Policy fixes won’t effect Lamoille North budget

The $36 million spending plan for Lamoille Union high school, middle school and the four elementary schools, excluding Cambridge, already reported on by the News & Citizen, will still be put forward for approval by district residents on March Town Meeting Day by Australian ballot, along with a proposed $3.8 million budget to fund the tech center.

Other districts have taken the step of delaying votes amid anxiety about rising taxes. Stowe, whose school board made drastic cuts to its proposed budget, delayed the annual school meeting to March 15.

As lawmakers at the Statehouse rush through adjustments to Act 127, the education spending law passed in 2022, schools could be allowed to delay budget votes into April, but Stowe is obliged to let its teachers know about any reduction in staffing by March 15 and was beholden to that date.

Clark has said previously that Lamoille North benefits from Act 127, which is “functioning as intended” for her district. The law is meant to encourage a more equitable distribution of state education funding to districts with lower-income families, English-language learners, students from low-population districts and small schools in sparsely populated districts.

The roughly 8 percent increase in elementary school spending and roughly 19 percent increase in middle and high school level spending was largely spent to ensure that pandemic-era support programs and staff, previously paid for by federal pandemic funding, remain in place.

The increase also reflects rising health care costs and the higher salaries negotiated by educators last year.

Lamoille North administrators said that 75 percent of the district-wide budget will be put toward instruction and student support.

The district had previously contemplated proposing a bond to fund new administrative and athletic infrastructure on Cricket Hill but that has been indefinitely delayed due to the flooding that ravaged some of its communities and other pressures being felt among residents.

Because the district limited overall spending to just under 10 percent, that allowed it to take advantage of a 5-percent tax cap provision to spread out the tax impact of rising budgets.

However, legislators appear poised to eliminate the tax cap in favor of a “cents discount” intended to ease the tax burden on district’s losing tax capacity under the new law, according to VTDigger. The changes to the law have already passed in the House and the cap removal was approved by the Senate Committee on Appropriations Tuesday.

Though Lamoille North is seeing its tax capacity increase under Act 127, according to Clark’s presentation on Monday, the tax impact would actually lessen under this new formula. Instead of being capped at 5 percent, the proposed budget would result in a property tax increase of just 2.65 percent.

“I can’t stress enough that this is a responsible budget,” Gallagher said. “I know that there are changes coming where perhaps districts will be allowed to re-adopt or change their budgets. We don’t want anything to change. We are not trying to cut out millions in capital expenditures. Whatever happens for them, I’m happy for them. We are concerned about Lamoille North’s budgets: They’re responsible, they’re sound and they’re conservative.”

The uncertainty wrought by Act 127 throughout the state is being compounded by sharply rising property tax rates in many towns in Vermont caused by the rise in property value caused by the pandemic-era overheating of the state’s housing market.

This is reflected in the common level of appraisal, which measures the gap between the assessed property value in a town and what the average cost of property in that town, and it is different in each community.

No town in the Lamoille North district saw the average property value skyrocket, but the gap between assessed and market-driven property values have continued to grow. Hyde Park has agreed to conduct a state-mandated, townwide property reappraisal. Eden has so far balked at a similar request.

“It can be a little complicated to grasp from time to time, but our budgets, for basically $73 for a $150,000 home, are providing phenomenal opportunity for our students and support services for our students,” Clark said.