Editor’s note: This commentary is by âDavid Schoales, who is a longtime member of the Brattleboro Town School Board and âbeginning his fifth year on the Brattleboro Selectboard. The views here are his own.
[O]ur elected officials in Montpelier are once again looking for ways to reduce the cost of educating Vermont’s children. They are considering raising a little of that revenue from our progressive income tax. This is generally a good idea, so why not make it really simple by building on the current income sensitivity approach and moving it all away from the property tax?
One of the obstacles to doing this is a fear that towns will spend more on roads and fire engines if they don’t have school costs on the property tax rolls anymore.
I remember, when Maida Townsend, now a legislator, was the president of VTNEA and Madeleine Kunin was governor, there was a concerted effort to make a significant increase in school spending — I recall the push was to go from something like $80 million to $113 million, but it was a long time ago and I am a little fuzzy on the numbers. It was a big increase. Kunin got behind it for a lot of reasons. Art Wolfe, the UVM economist, arguing against the increase, made the sage observation that if schools had more money, they would just spend it. Duhh! (I have been unable to take his prognostications seriously ever since.)
If we take school budgets off the property tax, municipalities are of course going to spend more money if they need to. If Brattleboro was not looking at a 4.2 cent school property tax increase completely explained by the increase from the state, we would pay cash for our $950,000 ladder truck and avoid $30,000 a year in interest for the next 10 years. No question. Is that a bad thing for taxpayers?
The school tax absolutely restricts town spending. Does that mean funding schools from the property tax is a good thing and we should continue doing it? Does it follow that the Common Level of Appraisal, which is only real money if you are selling your house or looking for an equity loan, should directly affect how much we spend on our children? This is what happens when we use property tax to fund our children’s education.
It may turn out that a little income tax at a time is the best way to change the way we fund schools, but my experience with legislators, especially liberal ones, is that they will settle for a little better and leave it at that. I prefer they keep pushing for the whole thing — the right thing — until the votes are counted. Right now legislators and the governor can block change by saying they won’t vote for something. This guarantees that they won’t have to vote on it at all. It lets them stop progress and not have to explain themselves to the voters. Cowardly?
Brattleboro property taxes will be up this year. Gov. Phil Scott wants us to eliminate teachers to reduce costs. We can’t do it. We won’t do it. We are instead adding another social worker to help coordinate the astonishing array of services and supports children need these days in order to be able to learn the academic and social knowledge and skills they will need to become an independent part of the human community. Many don’t get what they need from parents and home. Some of them don’t have parents; don’t have a home. So we have to help them. That requires people and that costs money.
