ANGELO LYNN

As Addison County residents review the upcoming school and town budgets ahead of March’s Town Meeting Day votes, we encourage everyone to spend a few extra hours studying the proposals. That’s because the federal gravy train of the past three years — thanks to the pandemic — are over, yet some of the harmful effects are still hanging on. 

The inflation that followed the very necessary infusion of federal aid to sustain the economy those first two-plus years — without which the nation would have surely spun into a severe recession with huge job loses — has slowed way down, but still impacts wages and construction/maintenance costs. Health care costs, averaging over 15% annually, continue to be a determining factor despite everyone’s best efforts to hold them down (see guest editorial above). And, in Vermont, the school taxation formula combined with the CLA and a huge increase in housing prices these past four years, will cause property tax rates to increase higher than usual this year in most towns.

The impulse for many homeowners is to just say no to higher taxes. But that’s not realistic. Schools and towns need to be frugal, but they also need to keep up with the maintenance of their facilities and pay competitive wages, lest the buildings fall into disrepair, and hard-to-find employees leave for greener pastures. Rather, the goal is to maintain the quality built into the current system, while being sensitive to the public’s capacity to pay.

That inherent tug-of-war will be the focus at many Town Meetings and will require residents to have a solid understanding of the underlying forces impacting this budget cycle. If you have specific questions about those budgets, send me a note at [email protected] and we’ll address it.

Angelo Lynn