Let's talk about property taxes, school budgets and the Yield bill. I know this year is going to hurt, but we all tried to reduce how much it was going to hurt. Kudos to all the hard working school boards who cut their budgets as much as they could bear.
School costs are out of control for a variety of reasons:
$50 million increase in mental health spending that really should be paid by the Agency of Human Services, not the schools.
Act 127, which was passed 3 years ago, was rushed through as a way to counter the school funding crisis then, but only made things much worse this year.
$40 million increase in health insurance costs for all education employees.
$50 million increase in expected infrastructure costs.
Please know I didn't override the Yield bill because of party politics. I overrode the Governor's veto because his plan, which is a fix for only this year, involved the following things that I think would have hurt us much more next year and in years to come:
-Eliminating Universal School Meals which is something I vehemently oppose. I don't think not feeding children is the best approach. By eliminating school meals, we're also losing $16 million of federal money which there seems to be no plan for replacing. The state gets money for every meal served, and Vermont farmers can count on a certain amount of income from the contracts they make with our schools. And again, if you feed all children, those that need it most don't get stigmatised and will actually get fed. If you want to talk with me about the success of Universal School Meals, I'm happy to have that conversation.
-Draining the entire $47 million in the Education Reserve fund. Using the Education Reserve for one-time property tax relief is a poor financial practice and is not seen favorably by the rating agencies. This is not an abstract concern, this would have immediate negative cost implications for municipalities, schools, banks, and state governments should they need to borrow or issue a bond. Also, we would have to repay this next year, and there's no guarantee that we would be able to. This would drive up taxes even more next year.
-Removing the $20 million set aside for expanded property tax refunds for households that qualify for income sensitivity. This strikes me as a regressive move. We put that money in there so folks would have greater monetary relief for this year's taxes.
How the Democrats brought down property taxes from the projected 20% increase to 13%:
-Using unexpected excess tax revenue (the eclipse was very good to us for revenue).
-Adding a one-time transfer to the Education Fund from the state's General Fund,.
-Removing sales tax exemption from cloud-based software.
-A 3% tax increase on short-term rental bookings, passed on to the renter, which is $3 on $100.
-Adding an additional $20 million in expanded property tax credit (which the Governor wanted to remove) for the 66% of Vermonters who qualify, based on income.
All of this together added about $96 million in "other" revenue to the Education Fund and allowed us to reduce property taxes from that 20% increase to a 13% increase. Also in this bill is a study to see how we can improve education funding moving forward.
I know this year is going to be hard on a lot of us, and much discussion and study is needed going forward. We need to work together for long term solutions rather than short term crisis management. Again, property tax relief is available (if your maximum household income is $128,000 or less) through Oct. 15th by going here: https://tax.vermont.gov/property/property-tax-credit
I'm happy to have civil conversations with anyone who wants to talk more about this.
School costs are out of control for a variety of reasons:
$50 million increase in mental health spending that really should be paid by the Agency of Human Services, not the schools.
Act 127, which was passed 3 years ago, was rushed through as a way to counter the school funding crisis then, but only made things much worse this year.
$40 million increase in health insurance costs for all education employees.
$50 million increase in expected infrastructure costs.
Please know I didn't override the Yield bill because of party politics. I overrode the Governor's veto because his plan, which is a fix for only this year, involved the following things that I think would have hurt us much more next year and in years to come:
-Eliminating Universal School Meals which is something I vehemently oppose. I don't think not feeding children is the best approach. By eliminating school meals, we're also losing $16 million of federal money which there seems to be no plan for replacing. The state gets money for every meal served, and Vermont farmers can count on a certain amount of income from the contracts they make with our schools. And again, if you feed all children, those that need it most don't get stigmatised and will actually get fed. If you want to talk with me about the success of Universal School Meals, I'm happy to have that conversation.
-Draining the entire $47 million in the Education Reserve fund. Using the Education Reserve for one-time property tax relief is a poor financial practice and is not seen favorably by the rating agencies. This is not an abstract concern, this would have immediate negative cost implications for municipalities, schools, banks, and state governments should they need to borrow or issue a bond. Also, we would have to repay this next year, and there's no guarantee that we would be able to. This would drive up taxes even more next year.
-Removing the $20 million set aside for expanded property tax refunds for households that qualify for income sensitivity. This strikes me as a regressive move. We put that money in there so folks would have greater monetary relief for this year's taxes.
How the Democrats brought down property taxes from the projected 20% increase to 13%:
-Using unexpected excess tax revenue (the eclipse was very good to us for revenue).
-Adding a one-time transfer to the Education Fund from the state's General Fund,.
-Removing sales tax exemption from cloud-based software.
-A 3% tax increase on short-term rental bookings, passed on to the renter, which is $3 on $100.
-Adding an additional $20 million in expanded property tax credit (which the Governor wanted to remove) for the 66% of Vermonters who qualify, based on income.
All of this together added about $96 million in "other" revenue to the Education Fund and allowed us to reduce property taxes from that 20% increase to a 13% increase. Also in this bill is a study to see how we can improve education funding moving forward.
I know this year is going to be hard on a lot of us, and much discussion and study is needed going forward. We need to work together for long term solutions rather than short term crisis management. Again, property tax relief is available (if your maximum household income is $128,000 or less) through Oct. 15th by going here: https://tax.vermont.gov/property/property-tax-credit
I'm happy to have civil conversations with anyone who wants to talk more about this.