The volunteers addressing their neighbors inside Plainfield Town Hall on September 24 had never sought federal funds to build a multimillion-dollar bridge before. They had no professional experience in floodplain mitigation nor affordable housing development. “We’re all learning as we go,” Karen Hatcher warned the crowd. “It’s so complicated, and very easy to miss something.” Nevertheless, the group, which had formed after flooding devastated the town this summer, presented to their community a new, bold vision of Plainfield. They imagined reengineering washed out Brook Road — a project that would likely cost between $10 million and $15 million — and restoring vast swaths of floodplain. Arion Thiboumery, another resident volunteer, pitched the Plainfield Village Expansion Project, a subdivision of thirty units of affordable housing within walking distance of downtown. He hoped builders could break ground by 2026. The plan is meant to make up for the 20 or so flood-stricken homes that will likely be bought out by FEMA, then razed. An added challenge: finding grants for the work and applying for them. The group of volunteers, mostly retirees, say they are up for it. They feel they have no choice. “We need to make sure that we take care of our town, and we get all the money we need to be able to move into the future,” Hatcher said. Plainfield is not alone. For towns across Vermont ravaged by two years of unprecedented flooding, the onus of rebuilding and hardening downtowns is falling largely on volunteers with limited expertise. That includes unpaid selectboard members — who are used to making decisions about road maintenance budgets, sidewalks and zoning, and are suddenly being tasked with writing sophisticated grant applications and developing complicated emergency management plans to adapt to future flooding. Unlike most states, Vermont has little county-level or regional government. That makes broader approaches to flood-mitigation more difficult, as towns have to effectively band together. Many worry that this also hinders municipalities’ ability to navigate federal bureaucracy and, ultimately, secure funds. “Towns are overwhelmed. They’re overworked. They don’t have enough professional capacity,” said Sarah Waring, state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program. Regionalization, she said, could allow municipalities to work at a more effective economy of scale. State-level officials have been working with volunteers to create some emergency management and flood recovery plans. But the catastrophes of the past two years have exposed Vermont’s…