Facing a more than 20% municipal tax hike this coming fiscal year, town leaders in Brattleboro have suggested lowering expenses through everything from curbing office-supply purchases to closing the public pool.
City government counterparts in Montpelier, wrestling with a similar spike, are considering cuts in funding for programs on housing, economic development, public transportation, the arts, and social equity and justice.
But taxpayers in both communities are questioning why officials aren’t slicing into the biggest percentage of the budget pie: personnel.
“I think you guys are dancing around the issue,” Montpelier resident Dave Bellini told the city council at the most recent meeting. “Nobody wants to do it, but sometimes it takes leadership and real management to just go in there and say, ‘This is what we’re going to have to do.’”
Municipal leaders in Vermont’s 247 cities and towns, now drafting 2025-26 budget proposals for March Town Meeting consideration, are reporting challenges with costlier health insurance, continuing 2023 and 2024 flood cleanup and the need to mitigate projected school property tax increases averaging 5.9%.
Amid the struggle to balance local wants and wallets before this month’s submission deadline, officials in Brattleboro and Montpelier are receiving public pushback.
In Brattleboro, the selectboard is considering a $3 million list of potential cuts after discovering the town’s coming $25 million base budget would spark an estimated 22% tax increase. But the proposal doesn’t suggest any staff reductions and includes management raises as high as 9%, prompting the eight-resident Representative Town Meeting Finance Committee to issue a rare public resolution.
“The Finance Committee is concerned that the selectboard was unwilling to consider staff cuts,” the statement began, “relying instead on cuts to services and deferrals to (fiscal year 20)27.”
The advisory committee wants leaders to present a list of potential employee reductions during continuing budget-drafting sessions this month and a “long-term financial plan” before the March vote.
“We recognize that the concept of staff cuts is painful,” it said in the resolution, “but we believe that considering it is an essential part of the responsible management of the town.”
In response, Brattleboro officials say they’ll address the budget at the selectboard’s next meeting Jan. 7.
In Montpelier, a $19 million 2025-26 budget proposal from city administrators calls for elimination of a $116,106 parks and recreation maintenance job, a $92,188 senior center job, a $66,826 part-time assessor assistant job and two $58,086 part-time finance jobs. But with the plan still up 7% year-to-year, residents who want a rate closer to the 3.5% rise in the consumer price index are calling for more staff cuts.
“You have to look at necessary versus nice to have,” Bellini, a former president of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, said as he questioned why the city was paying for such positions as a full-time communications coordinator. “The taxes are outrageous. You have to put yourself in the taxpayers’ place.”
Montpelier City Manager William Fraser, acknowledging he has heard many similar comments, opened the most recent budget meeting with a 10-minute defense of current staffing levels.
“I want to push back,” Fraser said, “about this notion that we have all these people in their ivory tower with their computers doing nothing. Every one of them is delivering services to our public.”
“If we reduce people,” he continued, “we’ve got to decide what work we’re not going to do.”
The Montpelier City Council is scheduled to review the budget proposal at a Jan. 8 meeting and hold public hearings on it Jan. 15 and Jan. 22.
All Vermont communities are required to set and publicize March ballots by Feb. 2, according to the state.
Montpelier council member Sal Alfano, echoing colleagues at their most recent meeting, said his email was full of comments from concerned taxpayers.
“The hue and cry is that we need to keep those basic core services,” Alfano said. “What people aren’t saying is, ‘and reduce services elsewhere,’ but that’s what it amounts to.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Facing steep tax hikes, hard-hit locals call for municipal staff cuts.