West Windsor’s 2026 annual Town Meeting, which will be held via floor vote at Story Memorial Hall, will begin at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, March 3.
The meeting will open with votes on candidates for local offices, including the moderator (1-year term), selectboard (3-year term), auditor (3-year term), delinquent tax collector (1-year term), first constable (1-year term), second constable (1-year term), town agent (1-year term), and Campbell Fund trustee (3-year term).
Regarding the open selectboard seat, Mark Harley, the current vice chair, will be running for re-election. Mark Higgins, chair of the selectboard, told the Standard, “Nobody else, to my knowledge, has expressed interest in running for the selectboard seat. But people are always welcome to get nominated from the floor and have the healthy debate that [the process] entails.”
Article 4 on the Town Warning asks voters to authorize all property taxes be paid to the Town Treasurer in two installments. Fifty percent on or before Oct. 30, 2026, by 4:30 p.m., with no discount for payment in advance, and the second installment of fifty percent paid on or before April 30, 2027, with no discount for payment in advance.
The remaining articles pertain to the approval of a budget, to which Higgins told the Standard, “We’re at the end of navigating our eighteen-month transition budget from a calendar year to a fiscal year. That has worked out well, and this will be the first budget that the town has ever voted on before it goes into effect. In previous Town Meetings, the budget started in January. This year will be the first budget that we will not spend until it is approved. That’s a big part of this.” The budget being presented for voter consideration this year covers the period from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.
The budget the selectboard is asking voters to approve will incorporate figures that assume a proposed local option tax is passed, which will be voted on in articles 5-7.
Residents of West Windsor will have to vote on three separate local option taxes: a one percent tax on rooms, a one percent tax on meals and alcoholic beverages, and a one percent tax on sales of other products. The town can decide to approve one, two, all, or none of the local option tax articles.
Article 9 asks the Town to approve budgeted expenditures for the General, Highway, Library, and Cemetery Funds for the fiscal year 2027, totaling $2,000,920. The breakdown is as follows: General fund ($778,829), Highway fund ($1,158,582), Library fund ($58,009) and Cemetery fund ($5,500) of which, $1,485,894 shall be raised by taxes (General $469,703; Highway $958,182; Library $58,009; and Cemetery $0) after applying $454,526 of non-tax revenues and $60,500 from prior year reserves/surpluses.
“Due to the unique structure of the current transition budget,” the selectboard writes in their Town Report, “it is difficult to provide a precise year-over-year comparison for this cycle. Using a compounding analysis based on calendar year 2025 expenses, the selectboard estimates that the proposed budget represents an approximate 3.3% increase.
For more on this, please see our Feb. 12 edition of the Vermont Standard.
