Sarah Turbow is a clinical social worker, an organizer, and a member of the Human Services Committee. This piece does not represent the opinions of the Committee as a whole.
BRATTLEBORO-On the eve of projected sub-zero temperatures and more than a foot of snow, the Brattleboro Selectboard cut the entirety of the town’s human services budget to save homeowners less than $60 in property taxes.
In one act, the Selectboard swiped at Brattleboro’s democratic traditions, its most vulnerable residents, and the town government’s charge to care for all its inhabitants.
Procedurally, the Selectboard’s decision represents a significant break from Brattleboro’s longstanding approach to funding human services.
In recent years, Representative Town Meeting (RTM) has set a percentage of the overall town budget for human services — in fact, the human services allocation is the single line item in the budget the public has this level of control over.
Once the allocation is set, the RTM Human Services Committee solicits and rigorously reviews funding requests from local organizations and brings a proposal of up to that cap to the following year’s RTM for approval. (This year’s funding proposal and cover letter from the Human Services Committee, out last week, are available at brattleboro.gov/human-services-review-committee.)
Until this year, the Selectboard has honored RTM’s decision by reserving the approved amount in the budget while debating other priorities.
At times, it has put forth an article at RTM itself suggesting a reduction in the overall amount for the following year’s budget. For example, last year the Selectboard recommended reducing the allocation to 1% of the overall budget.
Notably, RTM considered, debated, and ultimately rejected that proposal and instead reaffirmed a 2% allocation — consistent with both past years’ practices and a town-wide vote on an advisory ballot question earlier in the year, in which 63% of voters favored human services funding of 1% or more.
But until last week, the Selectboard had never before reduced the human services allocation before it reached RTM, nor had it made retroactive changes to an amount already vetted by the Human Services Committee.
Thursday night’s decision bypasses RTM entirely and nullifies the committee’s proposed $482,665 allocation to 33 organizations. This action effectively seizes control of the one line item in the budget set by RTM and undermines the public’s role in determining these allocations.
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In terms of impact, the decision is quite simply shameful.
The human services allocation is the only local public money spent on homelessness services and mental health and addiction treatment in a community where these issues are constantly referred to as a public safety issue.
Considering the freezing temperatures we’ve been enduring, I am particularly thinking of organizations that under the Selectboard’s budget won’t be supported by the town in the coming year: Groundworks, which provides overnight shelter for those who live outside; Meals on Wheels, which provides meals for homebound seniors; and SEVCA, which offers emergency heating oil and weatherization services.
Overall, almost 17,000 people were assisted by the organizations that applied in the last year; in our town of 12,000 residents, this represents, on average, 1.4 services used by each person who lives here. The people being left behind by these cuts are those we pass on the street every day, our neighbors, our friends and family.
Most of the applying organizations are facing exceptionally uncertain funding environments, due to the unreliability and instability of federal funding.
From federal cuts to mental health and substance use programs, Medicaid and Medicare, SNAP, housing programs, and special education, our local organizations can no longer rely on previously dependable funding streams. Our state government is shuffling funds as best it can, and many of us have maxed out our capacity for individual giving.
In this environment, the town had the opportunity to heroically do its part in bridging the gap and keeping these services and organizations — most of which operate with small budgets — afloat.
It is an opportunity that the Selectboard abandoned, joining the ranks of capricious and unreliable funders of these absolutely vital services.
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“Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society,” the saying goes. I have no children, yet I gladly pay taxes that fund public education — both because it’s the right thing to do, and because an educated public contributes to a better society for all.
The same goes for these human services; regardless of whether an individual taxpayer uses any of these services, our whole community is served by their existence.
This isn’t “forced charity,” as some claim — the purpose of taxes is to serve the public good, not just the services we ourselves use or most champion.
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Town Manager John Potter has estimated that spending the full amount allocated by RTM for human services would cost homeowners $55.75 in taxes per median assessed home.
For those of us with stable housing and heat in this freezing weather, surely this modest contribution to public funds that assist people without housing — along with thousands of vulnerable residents in other ways — is appropriate and just.
As a taxpayer, I share concerns about the rising expenses in our town, but “solving” our problems by zeroing out a vital fund amounting to less than 2% of our overall budget and less than $60 in tax burden is nothing less than cynical.
The Selectboard’s responsibility is to care for all of Brattleboro’s residents; this week, it failed in that responsibility.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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