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By Guy Page
With the polls opening less than 24 hours hence, “affordability” has been a recurring campaign slogan among both incumbents and challengers alike. But just how affordable is Vermont? VDC provides this brief overview on trending affordability of taxes, healthcare, energy, food, disposable income and housing.
School taxes up by double-digits this year, next year
- This year Vermonters are paying for unprecedented school spending with a state-average 14.5 % property tax increase PLUS two new taxes on short term rentals and software purchase. They’re looking at double-digit increase next year as well, Gov. Scott predicts.
- Vermont’s aging school buildings will require $6 billion to renovate the salvageable and rebuild the not-worth-salvaging.
How can we fix it? A new state study says bigger schools will both save money and improve student learning outcomes. The governor has strongly hinted he wants the state to head in that direction. But in many rural school districts, parents don’t want consolidation.
Healthcare costs ‘worst in country’
Analysts who published a state mandated report on health care costs said this summer ‘Vermont has the ‘worst health care costs in the country.’ that the average lowest-cost Silver-level premium health insurance plan in Vermont is over twice as much as the national average, and that health insurance rates next year will climb more than 20% if action is not taken.
How can we fix it? At least three ideas have been floated –
- As with school spending, state-hired consultants are recommending consolidation: state-imposed drastic cost-saving changes such as the virtual closure of rural hospitals.
- The Green Mountain Care Board has ruled that Vermont’s biggest hospital network overbilled insurers and ordered reduced insurance receipts. UVMMC has promised to fight the order, saying that the billings were necessary to provide adequate care and that hospital still lost money.
- The Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA) recently argued for a Medicare-style of pricing services to be imposed on hospitals. “To put an end to unreasonable hospital prices and protect our health benefits, we need to implement reference-based pricing (RBP) during the next legislative session. VSEA and VT-NEA, in concert with allies, will ask the legislature in 2025 to establish a new and fairer methodology for setting hospital prices, using Medicare rates as a benchmark.”
Reference-based pricing in Oregon that sets billing at 200% of Medicare rates is working well, VSEA asserts.
Food inflation second-highest in nation
A Consumer Affairs study found that as of November of last year, Vermont’s food inflation rate was 7%, second highest in the nation, after Pennsylvania. According to Forbes, Vermont food prices are 14th highest in the nation.
Electricity price 10th highest in nation
Vermonters pay an average of 17.53 cents retail for a kilowatt-hour of electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That rate will face upward pressure in the coming decade as the $10 billion Renewable Energy Standard of 2024 replaces lower-cost fossil fuels with higher-cost instate renewable power.
Heating oil down from 2022, up from 2020
A gallon of heating oil cost 3.59 gallons in October of this year, compared to $2.04 four years ago. Where it goes next is anyone’s guess – petroleum pricing has been boom and bust ever since the first oil strikes in western Pennsylvania and the organization of the industry by the likes of John D. Rockefeller.
Disposable income 40th in nation
Vermont is in the bottom 20% in disposable income – the money that’s ‘left over’ after necessary living expenses (yearly expenses for housing, healthcare, taxes, food and transportation) are paid. Our average Cost of Living is $43,927 per person, 15th highest in the nation. Our average ‘disposable income’ is $18,848, according to a Forbes survey.
19th highest in home purchasing costsThe median home purchased in Vermont costs $ 380,266, with an average monthly mortgage payment of $2,272, Forbes reported.
By tomorrow night, we’ll know whether affordability was a compelling concern for a critical mass of Vermont voters. Tune in to VDC-TV Election Night Coverage at 8 PM on YouTube, Facebook and X.
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Categories: Elections
Re: “How can we fix it (the education system and aging school buildings)?
Guy, with all due respect, your question is yet another false dichotomy. It assumes the current education system and aging school buildings should and can be fixed. This is a false premise.
While I understand that my point of view in this regard is abstract to many VDC readers, as a former school board director, Workforce Investment Board member (liaison between schools and businesses), employer, and parent of two children who went through Vermont’s public school system, it is my contention (and the contention of others) that our traditional education infrastructure and pedagogy is obsolete – and has been obsolete for decades.
In fact, the only reason ‘the system’ exists is because the special interest groups stalking their financial prey at the great education watering hole have propped it up to benefit themselves, not the children or the parents it’s purported to serve.
Public school buildings, as they currently exist, are as responsible for this obsolescence as are the graded, one-size-fits-all curricula.
Here’s the deal. When I built my house here in Vermont back in 1976, I had telephone access only to a ‘party line’. And I suspect most VDC readers don’t know what a ‘party line’ is, a fact that further emphasizes my point.
With a party line, neighbors shared the same copper telephone line. If my phone call ring tone was two short rings and a pause, then two short rings and a pause, I knew one of my neighbors was the intended recipient. If the phone ring tone was a three-ring sequence, I knew it was a call for me. And yes, my neighbor and I could listen in on each other. We all dealt with that as civilly as we could.
Then, in 1980, the Bell Telephone monopoly was broken up into competing service providers. At first, there were only a few providers competing. But think of how communication has evolved since then. Who could have imagined personal smart phones with exponentially more computing power and access than the NASA Apollo moon landing folks had?
I’ve been a communications specialist for decades. And I can assure VDC readers that our children’s education is not only obsolete, it’s becoming dangerous to follow the same old methodology. And I’m not about to list here the potential educational permutations that an educational free market will create. Suffice it to say, the possibilities are infinite. Literally! Infinite!
And our only requirement as a constitutionally regulated society is to provide ‘equal access’ to these infinite educational options, NOT the impossibility of contrived ‘equal outcomes’.
Think outside the box folks. All we have to do is facilitate an educational free market and let it do its magic.
How do we facilitate this free market?
I said it before. I’ll say it again. Step One! Tell your legislators to dust off the H.405 School Choice bill languishing in the House Education Committee. And if anyone has a problem foreseeing the benefits of an educational free market, please raise those concerns here and now on VDC’s comment page. Again, I’ve been deliberating the educational free market for decades, in theory and in practice. And I’m sure I can explain to anyone willing to ask and listen how virtually any hypothetical question fits the free market model.
I also moved here in ’75 because I could not afford to live in NJ or accept the way of life it offered. It was a good solid republican state back then with a lot of businesses springing up. Then came act 250 and well, one bad move after another as democrats gained more and more control. We have not had a real republican governor since Snelling!!
We all remember the money saving propaganda associated with Act 46, the last school consolidation; we’re paying for the results of that. There were no savings.
Why do a repeat? Wasn’t it Einstein who said: ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ‘ Why not try something different?
I would encourage you to look into “Micro Schools”. My Twin Grandsons age 15 are completing their Junior year of High School total cost 2800.00 each which I gladly paid out of their 529 plan. It is Pretty much an on-line curriculum with weekly class at a another students domicile. What would make it fail would be the parents lack of involvement. Fortunately my Daughter works at home
10/19/2024 – Epoch Times: “A new report reveals that school choice has significantly narrowed the academic performance gap between low-income students and their more affluent peers.”
Go figure.
10/19/2024 – Epoch Times: “New data from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy’s homeschool research lab show that 90 percent of states reporting data saw an increase in homeschooling in the 2023–2024 school year.”
Go figure.
The fall of Vermont started with the electing of democrats. The are an incompetent group and Vermont is a great example of that. The way out of this morass is to overwhelmingly elect “conservative” Trump endorsing republicans(if you can find them here in VT). There you have it and so simple even a democrat will understand it…but will not do it.
Remember a government with effectively one party rule IS NOT A DEMOCRACY, let a lone a federal republic.
Well Vermont, how do you like your tax bill, the cost of item you need daily, well if your happy, then keep doing what you’ve been doing and vote for a progressive, but if your sick and tired of being sick and tired then do something about it !!
Vote the progressive clowns out, they don’t care about you and your financial stability
they only care about there power ” Super Majority ” to bad the are more like the Stupid Majority on policies and spending.
The administration and funding of Vermont’s education system is informed primarily by emotion. The same is true of the majority of Vermont voters, their choices are based on their emotions. Trying to rationalize with people who operate from their emotions is a fool’s errand. No doubt they’ve already rationalized why their property tax bills are so much higher than last year. This is a sinking ship, folks. It’s not going to change in Vermont. There are so many other places in this country to live a happy life without having your income extorted by politicians whose sole loyalty is to the NEA.
I respectfully disagree, Robert. Education funding is logical and objective. Bank robbers, after all, rob banks because that’s where the money is.
I guess we’ll see if there are still happy places in other parts of the country after this election. Depending on who wins, we could have a nationwide Democratic supermajority that will be reinforced for years to come by granting automatic citizenship to the “bought” illegals that have flooded the country; and laws like CA has, where it is illegal to show ID when voting.