No one wants to vote to raise their own taxes and still, we’re suggesting local voters cast yes ballots for the new Central Vermont Career Center. This school currently serves 18 Central Vermont towns/school districts, including ours. Every sending town has a waiting list of students seeking a voch/tech education. And Vermont desperately needs voch/tech workers. Our students need alternative post high school educational and career options.
The $149 million cost of constructing this facility will not go down if the issue is pushed out a year or two years or three years. Vermont’s Act 73 and its current tilting at windmills to restructure current supervisory unions may or may not yield changes, but it will not change the structure of the state’s voch/tech learning centers, nor the need for them. I do not want to pay higher property taxes either.
Moving to Warren where that town (like Waitsfield and Fayston) really needs a new town garage and has brought a $9.7 million bond before voters to do just that. The town owns the land where the new garage will be built and will be able to redevelop the land where the existing garage complex sits – maybe and ideally, for housing in the village.
The town has worked for many years, through many iterations of its select boards and planners to get this proposal before voters. Just like the Central Vermont Career Center, it’s not going to go down in price if the bond fails and the project gets pushed off for a year or three.
It’s apparent to all of us, or it should be, that no one is coming to save us in terms of federal funds. That’s not happening today or tomorrow and likely not even after the midterms (but maybe we can hope.)
There’s work afoot across our communities to revisit the concept of creating town by town local option taxes which may be a prudent thing for us to do as we contemplate infrastructure needs in the face of climate change and a federal funding landscape that is punitive rather than a level playing field. Either way, a yes vote for these two bonds is the right way forward.
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