Bethel Residents Face 12% School Tax Increase
By Chris Costanzo

At a special meeting Monday, Jan. 22, the Bethel School Board approved an expenditure budget for the coming fiscal year that is expected to yield a residential school tax rate of $2.297 per $100 of property value. This represents an increase of 12% over last year’s rate of $2.053. The school board will present the new budget to the voters on Town Meeting Day.

The budget itself, which is for $4,550,472, actually represents only a 3.2% increase over the previous year, and is almost exactly the same as the budget the year before then. The new budget will be offset in part by anticipated local revenues of $810,328, which represent a 3.6% increase over the previous year’s revenues. 

Windsor Northwest Supervisory Union (WNWSU) Supt. Tim Mock explained the reason why the tax rate is so much higher, even though the budget increase is modest and revenues are up.

First, Mock noted that the student population is down to 296 from last year’s 308, and the lower number of students generates an increase in Bethel’s cost-per-student, which in turn drives the state’s formula for determining the tax rate. Also, the new budget brings Bethel’s cost-per-pupil slightly over the state’s threshold and generates a small penalty in the tax rate. 

The real blow, Mock said, comes from Bethel’s "common level of appraisal," a figure that represents the estimated percentage that the grand list value of Bethel’s real estate is to the true market value. This year, the common level of appraisal is 64%, which means that the state adjusts the property tax upward to reflect what it would be if the grand list reflected 100% of the current market value.  

Last year’s common level of appraisal for Bethel was about 74%. If it had remained the same for this year, the property tax rate this coming year would actually be lower than last year’s, thanks to an anticipated increase in the state per-pupil grant and a reduction in the state-wide portion of the property tax.

There is a town-wide reappraisal in progress, which if done in time, will pretty much eliminate any significant impact of the common level of appraisal this year. It would, of course, lower the tax rate, but at the same time property values would be higher.

At last Monday’s meeting, the school board actually considered three possible budgets to present to the voters. One was for a higher amount of $4,592,264, and would have generated a school tax rate of $2.348. According to Mock, the latter represents the lowest possible budget without cutting personnel. The budget proposal that the board approved requires cutting the equivalent of one full-time position.

School administrators also floated a proposal for an even lower budget of $4,510,972; which would have yielded a tax rate of $2.266 (and not generate any state penalty) but would require cutting two full-time positions.

The school board went into executive session to discuss the impact of such cuts in terms of specific employees, and ended up opting for a budget that will require eliminating only one position. The final decision will be up to the voters in March.    

Bethel’s anticipated $2.297 school tax rate for residential properties, combined with an anticipated $0.89 municipal tax rate (including separately-warned items) would bring the total property tax rate to $3.19, versus $2.79 last year—an increase of 14%; or $400 on a $100,000 home.

But the anticipated increase in the school property tax rate will be cushioned for many residents, thanks to the income sensitivity provisions in Vermont educational funding law.

In Bethel, the school tax on a house and the first two acres will not be over 2.95% of household income, for those whose household income does not exceed $90,000.

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