared about the economic circumstances that we are surviving through.”

The Hartford Village resident, who moved to Quechee when she was 18, hopes to encourage grassroots efforts to protect and support vulnerable community members in Hartford.

She would bring good communication, empathy and understanding of different points of view to the board, she said. “I’d really love to foster a network of volunteerism and connectedness within the town.”

This race marks Danaher’s third attempt to win a Selectboard seat. A 67-year-old graduate of Hartford High School and the University of Vermont, he served as a Capitol Hill intern for the late Sen. Jim Jeffords — a Vermont Republican who became an independent.

After pursuing a sailing career out of state for several decades, he returned to Hartford in 2020 to care for his mother. He became engaged in local politics, attending Selectboard meetings and serving on Hartford’s Committee on Housing and Homelessness.

“One of my main focuses is affordability,” he said by phone recently.

He wants to trim expenditures so that the town can live within its means, he said. “The way things are going I think the town has gotten unaffordable for the middle class. Hopefully, I can join the board and try to keep taxes down,” he said.

Three-year terms

Incumbent Lannie Collins, 57, of Quechee has been a member of the Selectboard since 2021. He is a fourth-generation Hartford resident who has served in the Vermont Army National Guard and on the Hartford Fire Department.

Collins wants to focus more on the administration of the town and “less on divisive politics that are not within the review of the Selectboard,” he said by email last week.

His priorities include promoting accountability, transparency and frugal spending, he said. Collins also wants to ensure that “all voices are heard and acknowledged,” and to welcome differences of opinion “with civility and openness to listen and learn from each other within our town.”

He stands on his record as a board member.

“I firmly believe that every decision that I have made has been for the best interest of the Town of Hartford voters and this will continue if reelected,” he wrote.

Miranda Dupre, 29, of White River Junction, is a community navigator for Vital Communities, helping to advance home and business ownership among people of color in the Upper Valley.

Her focus as a Selectboard member would be on building a stronger sense of community among Hartford residents. “It’s there, but it isn’t always translating,” she said by phone recently.

“Hartford is really amazing, and the base values are welcoming and inclusive,” she said. But that isn’t always evident in people’s everyday language and behavior.

“Discussions of ‘being a Vermonter’ and calling people ‘flatlanders,’ ” she said, “are little things that can make people feel that they are not part of the community.”

Helping people connect on a more personal level, she said, creates a space “where you can actually come up with solutions together even when you disagree on how get there.”

Hartford resident Erik Krauss, 55, recently retired from a career in software systems integration. He has served on the town’s Energy Commission and the Climate Advisory Committee.

“I want to come onto the board and be productive and not disruptive,” he said by phone recently.

The town has made some progress in the last few years in terms of stability in leadership roles, he said.

“I want to see what I can bring in terms of continuous improvement and creative problem-solving,” he added.

In the longer term, he wants to focus on initiatives that include transportation improvements. It is an issue that touches on other priorities such as “affordability, parking, and greenhouse gas emissions. We can mitigate these challenges with transportation,” he said.

Hartford resident and former Selectboard member Ally Tufenkjian has created a Hartford voter guide, which is available at: hartfordvoterguide.wixsite.com/candidates.

Hartford’s town and school meeting is scheduled for Saturday, March 1 at 10 a.m. in the High School gymnasium.

Ballot voting will take place on Tuesday, March 4 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the high school gymnasium.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.