Moe Harvey has never stopped volunteering

Nearly three decades after his time on the selectboard, Charlotters may still spot Moe Harvey at the town hall from time to time.

On a recent Thursday, he was trying to fix a grandfather clock that he had co-donated to the town 25 years earlier. He also took a brief turn manning the front desk when the town clerk and the assistant clerk both had to step out of the building.

According to Harvey, that doesn’t happen often. His regular unpaid job is to ferry check deposits from the town hall to a bank in Shelburne. It’s not an official role — it’s just something that he does.

“I’ve been doing that for like 25 years with no charge,” Harvey said.

A prolific volunteer, Harvey, a retiree, still holds a formal position in municipal government as well. As an elected trustee of public funds, he oversees special-purpose investment accounts created by charitable bequests to the town. In Charlotte, the title is a slight misnomer, as the town has only one such fund.

By Harvey’s recollection, a change in state statute allowed him some years ago to dispose of the other four, based on their trivial size. Instead of continuing to deliver a few dollars of annual interest each year to the Charlotte Central School or the Charlotte Volunteer Fire & Rescue Services, he could turn the principal over to the beneficiary and shut down the account.

But the fifth fund, seeded with $35,000 in the early 1950s to ensure the perpetual upkeep of four particular headstones in Grandview Cemetery (and, secondarily, of the cemetery itself), was not trivial. A prior trustee had converted the savings account into a brokerage account, and over time, it had swelled. By Harvey’s telling, it now holds about $800,000.

The brokerage firm had prioritized growth over dividends, so until recently, the fund provided only about $13,000 in annual income to the Grandview Cemetery Association, which manages the cemetery behind the Charlotte Congregational Church. This past spring, Harvey requested a new investment strategy, telling the broker to focus on delivering dividends rather than continuing to expand the principal, since the latter, according to the town attorney’s reading of the terms of the bequest, can never be spent.

“It looks like now, for next July, when we have to do the distribution, it’ll be like $35,000 to $40,000 a year,” Harvey boasted.

In ways large and small, Harvey’s career of service to the community has helped shape Charlotte, where he has lived since 1982. For years, he made weekly home deliveries for seniors on behalf of the Charlotte Food Shelf.

“I’m very active,” Harvey said. “I’ve been on so many committees; it’s unbelievable.”

When he joined the selectboard in 1994, the Charlotte Central School still housed the municipal government. As selectboard chair, Harvey guided the growing town through the purchase and demolition of an old house in West Charlotte whose property would become the town hall and public library.

He spent the rest of his term overseeing the construction of those buildings, as well as the development of a wastewater system for the camps at Thompson’s Point. The town clerk provided assistance.

“We needed her advice, and she was very, very helpful,” Harvey said. “It overwhelmed me, how wonderful she was being to help us.”

More than a decade later, Mary Mead and Harvey would marry. Mead continues to work as Charlotte’s clerk and treasurer.

In 1997, Harvey became the chair of the Charlotte Land Trust. When news arrived from the state that the Charlotte Central School might have to shut down and move elsewhere due to septic challenges on Hinesburg Road, the land trust, under Harvey, jumped into action, facilitating the municipality’s acquisition of a large property that included the Old Lantern Inn and Barn, as well as plenty of open space for development.

But school officials eventually determined that they could solve the school’s septic problems at its existing location. After subdividing its new land and selling off three of the resulting parcels, the town used a portion of the remaining property to build a sewer for its new municipal buildings.

More recently, the selectboard has allowed a few private landowners to hook up to the sewer, thereby supporting a degree of commercial development in the West Village. But Harvey believes that municipal officials should exercise caution.

“I really, really would love to keep Charlotte the way it’s been for the past 40 years,” he said. “I don’t want to be Shelburne. I don’t want to be South Burlington. I like Charlotte.”

Harvey grew up in St. Albans, one of Vermont’s larger commercial hubs, where his family had come to work for the Central Vermont Railroad – ultimately his own first employer, apart from the Vermont National Guard, where he enlisted for a six-year stint while still in high school. But his grandparents owned a camp in Waitsfield, and there he discovered a love for the outdoors and learned how to hunt. Amid a busy career as the founder and owner of Patterson Fuels, he made time for trips to nearly every part of Canada during caribou season.

Harvey also gave back to the outdoors through his involvement in a wetlands preservation nonprofit called Ducks Unlimited, where he became the vice president. In 2016, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department honored him as a founder of Vermont’s Duck Stamp program, which raises money for the state’s Migratory Waterfowl Fund through hunting licensure fees.

At age 82, Harvey no longer goes duck hunting, preferring golf for recreation. Except when back pain prevents it, that’s how he spends much of his time in Naples, Florida, where he now lives during the winter. He sold Patterson Fuels to his son in 2022, after 49 years leading the company.

Unsurprisingly, Harvey serves as the president of his condo building in Naples, managing its affairs remotely during the warmer months. Several of his friends from Vermont have moved down there full time.

“I would, too,” Harvey said, “if the town clerk would retire.”