Many towns and cities in Vermont are grappling with rising insurance rates and school costs, as Town Meeting day approaches.
But the Upper Valley town of Hartford is facing some unusual fiscal challenges this year.
Last year, Hartford voters approved almost $14 million in bonds for recreational projects and renovations to the municipal building. Now those bills are coming due, and that’s driving up the budget. And after last year’s vote, an unwanted surprise made balancing that budget even tougher. The cost of providing health care for the town’s 100 employees, plus retirees, skyrocketed, as Select Board Chair Chuck Wooster explained at a budget presentation for residents.
“That was an increase of 55 percent, just an incredibly high number; it happened for a number of reasons. A big one is that Hartford used to be part of a pool with every municipality in Vermont,” Wooster said.
But when the state required towns with 50 or fewer employees to leave that pool for the new health insurance marketplace, Vermont Health Connect, those left behind, including Hartford, had to dive deeper into their wallets.
Wooster says that means there’s no room in the budget for other town priorities.
“So if the money isn’t set aside now it means it all has to come down the tracks, so that’s a deep concern,” he said.
Despite the elimination of five municipal positions and the deferral of pressing capital needs, taxpayers will see a 5.6 percent hike in their property taxes if they approve the town budget. A higher school budget would add another 3.9 percent. There are also more borrowing proposals on the ballot, because the bonds approved last year were based on bad estimates. So Hartford needs more money to finish the work.
“The fact of the matter is, your School Board messed up but big.”
That mea culpa comes from School Board member Peter Merrill, who is running for re-election. He took full responsibility for putting too much faith in the inaccurately low estimates for work on athletic fields and other recreational improvements.
But Merrill still urged voters to approve the additional $3 million to get those jobs done, plus a new $3.6 million bond to replace a school’s heating system. Select board candidate Luke Eastman says he’s not sure yet how he will vote on those items. But he will vote yes on at least one other borrowing proposal.
“In fact I do support the TIF,” Eastman said.
TIF stands for Tax Increment Financing, and here’s how it works. Hartford wants to spend about $900,000 on infrastructure in a downtown district slated for private development. The new revenues from that development are used to pay off the town’s debt.
The idea has wide support, because it doesn’t raise tax rates—assuming the development is completed. Still, taken together, all the bonds on the ballot, combined with spending hikes, worry another select board candidate, Richard Grassi.
"All of us have to ask, that’s a twelve and a half per cent increase in our taxes, and each one of us has to individually weigh if we can afford to pay that," Grassi told the audience.
The answers to his question will come via Australian ballots on Tuesday.
