KILLINGTON — Voters gave the OK on Tuesday to take on up to $47 million in debt to build infrastructure that town officials expect will spur long-awaited growth.
The money, which will be repaid through tax increment financing, will fund a public water system that would pump water from Route 4 up Killington Road into the proposed Killington village area, eventually expanding access to the town water system downhill. The funding will also pay for reconstruction of Killington Road.
A tax increment financing district, or TIF, is a concise area targeted for development that needs infrastructure to achieve further growth. Money from the increased property taxes generated by the TIF development is used to repay the debt.
Optimally, the system allows towns to create infrastructure otherwise unaffordable without significant tax increases. Proposed districts are subject to approval by the Vermont Economic Progress Council.
Voters approved the TIF by a nearly 3-1 ratio, with 337 voting yes and 119 no, according to results shared by Killington Town Clerk Lucrecia Wonsor.
A steady stream of voters was flowing in and out of Killington’s town offices on Tuesday around 3 p.m.
“It’s very busy. We’ve just been inundated with voters,” said Bill Petrics, a poll worker, crediting the TIF vote for the atypically large turnout.
All of the voters who spoke to a VTDigger at the polls on Tuesday cited the TIF vote as their primary concern — and all spoke in favor of the investment.
“I wanted to see the TIF vote pass,” Mikkel Forsthuber said of his reason for voting. He said he believes the investment would “see the health of the town grow for future generations.”
Forsthuber brought his son along to the polls, letting him fill in parts of the ballot, all in an effort to teach the importance of participating in local democracy, he said.
Betty Hughes, who’s lived in Killington for 37 years, said the idea of creating a Killington mountain village has been around for “many, many years.”
The growth that the TIF might catalyze will help Killington “start to look like a lot of the other ski areas,” Hughes said.
“The big word is ‘change.’ People are looking for change,” she said.
Killington’s TIF district, which received preliminary state approval last summer, is composed solely of properties owned by the town’s ski resort and SP Land Company, which owns property near a proposed ski village.
The infrastructure should yield a crop of initial residences whose property taxes would support the entire vision, said Jim Haff, a Killington Selectboard member, at a recent public meeting.
“The result is going to be 180 — approximately 180 — housing units,” Haff said of the initial construction. “This will be only possible with the town’s creation of the water system and road improvements.”
Construction is expected to begin this year.