BRATTLEBORO — For the first time since establishing the state’s only Town Meeting of elected resident representatives six decades ago, this southeastern Vermont hub rejected a proposed municipal budget over the weekend after complaints the $25 million plan for the coming fiscal year would increase taxes by 12%.
The community’s Town Meeting has a history of reducing local government spending as early as 1970, when it cut $24,550, and raising it as late as last year, when it added $70,000, records show. But the annual assembly had never returned a municipal budget to local leaders for revision until Saturday’s session at Brattleboro Union High School.
“I’ve made motions, voted for things, voted against things, but I’ve never taken the position I’m going to take right now,” George Carvill, a Town Meeting attendee for 54 years, said in proposing the rejection. “What we need to do is go back to the drawing board. Start over.”
The assembly of up to 150 representatives went on to debate the budget for more than three hours before defeating it by a 57-76 vote. The rejected plan now returns to the local selectboard, which will have to revise it and then schedule another Town Meeting in hopes of receiving approval before the start of the fiscal year July 1.
“We can’t do all the things we’re proposing to do in this budget,” Peter Elwell, who served as municipal manager from 2015 until 2021, told his fellow Town Meeting representatives Saturday. “We’re driving ourselves to bankruptcy, and so the hard choices need to be made.”
Earlier in the meeting, Elwell questioned why the selectboard voted last fall to add up to nine new police positions during what it declared an “emergency” by using $675,669 in unassigned general funds, only to wait until this month to seek Town Meeting approval for the past spending and continuing cost.
“The use of the fund balance in the middle of the year to fund emergency measures should be done only under the most extraordinary circumstances,” Elwell said of a reserve that’s now below the town’s guideline sum of 10% of annual spending. “But in this particular instance, what was funded under the emergency appropriation are ongoing operating expenses, and so we’re getting hit both ways.”
In response, selectboard members said they had deemed the hiring of more law enforcement as an emergency after hearing public complaints that police calls had jumped 16%. But local leaders unintentionally undercut their contention that they faced a sudden need when they went on to ask Police Chief Norma Hardy to recount her remembrance of events.
“I actually presented to the selectboard two years ago the trends that we saw as rising crime,” Hardy told the Town Meeting audience. “It was not accepted well by the town, but it was a reality.”
Instead, local leaders in 2023 were focused on pushing a plan for the town fire department to take over emergency medical services — a change the selectboard went on to approve despite opposition by more than 400 residents who signed a petition and nearly 90 more who wrote letters to the town’s public feedback page.
The selectboard finally took action on calls for more policing last September in a 3-2 vote. Only afterward did local leaders calculate that the new hires and increases in health insurance and trash disposal costs would result in a double-digit tax hike, sparking a wave of warnings from residents and a call by a citizen advisory finance committee for a study of potential staff cuts.
“I think you’re definitely heading towards a rejection of the budget,” former selectboard member Tim Wessel told his onetime colleagues at their Nov. 19 meeting.
The selectboard nonetheless unanimously approved the $25 million proposal in January.
“People did tell the selectboard what their priorities are, where they wanted cuts,” resident Marta Gossage recalled during Saturday’s debate. “It was like talking to a brick wall.”
Gossage was one of several representatives who voiced discontent that local leaders were claiming essential services might stop if the assembly rejected the budget and returned it for revisions.
“We pretty much feel hijacked,” Gossage said. “You made the mistakes, and you’re telling us that if we vote against your mistakes, that is our fault?”
Added fellow representative Abigail Mnookin: “I really resent how much the selectboard and town staff are leading with fear. Why have a Town Meeting if we’re not here to deliberate and have the right to vote yes or no?”
Resident Paula Melton questioned why local leaders were tapping not only unassigned reserves but also a revolving loan fund and other specialized accounts for one-time spending without replenishing the original sources.
“I would like to strip out some of the emotion from this conversation and bring it back to long-term financial planning, which we know has not happened,” Melton said.
“We cannot get a perfect budget out of a compressed process,” Melton continued of any revision period sparked by a rejection. “However, we can certainly get a better budget, and we can hope that the new selectboard members will be better listeners than the ones sitting on the board right now.”
The assembly debated and defeated three attempts to cut the proposed budget to amounts equaling current-year spending plus an increase of 2%, 3% or 4%.
The five-person selectboard — with three newly elected members — was scheduled to start picking up the pieces as early as a reorganizational session Monday night.
“We all want Brattleboro to be a viable place to live, make a living, start a business, raise a family,” resident Steve Heim told local leaders Saturday. “You really have to look after the rank-and-file taxpayer, because there isn’t a town without them.”
