Richard Davis, a retired registered nurse, serves on the Brattleboro Selectboard as clerk. "These comments do not represent the Brattleboro Selectboard," he writes. "They are my personal thoughts."
BRATTLEBORO-Many years ago, there were poor farms run by local towns where the needy people in a community would find help and shelter. I have also heard stories from older Vermonters that when the Legislature was comprised of House members elected from every town, some towns would elect the most indigent among them to be legislators so they could be safe and cared for during the winter.
Another tradition started - I don't know when, but it has persisted in many communities in Vermont. That is towns using tax money to support nonprofit organizations.
I suspect other places around the country may have some variation. In Brattleboro, there has been wide support for this tradition, and we have a Human Services Committee that reviews applications from local nonprofits and then recommends funding from the town budget for consideration by members at Annual Representative Town Meeting.
As our town faces ever-increasing taxes, as will many other communities, we have been forced to look at money we spend and try to decide if we can continue to support programs that we have funded.
The tradition of funding nonprofits is changing in many towns. Some have eliminated this item entirely from their budgets, and others have modified it. (Provincetown, Massachusetts - hardly comparable to Brattleboro, but still a small town - has a Human Services Grants program.)
As a Selectboard member, I feel compelled to look at all options for lowering taxes. When I speak to local people, I often hear that older people are considering moving because of the high property-tax burden.
I think we should continue to support human service agencies, but I think we need to consider at what level to do that.
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Brattleboro has continued to make a commitment to nonprofits by allocating a percentage of the budget to human services for the committee to dole out. It amounts to $461,276 this year. If you look at the spreadsheet for the allocations, it is clear that the funding that nonprofits receive varies widely, ranging from $700 to $75,000.
I don't know how the committee determines how much each agency receives, but it seems to me that the process has resulted in some degree of inequality. Every agency has a different budget and different missions and different needs.
I wonder if the time has come for our town to look at our human service allocations in relation to our tax increases and make some changes.
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We are a compassionate town. We help our friends and neighbors, and the local nonprofits receive donations from people regularly. We have a very giving community, and people seem to give according to their ability.
I have run three nonprofits over the years and have always been amazed at the generosity of people in our community. Currently, Daryl Pillsbury and I run the Windham County Heat Fund, and we are in our 20th year of helping local people who need fuel. Over that time we have raised about $1 million, almost exclusively from local individuals, businesses, and foundations.
We decided not to ask the town for support because we feel that people have been providing us with enough money to keep operating. I suppose that if we ever ran into financial trouble we might reconsider, but then it would be a bad idea for the town to help us if we couldn't help ourselves.
So what would happen to all of the nonprofits in Brattleboro if they received less or no funding from the town? I suspect they would survive and thrive anyway, and they would be able to adjust their budgets.
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I am not saying we should stop supporting nonprofits, but we have to take a look at how we do so. If a Brattleboro taxpayer pays $5,000 in property taxes, they are paying roughly $100 to support the human service allocation. Many of the taxpayers already donate to these organizations, so they are giving them an extra donation through their taxes and letting a committee decide who gets their money.
Perhaps we should adopt a new model that spends less tax money. We could ask for suggestions from the Human Services Committee as well as the public and see what kind of response we get.
If the majority wants to continue funding at the current level, that is OK, but it leaves fewer options for cutting taxes and the other places we may look for cuts may cause even more pain.
This Voices Viewpoint by Richard Davis was written for The Commons.
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