Erik Johnson (Selectboard)

Erik Johnson: Carrying on a Family Tradition

Erik Johnson grew up steeped in Jericho tradition. His grandparents lived on the Fay Farm at the corner of Barber Farm Road and Route 117, and his parents lived just up the road. Johnson’s great-great-grandfather bought the land in 1876 and the family lived there until 2004. Johnson and his wife were living in the Foothills section of Jericho when the farm came up for sale in 2020. “We’d been looking for something on the other side of town,” Johnson said. “We thought it was probably a little crazy to take on an older home, but we also thought it would be fun to do.”

Moving into that house was one of the reasons Johnson ran for his first term on the Select Board in 2021. His grandfather had been a long-time Select Board member, and his uncle served on the Zoning Board of Adjustment and then the Select Board. “I’d only been in the house for four months when I was asked to run,” Johnson said. “Living here was a huge factor in making that decision.”

In March, Johnson was elected to his second term on the board. The achievement that he is most proud of from his first term was navigating the question of whether masking should be required since the governor had left it up to the towns to decide whether or not to mandate masks. Johnson was working for UVM Health Network at the time and was worried about how overworked health care providers were and how many people were ending up in hospital emergency rooms. He recognized that he lacked expertise in the field of epidemiology, so he tried his best to listen to voices on both sides of the debate. “In the end I decided that if it kept one person out of the hospital, it was worth it,” he said. “That was a tough decision but I’m proud of the way we navigated it and gave everyone a chance to be heard.”

For his upcoming term, Johnson said the Select Board will work on trying to increase access to affordable housing. With the new Town Plan and a wastewater study in the works, he hopes the board will be able to find ways to make Jericho affordable for people from a wide range of backgrounds.

Johnson noted that Jericho has a number of independent entities like the Underhill Jericho Fire Department, the Deborah Rawson Memorial Library, and Mills Riverside Park but they all seem to be able to work together. That’s one of the things he likes about the town. One area where he would like to see improvement is the speed at which things get done. He is hoping that during his second term he can help the board make quicker decisions and move at a faster pace.

Johnson has spent the last 15 years in health care IT. He’s currently the manager of a team of software developers at a company which is a vendor for the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They work on a website which collects and distributes data on long term care facilities to help people make informed decisions for themselves and their family when it’s time to consider care options.

In his spare time, Johnson enjoys skiing, camping, baking, and cooking. He has recently gotten into making sourdough bread. He has a saltwater aquarium and spends a fair amount of time on home improvement projects. On that front, Johnson noted that his house is actually in better shape than he remembers it and credits Jason Cheney with having done a good deal of structural work including adding cement floors and lighting in the basement and levelling out the kitchen floor which used to have a sizeable dip in the middle.

Johnson believes it really takes a full term for a new Select Board member to get up to speed. He said this was particularly true for him because he had not previously been a member of any board or committee. Additionally, his first term started during the height of the Covid epidemic, so all meetings were virtual. He thinks this term will be more fun because he has a better idea of what he’s doing. He admits he sometimes questions his decision to run when dealing with some of the more challenging members of the public. “I deal with conflict all day,” he said. Nevertheless, he thinks that because he knows more people and has a better idea of the job, he’ll be able to get more done.

Johnson believes that by being on the board he has taken the family tradition full circle. His grandfather was in charge of buying Mobbs Farm with the goal of turning it into a landfill. That never came to pass, and Johnson is proud that he was on the Select Board when the property was permanently conserved.