With town meeting day just under a month away, the race for Rutland city mayor is shaping up to be a competitive one, with the current mayor Mike Doenges and sitting Alderman Henry Heck vying for the position.
The only challenger to the incumbent mayor, Heck served in local government as city clerk for 14 years. But, Heck was not reappointed to the position by Doenges when he was first elected as mayor two years ago.
The two candidates agree that one of the top concerns on voters’ minds is affordability and property taxes, and they agree that drawing more people to the city is a priority. But the candidates’ approaches to tackling this issue differ.
Heck said that attracting people to Rutland is difficult because Vermont is an expensive state to live in, and that he would approach the issue “one bite at a time.”
“Getting people to come here is not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be easy because of housing, and it’s not going to be easy because of the cost, and it’s not going to be easy because we don’t have a lot of high paying jobs,” Heck said.
At the forefront of the former city clerk’s campaign has been a push to curb spending by the local government. Heck has taken issue with Doenges’ proposed city budget and infrastructure projects, calling for slowing down investment in development and reducing cost burdens on city taxpayers.
“What it all boils back to is the taxpayers and trying to commit to a sensible growth where we’re not going to overburden the taxpayers with more and more taxes,” Heck said.
READ MORE
Doenges said that after working with the Board of Alderman to determine priorities such as public safety and infrastructure, the city budget was cut to a 2.8% tax increase, which Doenges characterized as a “shoestring” budget.
“There is no frivolity in our budget. There’s nothing in the budget that isn’t a necessity for the city or has been specifically asked for by the taxpayer,” Doenges said. “That is a big, big difference versus other communities that are still working to play catch up on inflation.”
’‘Rutland is an expensive place to live’
Doenges said that the affordability issue facing Rutland residents is rooted in Rutland’s shrunken population, and believes that investments in infrastructure is part of drawing more people to the Marble City.
“Rutland is an expensive place to live for different reasons, and one of those is the fact that we’re a city that is built for 30,000 people, and there’s 15,000 people paying for it,” Doenges said. “That makes it more expensive to be part of this community, and we have to grow that population.”
Doenges said his strategy for addressing affordability has been to find revenue streams to invest in infrastructure and housing projects that would not fall on taxpayers through a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district, the Roofs Over Rutland Program and a Capital Investment Plan.
The Rutland City Board of Alderman voted to approve the TIF district proposal last month, which is designed to attract private developers to take on public infrastructure projects, and the request to start a TIF district has been sent to the state for approval, Doenges said.
This past fall, the Roofs Over Rutland initiative headed by the Rutland Heritage Family Credit Union with Doenges’ support received $8 million in investments to offer incentives to developers working on housing projects in Rutland.
The Capital Investment Plan is a new initiative proposed by the incumbent mayor and approved by the Rutland City Board of Alderman last month to prioritize capital projects and fixing roads and sidewalks in the future, Doenges said.
Along with voting for who will guide the city into the future on Town Meeting Day, Rutland residents will have the chance to also vote on whether or not to obligate a $3.8 million bond towards the first project under the Capital Investment Plan.
If the article passes, the money would go towards replacing a 40-year-old ammonia-based chiller for the hockey rink at the Giorgetti Athletic Complex, which Doenges said would be harmful to human health if the system broke.
While Doenges said that plan looks at $80 million worth of potential capital projects, the voters will have a chance to vote on allocating funds to each project individually.
‘Projects need to be paid for’
Heck has voiced concern that bonds taken out for capital projects through the Capital Investment Plan would be detrimental to property taxpayers.
“Some folks may not realize, with bonds we have approved for the projects, all of a sudden, you have to start paying it back,” Heck said. “It can affect the tax structure, and definitely he’s going to increase property tax as far as that goes, because, again, those projects need to be paid for.”
Doenges said, on the contrary, the Capital Investment Plan would be funded through a 1% local option sales tax that “people pay when they come to Rutland and they shop in our town.” Doenges said the Capital Investment Plan is a tool to address the need for capital investment while lowering the burden on the property taxpayer.
Rutland City residents voted in favor of implementing the local option tax in March of 2023, and it went into effect in Rutland City in July of that year.
“That’s the first time in a very long time that the city of Rutland has bonded for something that doesn’t increase property tax,” Doenges said. “This is a huge change, and going to be a major benefit over the long run for the city.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Affordability is a leading concern shaping Rutland City mayoral race.