Jessica Dolan, Ph.D. (District 8) is a Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting member.
BRATTLEBORO-Our predecessors were not only creative, they were smart!
They created the Marlboro Music Festival, the Vermont Jazz Center, the Harris Hill Ski Jump, the Brattleboro Winter Carnival, the Strolling of the Heifers, and the Brattleboro Literary Festival.
They created New Chapter, Grafton Cheese, and camps such as Farm and Wilderness, Green Mountain Camp for Girls, and Fairie Camp.
They created farm-to-table cuisine and sugarhouses, fine arts and photography centers, an intergenerational folk music scene, dance, circus, theater, and poetry. And they created families, among whom the concentration per capita of artists, musicians, writers, nature lovers, farmers, and outdoors enthusiasts is high.
For all these reasons, people stay in Vermont, choose to move here, or love to visit. Brattleboro is still widely known as a beautiful and special arts town.
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Recently - as we have discussed at length through Representative Town Meeting, months of public discussion, numerous Selectboard meetings, and public fora - Brattleboro has fallen on financially constrained times.
There was an accounting error to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the same time, we lost our extremely affordable, reliable municipal waste contract, and our only apparent alternative is far more expensive.
We have debated extensively about what to cut from the budget in the form of jobs and services, so we "only" have to raise taxes to somewhere between 10 and 12% (with job and service cuts weighed against a tax hike). Those proposed cuts fall mainly within the library, sustainability, parks and recreation, and public works, but not to the police department.
But other funds are available: a "rainy day"/emergency fund from the unassigned fund balance and a "revolving loan fund," the dedication of which is, as far as I know, up to the discretion of the Selectboard. The unassigned fund, in particular, is supposed to be "to meet unexpected expenditures and revenue shortfalls."
The previous Selectboard decided to dedicate these two funds to create new police officer positions and a downtown substation on Flat Street.
The problem with this decision is we now face a "rainy day" situation due to changing our municipal trash contract and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that were recently demonstrated through budget recalculations.
Not only has that proverbial "rainy day" arrived, it has been raining nonstop! If we dedicate the rest of our emergency fund and revolving loan fund to creating a new police substation and purchase of new equipment and cars, we create a different emergency, which is the imminent possibility of cutting services, infrastructure maintenance, and people's jobs in other departments.
This is a call for a reframing of that dedication - to shift the fund toward loving stewardship of our community and its infrastructure, and to delay construction or remodeling of a police substation - in favor of not cutting other people's jobs and town services.
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Police Chief Norma Hardy has done an excellent job in filling the police force and recruiting new officers who are in training and who have been promised jobs within a changing and challenging culture of law enforcement.
However, the police station moved from its previous, decades-long home within the Municipal Center to a newly renovated location on Putney Road only in 2017. The decision to create an additional police presence downtown did not come until last November, when our town was already in financial trouble.
This is not to claim that a downtown substation should never be created, but that we need to delay discretionary spending on new facilities, uniforms, and cars, so that we do not make cuts to critical social and physical infrastructure in this town.
We should use the rainy day and revolving loan funds for the fiscal emergencies we are in and address the social and environmental challenges we face by investing in loving stewardship of Brattleboro's buildings, infrastructure, and public programming.
We do need the library to be running at maximum capacity for all of our community members as well as visitors.
We need our Recreation and Parks Department to be fully supported to carry out all of their programming and have well-maintained facilities, most critically their senior center, Memorial Park, playgrounds, pool, and summer camps, which are the most equitable and accessible of all of Brattleboro's offerings, so working parents can continue to work during the summer. Recreation and Parks also draws tens of thousands of visitors to Brattleboro for the Winter Carnival, Shakespeare in the Park, summer arts, skiing, disc golf, and gorgeous trails.
We need our Department of Public Works to be able to repave and maintain streets and sidewalks so they are safe to bike, walk and drive on, as well as address lighting and environmental impacts on infrastructure.
We need employees in our Planning Department who can generate funds to update town infrastructure and keep it sustainable.
And we need the Brattleboro Town Arts Fund to complement the great work of the Downtown Brattleboro Alliance, including free, all-ages events that showcase the talents of artists, makers, crafters, performers, and musicians throughout this region, right in the center of town.
Gallery Walk is now the pre-eminent, all-ages public event here, one that truly brings out the joy and brilliance of everyone in this community, while drawing visitors from all around! Maintenance of public, accessible third spaces (public places where people can congregate to enjoy community together) are critical to mental health, public safety, community building, role modeling, and intergenerational relationships, and therefore, the health and vibrancy of our town.
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Without the loving stewardship of all the aspects of Brattleboro which make it a wonderful community - the arts, outdoor recreation, literature, writing, music, theater, public education, and festivities - we are not going to attract visitors.
If in our town governance processes we wish to improve the quality of life here, we must use our budget and available funding to feed the social vibrancy and steward the physical upkeep of our community. Otherwise - blah!
What town could attract residents and visitors if it is not well cared for, is overpriced, and puts its greatest funding emphasis on crisis management, rather than community health, happiness, and beautiful infrastructure?
Investing only in policing, trash, and fire/EMS and cutting away at the funds that support community will definitely not heal the parts of our social fabric that are ailing, nor will it spin a weft or warp that uplifts its beauty.
Fiscal conservatives often don't want to fund humanities, arts, libraries, health, environment, or even children's programming with tax dollars; they generally prefer funding jails, policing, and industry, while they direct organizations in the former areas to vie for foundation grants or private funding.
Tax dollars in our budget originate from the people of this community, and strong-arming us into using them only for policing, fire, and trash - while also threatening us with completely unreasonable tax hikes - does not align with the majority of people's values.
Firefighters, policing, and waste management are essential, but they don't need to require the majority of our budget and funding in any given year.
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Let's call for a delay of a downtown substation in favor of using emergency funds and the revolving loan fund to re-balance the budget.
Let's not make cuts to vital infrastructure, programming, public spaces, and livelihoods in our community in favor of policing.
Especially now, when the new executive branch has made devastating cuts in funding to federal health, environment, culture, arts, humanities, science, libraries, historical societies, farms, and social services, these core elements of town departments need our loving stewardship more than ever.
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