by Don Keelan
Warning: you may not want to read about this topic concerning Vermont and its 250 or so towns and villages. But it needs to be published.
For the past 260 years, Vermont towns and villages have been structured and governed the same way, but this will not be sustainable in the future. For some municipal entities, the future is here.
Village and town government operations have become more complex and challenging in dealing with municipal, state, and federal laws and regulations, financial matters, and an inability to engage folks to serve in numerous positions and boards.
It is typical for a Vermont village or town to have the following positions needing to be filled: select board, planning board, zoning board, listers, treasurer, delinquent tax collector, dog and fire wardens, town/village clerk, and building/zoning inspector. Add the highway/roads and wastewater/water/recreation department personnel to the list.
Once run by volunteers, towns and villages have resorted to the professional field of town administrators and managers; even the smallest towns and villages have gone this route.
We must include the most critical of services: fire and EMS. Not every town or village has a standing fire/rescue, and they depend on their neighboring town or village to have one to call upon when needed.
What was historically a volunteer effort, fire and rescue have, in many locales, become full-time paid positions. This gets to another pending crisis: the inability of rescue services (many are nonprofit entities) to sustain themselves financially. Fire companies are right behind them.
The over-arching problem from the above is that town and village governments have become an expensive burden for their residents, and the future cost could be exponential.
In my hometown of Arlington, my home’s assessment is $557,000 (a big house on 17 acres), and the school and town taxes are $11,153 or 2% of the assessment. On top of the taxes I incur, I make annual payments of $488, $200, and $1,344 for water, wastewater, and rubbish removal (not including any spring or fall clean-up). Arlington has no police department, relying solely on the Vermont State Police.
In Arlington, Virginia, a friend’s home with a similar dollar assessment has taxes of 1.13% or $6,302, and all of the above services are included. Now, I don’t wish to live in a county of a quarter million folks and a million cars going through the county each day trying to get into Washington, D.C. What helps considerably is that a substantial portion of the Arlington, VA tax base is made up from commercial properties. A luxury most Vermont towns do not have.
Therefore, innovation must take place to address the inability to obtain volunteers, hire critical personnel, operate the complexities of a small municipal entity, and maintain an affordable tax rate.
One possible innovation would be for small contiguous towns and villages to consider joining forces – in effect, merging. At the risk of being tarred, feathered, and banished from Arlington, I suggest that our town leaders explore the feasibility of joining the three towns contiguous to Arlington.
Sandgate, Sunderland, and Shaftsbury are presently populated with 400, 1,100, and 3,600 residents, respectively. Add to this Arlington, and there are approximately 7,500 residents—a reasonable number of citizens to govern under one governmental entity. Redundancy of town employees, managers, and boards would be eliminated. None of the above towns have a police department, and that just might continue.
Others would take up fire and rescue to determine if these critical services might fare better if a more regional, county approach was considered.
What is needed is for towns and villages to think outside the box on how to remain financially and operationally viable for future generations. The signs that trouble waters are ahead are evident with increasing taxes, dwindling volunteers, and the challenge of hiring personnel. I haven’t even addressed the next generation’s affordability to live in the above-mentioned towns. We will have to wait for another time to discuss the merging of schools.
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Categories: Commentary
Centralization and consolidation of government has never saved the taxpayer a penny. On the contrary, as VT Act 46 has proven recently, your costs go up and your taxes go up and your liberty disappears. In my town Fire and Rescue Services account for about 3 percent of the property tax burden and these people do a great job of providing services at an affordable price. If I recall correctly, 17 percent goes to the municipality which does a very good job of respecting the taxpayer. The other 80 percent goes to the state to pay for “education” Our elected state “representatives” have ZERO respect for the taxpayers. The state education bureaucracy which includes the Vermont Agency of Education, The Vermont Superintendents Association, The Vermont Principal’s Association, The VTNEA and the Vermont School Boards Association live large at our expense while school age children cannot read, cannot write and cannot understand mathematics. It is way long past time for Vermonters to direct their attention to the education monolith that is wreaking havoc upon the fabric of our society.
The fix is to allow for full school choice including home schooling. Put restraints on these organizations by giving local control back to democratically elected schools boards. This all requires a return to what once worked and removal of the entrenched super majority from the general assembly.
Mr. Lindberg: You have hit the nail on the head. Nicely done.
I guess you’re going to have to add another 18.5% tax increase to your monthly bills. You can thank the state legislature for that. There should be a minimum number of years living in the state before you hold one of these positions. State or locally. Especially since the town boards vote on things with very little participation from the community. Especially the Vermont locals. Combining them will just add more egos and even less participation.
I lived in the town of Essex and the same pipedream was sold to Essex and the neighboring towns to consolidate the town school systems and save money. Yes, the schools were merged to the EWSD, no money was saved and the smaller towns lost control of their educational preferences. The EWSD is committed to indoctrinating children into identity politics, liberation theology, and critical theory to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. One global collectivist society under the leadership of the UN by using Social, Emotional, Learning to open one moment and at a time. There was a reason why the last administration withdrew the US from UNESCO, and it had nothing to do with xenophobia.
You are SPOT ON!!! And this is precisely why these traitors to the flag want all this “workforce” housing being chronically & aggressively pushed by the progressives & dimocrats — to place US into!!! Drab, dreary, overtly modest often communal-type housing in Vermont – a beautiful, peaceful state wherein tourism was thriving & revenue from it was overflowing now suddenly MUST be altered via now disregarding important environmental protections put in place and indiscriminately throwing up as much low-income (i.e.: “workforce) housing into VT to forcibly diversify and increase this rural state’s population by a couple of hundred thousand!!!!!!!!!
Fight Against the Left’s Newest Grand Idea: “Workforce” Housing. Keep Capitalism – If You WORK, You Can Eventually Afford a HOUSE. I don’t know…..worked from 1776 to about ten years ago. What happened?
Where’s all the rubbish as well Mr. Keelan about the dimocrat’s plans plan to bring in hundreds of thousands of “new residents” into rural VT – whom I assume will be culled from the ranks of illegal aliens, more culturally “diverse” Africans from varying countries, & more gangsta thugs from the neighboring tribes near this state) which will further necessitate the need for the ever-so-imperative “workforce” housing in a state where numerous sizable businesses have LEFT, most manufacturing has LEFT, and the business climate is rather unfriendly for opening new businesses????
But your ever-so-clever government has simply changed the name of “Low-income” housing (which developed a negative connotation for obvious & justifiable reasons) to first “affordable housing” (which people eventually learned just meant yet MORE low-income housing) and now to the new & improved verbiage of “work-force” housing…and most Vermonters of all political affiliations are again eating that up like homemade apple pie. You know, it’s housing for “teachers & “police officers”….like the police VT defunded & who no longer patrol and all those teachers who have always been largely historically homeless, correct?
Then…..with less places left to work but with the dimocrats working tirelessly to “diversify” VT & destroy whatever culture there is remaining, exactly why does VT require this plethora of “workforce” housing? If you’re still not sure, re-read the first paragraph again – Vermont is being transformed into part of the new “liberal world order” (as Joey Biden refers to it as) where all but the wealthy & powerful will be living in Soviet-era style housing where billionaire Klaus Schwab proclaimed you will own nothing, and be happy!
Dimocrats care NOTHING for the underprivileged; they simply use them to advance their own power structure and now transform the USA into a Communist/Marxist nation dictated by THEM.
While, workforce housing might seem off topic here, it is not. Stop your town’s push toward “workforce” housing; it is another ruse!!! And for God’s sake, Leave Vermont Vermont!!!
This again is an old rich white guy tell us how to live…. Had enough yet?
They keep doing things NO ONE IS ASKING FOR. Did anyone ask him to make this stupendously ridiculous idea , unlikely. If they did which I doubt, they were more of the same type as our author.
As the comments say with history on their side. You lose control of your town and your kids education. How many of these places have people who are NOT all about that stuff ( trans, equity and so on). I will say again It is not for any ones children to know what you F***, or how. They are children they need to stay that way to become useful adults. Not sexualized incompetently taught dingbats, which in a small setting you can stop.
Am I the only one who sees the NWO tentacles reaching this way.?..again
Perhaps the solution is to reduce the regulations to get back to a state where small towns can manage themselves. This would also go a long way toward making living in Vermont more affordable for everyone.
If towns struggle to manage themselves, they would be far better off outsourcing certain functions privately than “merging” to create regional governments that are no longer accountable to anyone. It’s one thing when I can run into my town manager at Shaws. It’s quite another when he or she lives two towns over and never has to face me.
I’m totally in favor of consolidation I mean it worked so well with education (and yes Guy I’m drunk 🍺🍺🍺already)
I really enjoy your commentary and ideas, Don although I have very little faith that consolidating/merging town services will result in any savings. It seems logical but somehow when it come to top-down government, saving money for taxpayers doesn’t seem to be a priority. As long as our Legislature is majority Democrat/Progressive nothing will be less expensive. Current examples: rush to require electric vehicles, clean heat standard, proposed banning gas stoves, proposed banning garbage disposals (how is that required composting program going)…., ban trapping – will hunting for food be next?
In our book The Vermont Papers (1989) Frank Bryan and I proposed dividing Vermont into around 40 self-governing shires, which would take back most of the “people programs” created by Montpelier in the past hundred years., along with tax base to pay the costs. We still think that’s a decentralizing solution, not a consolidating one.
While that may be a solution there, you propose a one size fits all solution. Locally here in Clarendon, with a population just under 2500, we have a well staffed volunteer fire department. EMS is provided by the not for profit Rutland Regional Ambulance Service, which has not needed to raise it’s assessments in many years.
Our small office staff does it’s job well and efficiently. Our various town boards work well without a town manager. It is also worth noting that our REGIONAL school tax is over twice our town tax. (1.4452 vs .4796) I suspect yours may be as well.
Is it true that cities and towns are incorporated? Meaning they are corporations and not a citizen government? Meaning they are operating out of compliance with the Constitution as written? All the taxes we pay is simply paying interest on bundled debt bonds or funding a debt that is unconstitutional to begin with? The Federal Reserve model stretches its bankster fraud down to the local level. Any ideas of keeping bankrupt corporations afloat is long gone now – the panic is starting to rise and the implosion is immenient. UAE no longer accepting petro dollars. US Treasury bonds are junk on the global market. All trickling down to your town and city soon.
Consolidating towns is the last step before relinquishing complete control to the state. This is not just a bad idea, it would officially end our constitutional republic.
The first step in rolling back centralized government is, we must learn to say no to bureaucrats.
This all started years ago with local zoning, and every time you agree to another zoning regulation, you give away the power enshrined in your constitution.
Once you have given consent to such ordinance, it will compound and be brought to bare against you time and time again.
If one town consents to regulation, most certainly others will cut and paste their way to the same restriction, all encouraged by regional goals, that are not necessarily a need of your community.
In my opinion, our republic is consumed, by our democracy!