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Dan Knutson sold the house he's owned in Milton for 28 years in August and moved with his wife and daughter to a condo less than a mile away. A big part of the reason: Property taxes.
"It was driven by property taxes and the cost-of-living. I had to sell," said Knutson, a 67-year-old retiree whose bum arm put him on disability.
He said he watched his taxes increase from under $1,000 when he bought the house to more than $4,000. Now he struggles to pay the $1,500 a month rent on his condo. He is eyeing a move next year to South Carolina.
Knutson is part of an ever-more vocal chorus of Vermonters reeling from rising property taxes and looking for relief.
Whether relief is on the way is no sure thing, but here's an interesting development: It appears in this election season that a pile of politicians are starting to pay attention.
EARLIER: Milne lays out education plan
EARLIER: Governor candidates debate
EARLIER: Shumlin's liabilities grow
Town leaders from Milton to South Burlington to Killington are so frustrated by smothering property taxes that a growing number of them are calling for a two-year cap on property tax rates in hopes of forcing a change to the state's complicated system. Scott Milne, the Republican candidate for governor, embraced the idea. Democratic incumbent Gov. Peter Shumlin denounced it. But even those who are wary say the call for a cap could draw attention to the issue.
Around the state, legislators, school boards and state officials are holding meetings where they are hauling out charts to show that reliance on property taxes keeps rising while school enrollment keeps shrinking. Once divergent groups are conceding in new ways that this issue — among all the challenges that face the state — is top dog.
A recent Castleton Polling Institute poll indicated 59 percent of Vermonters think the education funding system needs to be changed, a response consistent across political lines, age and region of respondents.
Politicians on the campaign trail are hearing a resounding cry from constituents asking them to do something to simplify and repair a property tax system that few understand and an education system that grows more expensive while teaching fewer students.
"Every legislator is hearing from the public. It's not health care, it's not GMO's, not Lake Champlain. It's property taxes," said Steve Jeffrey, executive director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.
"I do think it's louder this time than in the past," said House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, who is running for re-election in his Lamoille County district and pledged the issue will be a priority in the 2015 legislative session. He conceded the solution is hardly a slam-dunk as there are flaws with just about every proposal.
A group of Democratic legislators held a news conference three weeks before the November election to say they feel their constituents' pain and pledged to make changes.
"I'm glad they're starting to hear it," said Republican House Leader Don Turner of Milton, who accused the Democratic majority of being late to the game. "I'm disappointed they've been the super-majority the last six years and nothing's changed."
"I wouldn't say we're late to the party," responded Smith, the House speaker, who argued that instead there has been disagreement within the Statehouse about how to solve a complicated issue. "I think the problem was there was not consensus within the building about what the problem is," Smith said.
Late or not, town and city leaders say they're heartened to see the growing number of conversations going on about possible solutions, whether on the campaign trail or in conference rooms.
"It really seems to have picked up in the last couple months," said Brian Palaia, Milton town manager, who joined other town and school officials at an August summit in South Burlington on the topic.
Property tax cap: tourniquet or bad idea?
The Milton Selectboard is among those that have passed a resolution calling for a cap on the property tax rate after seeing school budgets fail two years in a row and the margin of victory for the town budget grow narrower, Palaia said.
The Milton board went a step further and passed a second resolution with more detail. They wanted a new system for financing education within two years, even if it means considering the ever-controversial mandatory consolidation of schools, a statewide teachers' contract and changes to the system to make those eligible to pay their taxes based on their income to have a greater stake in the process.
Some players, including Gov. Shumlin, have greeted the idea of a cap on the property tax rate with immediate criticism.
"It's just a bad idea," said Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger. "It would do nothing but shift the burden onto other taxes."
Capping the rate would leave an estimated $42 million hole in school spending next year, according to the Legislature's Joint Fiscal Office.
Milne, who is challenging Shumlin in next month's election, has argued that the Legislature should come up with other ways to cover the gap for two years while creating a more workable way to fund education.
"I've got a cap that's a tactic to force the Legislature to act," Milne said. "It's their job to come up with a way to figure it out."
Smith, the House speaker, isn't buying it. "Scott Milne decides he's going to take the cupcake and give the spinach to the Legislature. I think if you want to do something you ought to put how you're going to do it on the table," Smith said.
The South Burlington City Council also passed a resolution calling for a cap on the property tax rate. The council never intended for the cap to be the solution, said City Manager Kevin Dorn. "This is a tourniquet to stop the bleeding and give the Legislature time to come up with a solution," he said.
Rising property taxes to pay for education have forced South Burlington into tough decisions about the city budget, Dorn said. Last year, the city used its reserve accounts just to keep the city budget to a 1 percent increase and hire one new police officer, he said. "That significantly depleted our reserves. We couldn't do that for another year," Dorn said.
In Killington, Town Manager Seth Webb said, "The town has found it increasingly difficult to raise funds for critical projects ranging from annual maintenance to rebuilding aging infrastructure."
A Killington town study shows that one resident's property taxes increased more than 490 percent from 1997-2012 and Killington Ski Resort taxes increased from $226,000 in 1996 to $780,000 in 2012, Webb said.
Jeffrey, at the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, wants a new way to fund education, but is wary of the cap because of the unanswered questions about what might happen in the interim.
But he and others note that Shumlin and the Legislature have contributed to the increase in dependence on the property tax in recent years by adding costs to the property tax, including early childhood education, dual enrollment that helps high school students take college classes and school for prison inmates.
"We're paying for more stuff out of the education fund," Jeffrey said.
"The property tax could be funding 75 percent of all education costs in five years," Steve Dale, executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association, told a gathering of Vermont town officials recently.
Shumlin responds to complaints about rising property taxes by reminding people that taxes increase because local residents approve their school and town budgets. The argument disregards new expenses paid for out of the property tax.
Milne lays the lack of a solution for property taxes at Shumlin's feet, for failing to find solutions during four years as governor and four as Senate leader. "Education is not something Gov. Shumlin mentions often as a broad-based tax," Milne said. "The property tax is a broad-based tax."
In 2005, 61 percent of the education fund was paid by property taxes, according to the Joint Fiscal Office. Ten years later, 68 percent of the education fund comes from the property tax.
Education spending?
As Vermont's eight mayors gathered recently for a news conference in Burlington to endorse Shumlin for re-election, they conceded they were doing so even though their communities are reeling from property taxes. Weinberger, the Burlington mayor, said the group spoke with Shumlin about solutions.
"He's told us he's open to change in the upcoming session," Weinberger said. He added, "We don't have the answer today."
Nobody seems to have the full answer yet, though people on all sides of the issue contend a solution can be found next year.
Shumlin said his focus is on education spending. "I'm willing to consider any idea that helps us to get our spending under control," he said.
Toward that end, he has directed Rebecca Holcombe, the state education secretary, to work with school boards and others around the state, laying out statistics about Vermont's relatively high per-pupil costs and student-teacher ratios and what programs sample schools are getting for them. Holcombe said those stats show that two schools can spend the same amount per-pupil but one has an extensive array of math and science offerings and the other has few.
Ultimately, what Holcombe is doing is selling local communities on the hard-sell idea of consolidating school operations with their neighbors. Legislators broached that territory this year, causing a lot of consternation among communities fearful of losing their schools. Holcombe said the idea is to help local school leaders better understand the realities that shrinking schools face, offer them increased incentives and allow them to make their own decisions.
Both Shumlin and Milne say they support voluntary consolidation with incentives, but both are relying on communities that havce refused consolidation in the past to reconsider.
"I don't think we can look at reduced costs without consolidation," Holcombe said. She added that local boards are more amenable to that discussion than they were earlier this year because they realize some schools are falling short. "We're asking, 'Are you offering your kids less than you did 10 years ago and are you spending more?'" she said.
Milne said good conversations about working together are going on in communities around the state, including his own town of Pomfret, which is having the difficult discussion of working with neighboring towns.
Milne laid out education plans last week that calls for voluntary consolidation with incentives, but varies from Shumlin's.
Milne highlighted a 17 percent increase in staffing among Vermont schools from 1997 to 2012 while there was a 16 percent decrease in students. He proposed forming 15 regional districts to replace the state's 46 supervisory unions and 12 supervisory districts. He would phase out small school grants that have helped the state's tiniest districts survive.
Milne would replace the statewide property tax with regional taxes for each regional district. Each region would then have the option of using savings to expand pre-kindergarten and pay for in-state public college for Vermont students. In the meantime, he called for enacting the two-year cap on the property tax rate within two weeks of taking office in January, then working with the Legislature on a new education funding plan.
Nobody seems to be promising how much money consolidating school districts would save. This year, proposed consolidation talks faltered over that question, but increasingly that's where the conversation is headed.
"Somewhere in the state of Vermont, there are savings to be had," said Dale, the head of the Vermont School Boards Association.
Contact Terri Hallenbeck at 999-9994 or thallenbeck@freepressmedia.com

Thanks to Seth Webb, Killington Town Manager for forwarding this story to me so I can share it with you.
Vito

Comment: Notice how nobody seems to be talking about cutting school spending even though that would be the most direct way to affect property taxes. Note: "17 percent increase in staffing among Vermont schools from 1997 to 2012 while there was a 16 percent decrease in students,". You would think simple logic would dictate cuts!
Vito