On Monday evening, the West Windsor Selectboard members discussed adding a 1% local option tax to the ballot on Town Meeting Day in March.
The discussion primarily looked at ways to increase funds without raising property taxes exponentially, with a conservative estimate that a local option tax would bring in (at minimum) $50,000 per year. According to the board, the revenue of this proposed tax would be used primarily to maintain infrastructure and keep up with the cost of large-scale town items that are most affected by inflation prices, such as fire trucks or highway equipment.
As discussed, this option tax would be presented to voters as three individual components — sales tax, room/board tax, and meals/alcohol tax. Voters would be given the choice to vote for the implementation of all three, two of the three, or only one.
If this local option were to pass across all three categories being proposed, residents and visitors could expect to see an additional tax on goods in West Windsor, a tax on renting a room at the hotel or through a short-term rental unit, and a tax on food or alcohol purchased in West Windsor.
Selectboard chair Mark Higgins explained that if a sales option tax were passed, a 1% tax would also be added to all online orders that are delivered to West Windsor residents. “It’s not ideal, but I don’t know that there is any way to avoid this. These dollars are going to be needed one way or another; it just becomes a matter of how they are collected,” said Higgins.
“It is our duty to examine all these options and present them to voters so they can make an informed decision about how to proceed. We encourage people to attend or listen to our budget discussions. We’re trying to be responsible to our constituents and ensure that if we ask for a $1, it is only after exhausting every other possible solution.”
Fore more on this, please see our Dec. 11 edition of the Vermont Standard.
