“Stop taxing the middle class, or in a year, the middle class won’t exist,” Amanda Shangraw says
During Gov. Phil Scott’s press conference yesterday, Williamstown entrepreneur and third-generation Vermonter Amanda Marie Shangraw asked Vermont lawmakers to understand that “These taxes are killing us. Please. Stop taxing the middle class, or in a year the middle-class won’t exist.”
Her prepared remarks are printed below.
My name is Amanda Marie Shangraw, I’m a 3rd generation Vermonter who was born with Severe Dyslexia and ADHD.
I was raised by a single widowed mother, Nancy Griffin. My father Barry passed away young of a brain aneurysm. I grew up in poverty in rural East Calais, Vermont. My mother took a job and worked overtime every week until she retired from the United States Postal Service, to support a family of three children by herself. I went to U-32 Middle / High School and continued my education at Johnson State College.
My entire life, I’ve wanted to do good. Start a business and “make something of myself.” I struggled so hard in school that own my teacher advisor warned my mother in my freshman year that the likelihood of me ever getting a diploma was slim, let alone become a contributor to general society, but I took summer school and she worked over time so she could pay for private tutors, to come to our home every day, all summer, every year of my high school career specializing in Orton-Gillingham, so I could eventually learn how to read and write.
In the middle of COVID-19, I met my now husband Peter Shangraw, standing here with us today. He’s a single dad who’s raised two incredible children all on his own. The children’s biological mother has been absent most of their lives, as she has spent the last 20 years struggling with severe addiction. Peter is also a multi-generational Vermonter, who was raised by his Mom, Kay, and his Father, Dennis Shangraw, – he’s one of four boys that all grew up in rural Williamstown, Vermont. Peter’s father was a truck driver, known for his ability to work 80-100 hours a week. Peter’s mother, Kay, was a dedicated nurse until she retired just last year.
Peter and I, by complete accident in the middle of the pandemic started a now, nearly, million-dollar business called Bergamot + Amor in Williamstown, where we hand make luxury leather goods and ship them all over the world. We started our business out of Peter’s garage, but quickly outgrew that space. In 2023, we closed on two abandon properties right downtown in Williamstown, VT on Route 14. The buildings are the last of any historic commercial buildings left in the village and require, what we are now learning, is extensive work to make them up to “current code.”
Peter and I have worked 7 days a week, for the last 3.5 years, 16-hour workdays, while our kids grow up. We have sacrificed taking days off, or any vacations to pay for the buildings in town and their continuous upkeep, with the goal of reviving a small town, and promoting tourism to Vermont in hopes that Williamstown can not only build a better reputation for itself, but also survive post pandemic.
The taxes that our business is seeing monthly to the state, biweekly in payroll, and built into every transaction we take, on top of increasing property taxes, and the endless permitting and fees to upgrade our building to meet “current fire code,” state code, and ADA compliancy after over 100 years of no upgrades is bankrupting our small business. Since our business started in 2022, we have paid $141,915.73 in taxes to the State of Vermont. That’s a price tag that Peter and I’s take-home salaries combined have yet to meet. We employ eight incredibly smart and motivated Vermonters, some that started with us as kids, making three times what I did at their age, just starting out in the workforce with zero previous job experience ever and who are still considered dependents.
I’m here today because I voted for a large majority of you, and I’m let down and hurting, and I’m defeated just like thousands of other Vermonters and small business owners.
Democrats, Republicans and Progressives alike, and I wanted to look you all in the face and introduce myself, so when you go to vote bills in, such as the new corporate tax bill or raise payroll taxes to support items in the state general fund you have a face to remember and hundreds of others to think about. Not to mention the huge property tax hike we’re facing.
I’m asking you, our state government. How do we survive when we don’t have pockets as deep as the big corporations? How do we continue to build back better and lift our community up without having to accept a high interest loan or borrow some crazy amount of money or learn how to write grants? We can’t afford to hire additional help, we work non-stop to sustain, between the cost of living constantly increasing and us having to skip our own paychecks to make sure the lights stay on in our workshop, we are drowning.
I’m reaching out because not only do we need help, but I’m hoping this isn’t the first time a small business owner has taken the time to explain how these “small hikes” in taxes are truly killing the working-class Americans and suffocating the American dream, messages and motivational pushes that I was fed for breakfast as a kid, now feel further out of reach than they ever have. I don’t want to sit at home and collect food stamps.
I want to work and continue to create jobs and offer housing, and be a part of the solution, not the problem, but we are learning daily, that in this state it’s easier to give up, than to keep fighting. Small businesses all around our state are folding, and I fear we might be next. These taxes are killing us. Please. Stop taxing the middle class, or in a year the middle-class won’t exist.
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