Ralph Perkins
Colchester Resident
Community
2016 - Present
Colchester Community Food Shelf
Since 2016, I have served on the Board of Directors of the Colchester Community Food Shelf. Additional projects have included overseeing a small garden where UMS first graders would plant potatoes and return in the fall as second graders to help harvest them.
2004 - Present
Milton Grange #522
Over the past 20 years, I have held different offices within the Milton Grange and worked with Jim Ballard and others to start the Farmer's market that was the forerunner to Milton's annual summer market.
2005 - Present
Tuberville Charitable Food Project
Tuberville is a small 501(c)3 that grows and brings Vermont vegetables to local food shelves. The goal of the project was to create new sources of support that did not take existing funding from other programs. Tuberville donates roughly 50,000 pounds of food to over 35 programs annually. I am a co-founder and the managing partner.
Family
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Jeannie and I have lived in the Clay Point neighborhood since 2006. She spent many years as a speech and language assistant at Union Memorial School. Since retiring she volunteers at the Colchester Food Shelf as the Inventory Coordinator.
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We enjoy working outdoors, walking the roads in the neighborhood and do our best to keep a few hives of bees healthy and alive.
Work
The last 25 years of my employment has been as a Production Manager for live events and music tours. During this time I developed and executed results driven projects with high benefit to cost ratios for country and pop artists. My tour work was hands on, typically overseeing teams of 70 - 120 touring crew. Global responsibilities included negotiation of multimillion dollar contracts and verification of deliverables.
Civic Participation
Before I retired, work related travel limited my ability to volunteer substantially for town committees. However, I sat on the 2013 citizen’s advisory panel to review the finalists for the Town Manager position which recommended Dawn Francis and as a resident I have written positions on:
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Demographics of Colchester voter participation (2012)
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Firearms Ordinance
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Mallets Bay Sewer - 1st vote
I mention them here not as examples of what I believe in but more as examples of how I believe we need to fully analyze civic and community issues.​
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Firearms: I am not a hunter but I supported the logical discussion and the decisions made for the benefit of all residents.
I disagreed with the initial proposal indicating a need to ban all discharge except shotguns because of a lack of factual basis for that position but I believe the citizen's taskforce the Town created in revisiting their position was a good example of cooperation and communication. Likely, no one got everything they wanted but everyone got some of what they were asking for.
Malletts Bay Sewer: To this day I could not tell you if I am for or against the Mallets Bay Sewer project - not because I have not researched the situation, but because I do not believe we as a town had a full and developed conversation. I can tell you that if the use of our ARPA funds were to improve water quality, there may have been better cost to benefit solutions. If the sewer was for smart controlled development, I would have liked to have heard a proposal, honest discussion and a thoughtful debate on that question.