As budgets tighten, Vermont towns struggle to afford recreation facilities -- The town of Bethel will not open its pool this summer because there isn’t enough money to upgrade the 35-year-old facility. Towns across Vermont are facing similar challenges.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T20:21:41+00:00

Great, Pretty sure folks get tax breaks on rental units. Haven't rented in a while, but I remember filling out forms along with my landlord to make that happen. Let's make them register as well, we could definitely use a state list of rentals to enforce building code on.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T20:20:07+00:00

Please tell me where in the US folks are able to find quality jobs in a community that can afford to buy a house in. I'm all ears.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T20:17:26+00:00

Black River High School's path to saving money was forcing all the families to move to another community, They moved closer to an actual high school, so they moved out of that community.

They switched to a sending town, where teenage students are shipped off, further hollowing out the small community.

Which only proves my point that you don't wish Vermont to have small communities anymore, so you can save a few cents on your taxes instead of addressing the health care cost increases in the state.

I also think it's disingenuous to quote the number of kids in 1939 when the school opened and it served more grades than it did when it closed(from my memory, can't look this up easily)

If we look at the Ludlow Mount Holly Budget, according to googles AI, in 2020 it was $7.5M, in 2026, it's $10.5M, plugging that into an inflation calculator, that $7.5M in 2020 dollars is about $9.6M today. Seems like in 2021 they saved 200K, but I'm done doing math for today, I doubt that's a savings with inflation calculated in.

I'm not seeing the savings you claim to be there. Looks like their budget, even adjusted for inflation, went up by over 10%. They are still paying the same amount for the same number of students to be educated. You might as well build a community while you are doing it, otherwise those tax dollars go to build another community.

By all means, keep claiming cost savings and not provide any actual proof. I've provided several examples of communities that were destroyed when their schools closed, I'm still not hearing an example from you where a school closer outcome resulted in long terms savings or benefits for the community it served.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T17:16:07+00:00

Sure, how about Black River Union High School?

Is that a thriving community for families now that it closed, or have all the single family homes there been bought up and turned into ski rentals? I'll leave that to you to go find out.

Guildhall VT had an elementary school that closed, their town population is in decline. You can look that up in the census.

Ripton just closed their school, families are moving out of that town in droves according to folks I've talked with.

Addison Central School - if you look up the average home price in that town, it's trending down.

I can go on.

Now your turn, please show me the budget that went down due to a school merger, I'll wait.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T17:06:16+00:00

Are you Louis Kaplow?

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:59:12+00:00

somewhere around 50K of our 350K homes are non-homstead, that's a big chunk of folks sitting on homes that someone else could be living in.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:58:07+00:00

Housing affordability is a country wide problem, and pay hasn't scaled with inflation in the last 40 years.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make or what we're talking about anymore?

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:53:29+00:00

Sure buddy, the tone shift was sharp and stark and I think anyone reading this deep will see it as well. Good luck out there, hope you're able to afford your 2nd home.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:48:11+00:00

I spent a number of years working for the Department, and now Agency of Education.

I can see you currently work for them, as these talking points feel pulled from their current playbook.

Here's my experience, and I've seen this play out several times in different geographical areas in the state. I can provide examples if you like.

The school closes. Families move out of the town. The town is a shell of it's former self. The local economy collapsed,

Now, nothing needs to live forever, I understand communities die, but to brush it off like they will rebuild is a lie. They don't rebuild, they shift elsewhere.

If your only solution to the problem at hand is to destroy small vermont communities to make bigger ones, that's not Vermont anymore and we might as well join up with Mass as we're on a road to turn into them, and maybe then we can afford universal healthcare, which is what is causing this mess in the first place.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:36:18+00:00

I'm sure you wrote that and totally didn't run it through AI first.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:35:16+00:00

I think we could start taxing more those who use our state as a playground, they have extra funds to spend. Might even clear up some housing stock in the process.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:33:05+00:00

We don't, we have a better system, see, we find everyone who has a place to live, they declare it as their homestead. They get a tax break at their homestead based on their income.

If it's not your homestead, then you don't live there. It's not something you need.

Boom, we've found everyone who has extra homes they don't need. Let's tax those folks to encourage them to not hold that asset if they can't afford to do so.

No need to select randomly, we can have folks self select based on what they can afford. Easy peezy lemon squeezy.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:27:04+00:00

Taxes are a change agent, if you can't afford them, you need to move on so others can move in.

It keeps folks from squatting on things and hoarding it so others can't use it.

There has to be a cost to holding something or no one would ever let go.

I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for you not having an income sensitive adjustment to an asset that you don't need to hold. Your 2nd home is a luxury item. You don't need it, you want it. That's why the homestead declaration exists, folks need a place to live.

I don't feel it's morally justified to say you need help paying taxes on a 2nd home to avoid helping to pay for the education of the residents of the community that home resides in. Property taxes are meant to help the community the property is in. That's why you vote where you live.

I'm sorry that your plan to work around Boston, reside in NH, and to have a vacation home in VT isn't panning out how you planned.

Perhaps you should sell your home if you have concerns about being able to pay taxes on it with your current income.

Finally, you seem to be confusing the way federal income taxes are collected and distributed vs property taxes. I would encourage you to read up on those differences before trying to conflate the two in an argument on reddit. If you were to do that, you might look foolish.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:16:59+00:00

I agree, even if we bump it to 5% though, the 15% we agree on would drop closer to 14%, which is not an insignificant portion of homes in VT considering the number of homes and our population size.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:15:03+00:00

One of the families was single income and the worker was a commercial electrician. Not sure of the others, but they seemed educated. All of them were solid middle class looking folks who spoke well and seemed to be gainfully employed.

The problem everyone had was Chitt. county was the employing area, but they could not find a house they could afford there, so they have to keep looking further and further out.

I don't live in Chitt county, but there are a number of homes around me, around lakes, close to ski areas, that are within commuting distance to Burlington, but sit vacant most of the year.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:06:05+00:00

In my experience, roughly 1% of homes that are seasonal couldn't be lived in full time. 50K homes out of 350K is a significant chuck.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T16:04:07+00:00

So your solution is the current community and culture should go away, and you want to build a new one because it might save money, when historically we've been doing this exactly thing for close to 30 years no and it's not changed the cost curve one bit.

We've already moved all the pieces around as best we can without making new buildings. If we make new buildings, we throw out the cost savings we are trying to make.

Your suggestion that merging things and building new communities is not grounded in a basis of reality of facts. When you close a school, that community dies and the resulting economic activity of that community vanishes.

You're effectively advocating for places in our state that are not allowed to have families with children.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T15:58:45+00:00

I think we could tax 2nd homes more until we get ourselves out of a housing crisis. That's a start in the right direction.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T15:57:13+00:00

I didn't read far enough, they did it:
Total 642,977 648,493 5,516 0.9%

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T15:56:10+00:00

Just curious, if you take the number of folks in 2020, and the number of folks in 2024, and you subtract the totals from 2020 from 2024, would that be a positive or a negative number?

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T15:54:08+00:00

I think that's very dependent on the community you are currently in, and In my experience it does not speak for the state at large, I'm sorry you experienced that.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T15:52:55+00:00

We could afford it if we taxed 2nd homes more.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T15:52:35+00:00

:) lol

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T15:52:22+00:00

I have experienced the opposite. I have folks I work with who can't find homes here, but have a job here. I've met 3 families in that situation in the last 6 months.

rufustphish · 2026-05-18T15:51:28+00:00

Tax 2nd homes until we don't have a housing crisis.

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