new year, new song

Written By Laura Powell

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful few weeks of holidays, no school, and in the case of my house, gifts of chocolate cake.

Ok, we’ve had many meetings since my last update, so let’s get into it:

FY26 Budget

The board has gone back and forth about several potential cuts, but to be honest, none of them change the reality that we are still playing catch up to a historically underfunded budget. Our municipal manager has said both last budget season and this that we are about $100,000-$200,000 away from a healthy budget. We have increased capital reserves to account for upcoming maintenance and costs for a lot of our aging assets as well as new costs (such as the new fire engine). We are currently planning to cut about $13k from the Clerk’s budget since they appear to be overstaffed, looking at the vault hours and recording fees. Other cuts we discussed but kept: annual fireworks (which we will be asking another organization to step forward and take on after this year); and increasing the employee contribution to insurance premiums by 2%. I also previously requested funding for a Planning Director, but rescinded the request in lieu of something I will write about soon.

At the request of the Village Trustees, the Town and Village are increasing our disbursement from the Woodstock VT Endowment Fund, which is a fund created by the Rockefellers when they donated their mansion to the Park to pay for the loss in property tax revenue. This will buy down the tax rate for the Town and the Village by a little more than 1% and 2%, respectively. This is not a long term solution, in my opinion, as buying down taxes in the near term has historically meant rebounds (see: Phil Scott and the 2022 education surplus). The most effective thing the Village can do to achieve affordability in the near future is to merge with the Town. The most effective thing we can do as a Town to become more affordable is to increase our Grand List by building more housing.

The board is meeting Monday at 4pm to hear final comments on the budget and hopefully vote on what you will vote on Town Meeting Day. You can find a draft of the budget here:

https://townofwoodstock.org/about/fy26-budget/

Asks for YOU:

We are potentially voting on the following items at the meeting on Monday, so please let me know if you have thoughts/opinions on the following:

  1. Whether or not we should include an article to move voting permanently to Australian Ballot? This comes with the knowledge that vote will still have to be in person this year so if you care about changing it, you will have to show up on Saturday, March 1st to vote. As a reminder, we already vote on elected officials, school district matters, bond articles, and petitioned articles by Australian ballot on Tuesday.

  2. Susan has been working closely with the Vermont Land Trust to secure some grant funding through a conservation easement for the property. The question in front of us is how much do we want to place in a conservation? Do we want to hold any back? The conflict here is between receiving the money now and restricting the land in perpetuity, or receiving less money if we decide to exempt some land from conservation with the idea that we could leverage it in the future.

Double-dipping

This will not be the first or last time you hear me talk about special articles on our ballot. Non-profit organizations use special articles to fundraise on Town Meeting Day. These articles are included because they have collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot. Last year, these articles increased our tax rate by an additional 2-3%. The town budget alone currently calls for a roughly 10% increase from last year’s tax rate. PLEASE BE MINDFUL WHEN VOTING FOR THESE MEASURES - especially from organizations that already receive funding from our operating budget (i.e. Pentangle Arts, Norman Williams Public Library) and have other channels to fundraise from (such as private donations and endowments). I am not saying that these organizations do not deserve funding, I am simply trying to discourage this medium as a means of significant fundraising at the taxpayer’s expense (prepares for tomatoes to be thrown).

Zoning

If you’re going to watch a meeting this week, you should watch this week’s Planning Commission meeting where our shared energy coordinator from TRORC, Harry Falconer, outlines why our zoning bylaws need to be reviewed. If you recall, this is one of the goals agreed on by both boards in service of our priority to increase housing and development, specifically in the Village.

Reading/watching:

Laura Powell
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