To the editor:
Due to Vermont’s byzantine Education Funding Formula, there is some confusion surrounding Greensboro’s Homestead Education Property Tax.
The plain facts are as follows: In 2024 Greensboro’s Homestead Education Property Tax Rate increased by 9.7%. In 2025 it increased by 8.7%. This year, the smoke hasn’t yet cleared from the legislative session in Montpelier, but based on numbers available from the Joint Fiscal Office the estimated increase in Greensboro’s homestead education taxes will be from 20.9% to 24.5%; Governor Scott wants 20.9% (using $105 million in onetime money from the General Fund to buy down tax rates this year) while the full Vermont House of Representatives wants 24.5% (using $52.5 million in onetime money from the General Fund to buy down tax rates this year and a similar amount next year).
Over the last three years Greensboro’s Homestead Education Property Tax will have faced a combined increase of between 39% and 43% depending on what finally comes out of the legislature. The proposed Mountain View Union’s budget scheduled for a revote on April 7 is $9,173,292.42. With 284 students in the district that comes to $32,300 per student.
Part of the reason for Greensboro’s enormous increase is the small number of sales used to calculate Greensboro’s Common Level of Appraisal. There are two reforms that could help ease this problem going forward: First, there should be a circuit breaker that limits the change in CLA for any town in any given year; Second, the CLA should be based on a much wider sampling of property values (perhaps by county). Small towns should not be put at this kind of risk.
The state is moving, very slowly, toward the so-called Foundation Formula that will cap spending, but the legislature has been twiddling their thumbs. They have spent a decade focused on forced district mergers and consolidations. That has been tantamount to rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Almost all the evidence indicates it won’t fix the problem.
Finally, an enormous number of the costs that are now borne by the Education Fund are, today, essentially social services and not education. They need to be shifted to the General Fund, using a more progressive income tax.
Dave Kelley
Greensboro
David Kelley is a Vermont attorney. He lives in Greensboro and is a former chair of the Hazen Union School Board. He was part of the legal team that represented more than two dozen rural elementary school districts that appealed forced mergers under Act 46.
