The Douglas administration is proposing to eliminate Vermont’s municipal planning grant program. Tayt Brooks, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Housing, Economic and Community Development, says he chose to “zero” out the $408,700 state funds for town planning in order to protect his agency from more cuts.
“As an agency and as a department we are looking at reductions,” Brooks said in an interview. “And we decided to reduce that program as opposed to additional staff layoffs.”
The Commerce and Community Development has lost 20 staff positions since the beginning of the recession. The agency currently has 82 employees, Brooks said.
The grants program provides as much as $15,000 to municipalities that under law must update their town plans every five years. Grants also have been distributed for other planning purposes, including zoning and natural resources mapping.
In 2008, the program had $800,000 in grant monies. Last year, fiscal year 2009, the agency distributed about $400,000 in grants to 41 towns out of 90 applicants, Brooks said.
This year the agency had the same amount of money available for planning grants, but it waited to distribute the funds. Now those funds, if the committee approves the budget adjustment change and the Legislature concurs, would be eliminated, and no grants would be distributed to municipalities for the current year, fiscal 2010.
“It boils down to ranking priorities in the department,” Brooks said at the hearing. “The municipal planning program was already cut in half, and we thought, how well does the program work at half the capacity?”
Brooks made the announcement at the House Appropriations Committee’s budget adjustment hearings this week.
Martha Heath, chair of the committee, questioned Brooks’ decision to eliminate the program in the budget adjustment process.
Lawmakers expressed concerned that towns would no longer be able to afford to meet the state’s planning requirements without the funding.
“We sent out a memo [to towns] last August saying we would put off issuing those grants until later in the spring,” Brooks said at the hearing. “We didn’t get much of a reaction, quite frankly.”
He said his agency didn’t hear any complaints from towns, and that in a meeting with the executive directors of regional planning commissions, “They indicated the predicament the state was in. They understood there were going to be tough choices.”
Video clip of Tayt Brooks at the House Appropriations Committee budget adjustment meeting
Regional planning commissions issued a letter on Friday stating that Brooks was confused about their level of support for their program. On behalf of the commissions, Peter Gregory, executive director of the Two Rivers Ottauquechee Regional Commission, called the municipal planning grants “essential investments” and suggested that the agency provide mini-grants of $5,000-$8,000 to towns.
Sue Sinclair, executive director of the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, said the elimination of the program would be a big loss for towns.
Sinclair says the grants often paid for most of the cost of the five-year updates required by the state. Typically, towns hire regional planning commissions to do the planning work, she said.
Sinclair says her commission provides services for seven to 10 towns a year, and the cut to towns could translate into a loss of about $20,000 in revenue for Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, on top of a $35,000 budget cut last year. The commission’s annual budget is about $750,000, Sinclair said. Its funding comes from federal funds, the state and municipalities.
“It’s a big hit for us,” Sinclair said. “We got a 13 percent reduction in the previous fiscal year, and we’re anticipating another 8 percent.”
The program, launched in 1988, was eliminated once before for a three-year period in the mid-1990s.
Karen Horn, director of public policy and advocacy for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, said it was very difficult to get the program and the funding reinstated.
Without planning grant funds, towns are left with a difficult choice, Horn says: They either have to add the costs to the municipal tax burden or ask volunteers to do the work.
“We would argue if you’re not going to provide any funding to help towns implement these mandates, then you need to get rid of the mandates,” Horn said. “You need to give them options. The Administration and the Legislature need to admit things aren’t going to get done.
Letter from Peter Gregory to the House Appropriations Committee
