School budgets fall to voters angry about huge property tax bills | Editorials

The near certainty of a double-digit jump in Vermont’s property tax rate made its mark on Town Meeting Day voters. Of the 93 school budgets considered, Vermont voters defeated 29 of them. In Franklin County, only two school budgets passed. They were Fletcher Elementary and Maple Run Union School District. Enosburg-Richford, Fairfax, Georgia, and Missisquoi Valley Union school districts all saw their school budgets defeated.

Vermont has not seen school budget defeats at this level for decades. The final tally may set the record for the number of school budgets defeated. Typically, Vermonters support their schools. We even have a school finance system that protects two-thirds of our voters through an income-sensitivity program.

But paying an additional 15 percent to as high as 30 percent-plus in property taxes was more than most homeowners could stomach. Voters were quoted as saying it was a choice between staying in Vermont or leaving. 

Even for the school districts that did survive, they simply borrowed a little time. An example is our own Maple Run Unified School District, whose budget passed by a paltry 55 votes. Maple Run has established a strong relationship with the community, which was central to the reason its budget passed. But the closeness of the vote was also a message from the voters to Maple Run’s school board that the board has a year to figure out how to trim its costs. Voters will not accept anywhere close to this year’s increase next Town Meeting Day.

What voters understand is that they are about to see a major increase in their property taxes, an increase that will be part of next year’s property tax rate. Most homeowners cannot afford a 15-30 percent increase in their property taxes, let alone a follow-up year that is even close to this year’s increase.

It gets worse. The wage pressures within schools will continue, as will hikes in healthcare costs. But schools are also facing immediate pressures to deal with deferred maintenance and figuring out how to respond to the unfunded mandate of school testing for PCBs. Schools continue to struggle with the mental health needs of their students.

As we have said before, our educational system is a mess. An expensive mess.

This expensive mess is also being ignored. There is no leadership on the issue. A full year has almost passed without the state having someone to lead the Agency of Education. With rare exceptions, there is no legislative leadership. Vermonters are about to be slapped with a huge increase in their property tax bills, and they are greeted with silence and a shrug of legislators’ shoulders. A tsunami of new costs is about to confront our schools, and, as a state, we don’t even talk about it. Meanwhile, our academic standards continue to slip. We are no longer referred to as the state with the best education system, despite paying more per student than almost any other state.

There are a variety of reasons school costs continue to rise, including the effects of a tight labor market, health care costs, a poor housing market, tiny schools, challenging demographics, and the lowest teacher/pupil ratio in the nation. Any meaningful response will involve some pain. 

There is no way to reduce costs without reducing staff or shuttering schools. [Labor constitutes about three-quarters of a school’s budget.] Anything else is playing around the edges. The Legislature’s role will be to review what it asks of schools and consider what can be scaled back. [At this point, less is more.] The Legislature will also need to figure out how to help fund future school construction costs. It will need to scale back its ridiculous testing program for PCBs. 

These moves are crucial because soaring property tax rates have a significant impact on the state’s economy. They sap the purchasing power of homeowners and slam the brakes on would-be families looking at Vermont as a place to live. They push our housing stock out of reach for average wage earners. They make Vermont a more expensive place to live, if that is possible. The ability of our employers to hire becomes even more difficult.

Is our educational landscape complicated and full of painful twists and turns? Yes. The only thing more complicated is doing nothing and allowing today’s challenges to become even more embedded than they are.

But doing nothing is what we do. That will not change until we find decision-makers with the skilsl, the credibility, the experience, and the political stomach to explain to the voters where we are, why, and what can be done to move us forward.

Vermont’s taxpayers are all ears.

By Emerson Lynn