Essex residents will vote Tuesday on whether to pursue a merger between the town of Essex and the village of Essex Junction.
It’s a ballot measure that aims for unity but prompts division.
Essex Junction is a village within the town of Essex, with its own municipal government and about 12,000 residents. The town and village combined have about 22,000 residents.
Merger proponents say a unified Essex would streamline the consolidation of municipal services already underway between the two communities and help equalize the residents’ tax bills. Essex Junction property owners now pay taxes to both the village and the town; Essex property owners outside the village do not pay village taxes.
Some critics see the merger as an attempt by Essex Junction residents to shift part of their tax burden onto town residents.
Essex Junction has its own library, recreation department and public works departments, all funded by village taxes, not town taxes. However, village residents then help to pay for those same services in the town.
The village contains 42% of the town’s property values, but the village trustees contend the village does not receive 42% of municipal services provided by the town.
Many town residents and officials disagree, including Irene Wrenner, a former selectboard member and a vocal opponent of the merger.
She says Essex Junction residents not only get a lot of value for their taxes but “they’re getting more than what [they] pay for for a lot of these departments,” Wrenner said. “These same old conversations about how the village gets nothing are not only inappropriate, they are mathematically wrong.”
Similar merger discussions have occurred in many Vermont communities, where residents of the village area wanted things the town wasn’t interested in — such things as water and sewer systems and local police coverage. In many communities, the town and village governments have merged, but others have held on to the division.
Essex town and village voters narrowly passed a similar merger proposal in 2006, but the merger was overruled just months later in a follow-up vote after some residents petitioned the town to reconsider. Margins were extremely tight on both tallies: 209 votes made the difference the first time and just 187 on the second.
Since then, Essex town and village officials have worked to consolidate some municipal services. They now share the same finance department, the same municipal manager and the public works manager. They also share funding and access for the Essex Area Senior Center, and the police department has served both village and town since the 1970s.
According to Elaine Haney, chair of the Essex selectboard, these consolidations have saved taxpayers $3.4 million since 2013.
“We know for a fact that consolidating departments and services saves money,” Haney said, “and so merger is the next step, because what remains to be consolidated is very difficult to do without merging.”
Both town and village still have their own fire departments and separate planning departments.
Village merger proponents say it’s unfair that they have to pay for town services they don’t directly benefit from. A merger would also allow town and village to consolidate their ordinances, which Haney says would make Essex more attractive to developers.
“Some of the things that are benefits of a merger are intangible; they don’t have line items that I can point to and say we’ll save ‘x’ dollars because it’ll be this much easier to do this work,” Haney said.
Though she understands that the village-to-town tax shift can be hard for town residents to accept, Haney said, the merger would actually move the city toward tax equity.
The current total municipal tax rate in the village is 86.9 cents per $100 of property value and 53.9 cents outside the village. Based on those rates, the municipal tax bill for a $200,000 house is $1,738 in the village, $1,078 in the town.
School taxes are separate from municipal taxes.
Under the charter plan up for a vote on Tuesday, the tax rates would equalize over a 12-year transition period.
Haney says that, “on average, a village taxpayer is paying $925 more per year than the town outside the village taxpayer, and in exchange for that, they are not receiving 100% of their services they’re paying for.”
Wrenner thinks that is misleading. She says 59% of the tax dollars collected by the town of Essex in the 2020 fiscal year came from the town outside the village, according to data she gathered from Essex’s general fund summary, even though both communities are fairly close in population.
And while there are some instances where village residents pay for services they don’t often take advantage of, like the public library in the town of Essex (Essex Junction has its own), Wrenner says there are other cases where that value is made back.
For example, Wrenner said, the village accounted for about half the calls made to the Essex Police Department in 2020, despite accounting for only 41% of the town’s overall tax dollars.
“The problem is, I think, with the village budget that continues to grow, they’re looking to share it,” Wrenner said. “Maybe instead of looking outside the village, they could look internally and say, ‘What can we do ourselves to help our tax rate, rather than looking for someone else to share it?’”
Taxes are not the only sticking point in the merger debate. If the merger does pass, residents will have to find a way to reconcile the key differences between the charter up for a vote Tuesday, and the charter that Essex Junction passed in November.
The major difference is representation. In March, Essex voters approved a proposal to change selectboard representation to a 3+3 model, with three members elected from the village and three from the town. Now, the Essex selectboard has five at-large members.
The Legislature, which has power over municipal charter changes, cited a number of concerns with the charter as written by the town, and covid-related complications prevented discussions from moving forward. Now, the 3+3 model is back in the town’s merger plan.
The merger proposal approved by the village in November looks different: a 3+3+1 model, with three members from the village, three from the town, and one at-large.
Andy Watts, an Essex selectboard member who lives outside the village, thinks the 3+3 setup would likely result in “complete deadlock,” citing deep cultural differences between the communities.
He also says that should the merger pass, the Legislature could kick the two plans back to Essex so residents can reconcile on their own. The Legislature could also decide to table the proposals until next year.
“That’s one of my arguments for not going forward with the merger plan now because we could vote on it in November and have it have the same effect, that the Legislature won’t look at it until next year,” Watts said.
Clarification: An earlier version of this story did not fully describe why the Legislature did not approve the proposed charter change.