By Guy Page
Just days after a popular Burlington coffee shop announced it would close amid a strike and challenging financial and social conditions in downtown Burlington, a Barre restaurant is sounding the alarm about overtaxation.
Barre restaurant owner Diane Duquet Hood says she plans to take her concerns about rising property taxes directly to local lawmakers after hearing back from both U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ office and Gov. Phil Scott’s office.
In Burlington, the popular Black Cap Coffee & Bakery announced a week ago it would close, citing the “extraordinarily difficult…economic environment” downtown and the area’s endemic drug abuse. Owner Laura Villalta denied the closure was connected with an ongoing worker strike.
Duquet, owner of the Meltdown, a downtown Barre grilled cheese restaurant, pointed a warning finger directly at taxation.
In an update shared on the Aired Out! Facebook page Friday Dec. 12, Hood said both offices responded to her outreach but advised that the issue should be addressed at the local legislative level. She said she appreciates the replies and intends to contact area legislators.
“This isn’t about pointing fingers — it’s about continuing the conversation at every level and making sure our local voices are heard,” Hood wrote. “I’ll keep showing up, asking questions, and advocating for small businesses and homeowners in our community.”
Hood and her husband, John Hood, co-own The Meltdown. Her update followed a widely shared post detailing the financial strain rising property taxes are placing on the business.
According to Hood, property taxes on the building have climbed from about $11,000 a year to more than $14,000, with the steepest increase occurring last year and another hike now pending. Those costs, she said, are layered on top of a mortgage, insurance, utilities, maintenance, and the escalating expenses of operating a restaurant.
Hood said nearly every major cost has increased, including food, labor, insurance, utilities, and credit-card processing fees. At the same time, she said, there is a limit to how much those increases can be passed on to customers.
“I can’t just tack $3 more onto a grilled cheese,” Hood wrote, noting that many patrons are struggling financially as well and voice that frustration daily.
Hood also challenged the perception that restaurant owners are “rolling in money,” saying restaurants are often among the first businesses to suffer when the economy tightens. She noted that The Meltdown generates significant tax revenue, estimating more than $100,000 last year through the state meals and alcohol tax and Barre’s 1% local option tax, even though the restaurant only collects and remits those taxes.
She warned that continued increases in property taxes could force small businesses to close, leading to lost jobs, reduced tax revenue, and empty storefronts in downtown Barre.
Hood said the outpouring of support following her post has encouraged her to continue raising the issue.
“I love this town. I love this community,” she wrote. “But we need some common-sense relief before the businesses that hold this community together are pushed right out of it.”
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Categories: Business, Good Eats!
Headline fixed:
Ever-rising Democrat-progressivism endangers downtown restaurants, owner warns
Most of these VT citizens (as per election data) voted for a Communist for their US Senator. Most voted for the same in Balint and for Sarah George and the councilmembers of their cities.
What is it that you expected, exactly?
SOMEBODY has to pay for all the social “justice” – i.e.: welfare, that you wanted.
And that somebody is businessowners and homeowners.
Doesn’t work to your liking? Before voting, try some research on how & why Communism/Marxism/socialism NEVER works.
Now, sadly, all you can “elect” to do is pull up your roots and relocate to N.H. like so many have.
Insincere or forced philanthropy and moral hypocrisy, portraying corrupted virtue, is worse than open vice. Good intentions often mask patronizing elitism. They embody tainted virtue, leading to violence and tragedy. Self-righteous morality often becomes repulsive, burdensome, and destructive… i.e., the danger of tainted, hypocritical and self-righteous “goodness”.
People who believe they are acting out of superior moral insight (“for our own good”) will torment us without limit or remorse, because their corrupted goodness justifies anything.
Hypocritical or self-congratulatory “goodness” often masks pride, control, and cruelty. It is more dangerous than transparent wrongdoing because it cloaks itself in virtue and resists self-examination. The result is a kind of moral decay that smells worse (metaphorically or literally) than honest sin.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” ― T.S. Eliot
It’s not just the taxes that have promoted an exodus of restaurants and other businesses from Burlington. The owners are figuring out that their patrons and employees like ample free parking, and not having to use a ridiculous phone app just to park or be putting their life and property at risk in one of Burlington’s scary parking garages. They dont like being harassed by panhandlers while entering, patronizing and leaving the establishment. They dont like their employees having to leave work at late hours and be accosted by panhandlers, vagrants and junkies on their way home from a long day at work. The business owners of Burlington dont like having to shoo urban campers out of their doorways in order to enter their place of business and that the garbage and needles left behind need to be cleaned up so as to not scare away customers. They dont like having to pay to have spray-paint, sometimes presenting hateful or threatening messaging cleaned off their outside walls and windows. They mostly dont like being treated like a golden goose to provide a large part of the tax revenue for providing all the “social equity” benefits that in reality are the reason that those dystopic elements are attracted to Burlington from far and wide in the first place.
There it is in a nutshell for you, Mayor Emma-Hyphen.
Thank you Rich. Perfectly stated, with the appropriate summation, thought
I would have added the Montpelier gang after the mayors name.
Thanks, I could have included: Barre, Montpelier, Rutland, Brattleboro, Bennington, Springfield, Newport, St Johnsbury etc etc…just trying to keep it focused on Burlington where I have personally seen the biggest example of leftist-dystopia descend up on a once-great Vermont city, brought about by it’s own voters…
The warning message obviously applies to any democrat or progressive-led urban area in Vermont or beyond.
An appropriate short video that is relevant to this article.
https://substack.com/@thejefferymead/note/c-187792101?r=u7b87&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Worthwhile.
In Vermont as it looks, either you learn how to cook or go to NH and enjoy a good restaurant. Perhaps the VT restaurant owners can reopen in NH and survive. The state is booming, look for yourself.
First off, the article is about a restaurant in Barre called the Meltdown, not Burlington. Second, I’m pretty sure the business owners identify as Conservative, so most of the comments here are missing the point.
Mentioned in the first paragraph is the recent closure of a Burlington restaurant, and the reasons cited in the Barre closure are in common with similar concerns made by Burlington business owners recently. Unfortunately, the scenario is common to many municipalities that have bent over backwards to accommodate “street people” and have seen the same consequences as a reward for their misplaced empathy.