A week after Charlotte voters narrowly rejected a proposed $2.9 million town budget, the selectboard met Tuesday to make a third round of cuts — the latest development in a contentious budget season.
Voters rejected the budget by 35 votes on Town Meeting Day, with 458 voting in favor of it and 493 against it.
The failed budget represented an 11.5% increase over this year’s budget. The biggest spikes were a nearly $94,000 hike in what board members said were inflation-driven employee salaries and about $80,000 in employee benefits — items some residents cited as the reason they didn’t vote for it.
Data shared at Town Meeting outlined a 2% pay raise and a 7.5% cost-of-living adjustment for the town’s 18 employees. For the top two earners — the town clerk/treasurer and the town administrator — salaries would jump from $87,600 each in the current fiscal year to $96,000.
Last year’s cost-of-living adjustment was 4.5% and was considered high, according to Dean Bloch, the town administrator.
Rosemary Zezulinski said at Tuesday’s selectboard meeting that she was “appalled” and “very upset” to see the sharp increases at a time in which many Charlotte residents are working second jobs and struggling to stay in their homes.
“There are people deciding whether to pay for their food, pay for their medicines, or pay for their taxes,” Zezulinski said. “We need to be compassionate because I don’t believe our greatest asset is our town employees, even though they’re all wonderful. Our greatest asset is our residents in this town — of every background, whether they’re older or younger, families.”
The salary bump is big and a concern for everybody, selectboard chair Jim Faulkner said at Town Meeting last week. The salary increase is based on a market analysis conducted by consultants from Gallagher, Flynn & Co. that the town hired last year.
“The goal was to get to the market rate, which we did,” Faulkner said. “And the benefits come with that; there’s no way you can avoid that.”
Selectboard member Louise McCarren defended the salary increases last week and at Tuesday’s special meeting. “I believe that we need to pay what we need to pay to keep good employees,” she said.
Others saw it differently.
“I voted no … because salaries and benefits are rising exponentially,” Peter Demick said at Tuesday’s meeting. The average salary of a librarian in Vermont is about $50,000 and can go up to $75,000, he said. He wondered why Charlotte wants to pay the library director $88,552 — the amount proposed for fiscal 2024 and the third-highest salary on the town’s list. Two other librarians would draw about $56,000 each, according to the salary chart.
Jerry Hawkins, a resident who also voted against the package, said he supports a decent wage. But he argued those are “fairly large pay increases,” the kind most residents do not get.
“So we need to take another look at how much we’re increasing the salaries and benefits because, for a town of 3,000 people, it was just ridiculous to me,” he said. (Charlotte has roughly 3,900 people, according to the 2020 census.)
The cost-of-living adjustment has increased significantly. In past years, it has been close to zero, but this year’s figure came in at the end of January at around 7.4%, according to Matthew Krasnow, a former selectboard member whose term recently ended. He was voted trustee of public funds last week for an uncontested three-year term.
“So the salary administration policy bakes that into the annual increases for all town employees,” he said on Town Meeting Day. “It’s a very conservative and standard cost-of-living increase benchmark institutions use for annual adjustments to their cost-of-living increase for employees.”
During public comment at recent selectboard meetings, residents raised concerns about fiscal management and transparency — issues some brought up again on Tuesday.
Demick told VTDigger he has never seen a budget vote fail in his 20 years of living and voting in Charlotte. He voted against it because he thinks it is unsustainable for a town as small as Charlotte to have a bond debt of more than $1.32 million.
“It’s like giving a kid a credit card. They max it out and then they get another credit card and max it out,” he said. “Repaying it is literally impossible for people who have lived here for generations. And now we’ve only had an influx, since 2010, of like 250 people. So they are putting a tremendous tax burden on everyone who lives here.”
Lane Morrison, a former selectboard member, offered several suggestions — delaying raises, terminating a consultant contract and shaving down non-essential line items such as building maintenance.
The board also faced backlash for choosing to have residents vote on five articles — including the selectboard’s budget proposal and the library budget — by secret ballot instead of at a traditional Town Meeting this year.
Others said the town and school budget impacts on the property tax rate were not clearly presented, which led to confusion, especially in comments made on Front Porch Forum. The municipal budget accounts for only about 11% of the overall property tax burden, while the education budget accounts for 89%.
The fiscal 2024 budget for the Champlain Valley School District is $96.1 million, a 7.5% increase over current spending. It was a separate ballot item in the regional district’s five member towns — Charlotte, Hinesburg, Shelburne, St. George and Williston — and voters approved it last week.
Town Clerk Mary Mead and Morrison suggested selectboard members come to meetings more prepared and communicate better.
Faulkner said town officials had been preparing and discussing the budget for months, and many residents participate via Zoom at its hybrid meetings.
“When I get complaints about keeping people informed, what I’m hearing is, people are not participating on a regular basis to keep informed,” he said.
The board on Tuesday trimmed several line items and is looking to rework budgets that were passed as separate articles at Town Meeting. That includes nearly $966,000 for the Charlotte Volunteer Fire and Rescue budget — a $75,000 increase that translates to a tax increase of about $33 on a $500,000 home, according to a presentation by fire and rescue member John Snow.
Board members also plan to meet with the library board to discuss the roughly $324,000 library budget that voters approved — almost a $40,000 increase — which some residents are not happy with.
After three and a half hours of discussing potential reductions, the board closed the meeting at 10:30 p.m. and agreed to return to the table next Tuesday.
“We’re very clear that taxpayers are not happy with the budget. We’re going to see what we can cut further,” said Faulkner, who asked department heads to consider equal across-the-board cuts.
The town government must have an approved budget by July 1, when the 2024 fiscal year begins, and set a date for a revote by Australian ballot, tentatively on May 2.