Correction: An earlier edition of this story misidentified the committee in which this discussion was held. We regret the error.
By Guy Page
At the January 28 Senate Finance Committee meeting, Sen. Martine Laroque Gulick (D-Chittenden Central) pushed back against the idea that Vermont’s property taxes are too high.
“I would love to do a deeper dive when we say the Vermonters can’t afford their property taxes. I’d like to learn more about that,” Gulick, a Burlington resident and career educator, told her fellow committee members. “I have very high property taxes. I don’t like to pay property taxes, but I can afford them. And I know that many owners are income sensitized. So, I would like to dig into that premise a little bit more because we throw it around a lot.”
Gulick, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and vice-chair of the Health & Welfare Committee, is also on the School District Redistricting Task Force State Aid for School Construction Working Group.
According to her bio on the legislative website, Gulick is a high school teacher who taught French and English and served as Library Director in Vermont and overseas. She has been a member of the Burlington School Board since 2018.
As a member of the School District Redistricting Task Force, she was part of the effort to move away from Act 73’s mandated redistricting and towards sharing services among existing districts.
The comment drew a sharp reaction from a State House observer who requested anonymity: “I think it illustrates how one of the senators most oppositional to education transformation is not in touch.”
Finance Chair Sen. Anne Cummings (D-Washington) pushes back on her later, basically saying her and her husband don’t have pensions like a former teacher and need to live off what they saved.
