Eric Caron is a retired high school guidance counselor.
BRATTLEBORO-At the Jan. 13 meeting of the Brattleboro Selectboard, a longtime resident stated: “I really want to give my house to my kids and I’ve got a daughter who’s living in Guilford who’s earning, I don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing somewhere about $40,000 a year, maybe $45,000 a year.
“My taxes alone are over $10,000 on that house,” he said. “How do I give it to her? What can I do to make it so that she can at least have a chance of getting it?”
Each year that goes by, the town has hired more employees and increased services and capital expenditures. The result is a town budget with year-after-year million-dollar budget increases and double-digit tax increases for its residents.
Despite this, to my knowledge, the Selectboard chair and the town manager have yet to acknowledge that the town tax burden has created a financial crisis. Tom Franks, a Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting member, has extensively analyzed the numbers and has shown that residents now pay the largest percentage of their income for town services than any other municipality in Vermont.
Why is this a problem for the future of Brattleboro?
Let’s look at some examples of the impact of the high tax burden on Brattleboro residents.
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When I moved into my current Brattleboro neighborhood about six years ago, all the homes were single-family homes, with one also including a small apartment for an elderly family member.
I’m now aware of three additional homes that rent to non-family members. In some cases, more than one rental space was added. Several of my neighbors have told me the reason for this change from single- to multiple-family homes is to be able to pay their increasingly large tax bill.
My family became close with an immigrant family of seven who settled in Brattleboro. In a short time, the community benefited from their strong work ethic and desire to succeed. They all had jobs and were strengthening our community.
Unfortunately, when they were ready to purchase a house, they realized that they would be able to afford a larger and better-maintained home in another part of Vermont. They left their Brattleboro apartment and their jobs, purchased a home in Bennington, and have already entered the workforce there.
At that recent Selectboard meeting, a couple introduced themselves to me. They explained that they wanted to stay in Brattleboro but now were looking at moving to a place with a lower tax burden. He said he became a Representative Town Meeting member and started attending Selectboard meetings because of the growing tax burden but that nothing has changed.
If the tax burden is so clearly a damaging problem for the town, then why do the taxes continue to rise and stay higher than most of Vermont?
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The town’s management has a strategy to ensure all departments either increase or maintain their budgets. This strategy employs shame, guilt, and fear.
This became especially clear after the 2026 town budget was rejected, when and the town manager’s office issued a memo to the Selectboard included in meeting materials for April 1, 2025. This report included frightening, outrageous predictions of all the terrible things that would befall the town with every slight budget decrease.
These were offered as truths.
We were told people would have medical emergencies because they didn’t get timely medical info from the Library, utilities would be turned off, and people would die leaping from burning buildings. Chris Grotke of iBrattleboro.com posted a commentary, “Town of Brattleboro Budget-Cutting Scenarios Win Award for Short Fiction.”
I never thought that strategy would return, but it showed up again in the Jan. 15 Selectboard meeting.
When a modest 1.5% reduction to small departments and a 3% decrease to large departments was proposed, it seemed like three Selectboard members were ready to make the first move toward real financial accountability in years. But then the old strategy was put into use and all three Selectboard members were stopped in their tracks.
Every department head was asked to speak to the effects of the proposed cut to their budgets. Rather than give a professional explanation of how the department would reduce services or spread out the reduction to minimize the impact, the threat of vast service-cutting steps were described. Shame, guilt, and fear showed up in almost every statement.
What was not discussed: how our skilled department heads could adjust their budgets to reduce costs while maintaining core services.
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How does Brattleboro return to sound financial footing?
The first step is for our town manager and our Selectboard to agree we have a financial problem that must be solved, at least partly, by lowering municipal taxes.
This means focusing on essential services, decreasing department sizes, rebuilding the emergency reserves, and building revenue — not by increasing taxes, but by strengthening the financial base of our amazing town.
Brattleboro residents need to make their concerns known. The best places to do that are at Selectboard meetings, and by writing or speaking to Selectboard members. And by voting in the election on Tuesday, March 3.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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