A common question floating around these days goes something like this, “I didn’t vote for the services the village uses, so why should I pay for them?”
On its surface, this question seems to make sense. Who wants to pay for things they don’t use? However, if we stop and think carefully about what’s being asked, then we need to start identifying which services we’re referring to in order to figure out who should, and shouldn’t, pay for them.
The vast majority of services that we all use (fire dept, police dept, sanitation, etc) were established in the Village first and then later added in the Town. This is because the Village was (and is) more densely populated. When development and population increased in the Town outside the Village, the Town decided to create services of their own to serve the more rural area.
Here is a chart that shows when each service was established.
Due to an unfortunate lack of foresight, the town government at the time did not choose to work with the Village government to extend the services into the more rural areas. They instead decided to create their own separate departments, creating a byzantine taxation system in the process that we’ve been trying to sort out ever since.
Now, let’s consider the payment of services under the three situations the Town of Essex and the Village of Essex Junction have been debating about.
Status Quo
In our current system, the residents in the Village pay for Village-only services as well as Town services. Residents who live outside of the village only pay for Town services.
Separation
If merger fails and the Village of Essex Junction separates from the Town of Essex, the Village will continue to pay for Village-only services but will no longer also pay for Town services. This will cause a loss of 42% of the tax base for residents living outside of the Town, most likely resulting in a combination of higher taxes and reduced services in the town outside of the village. So in the event of separation, residents in the Village will pay for Village-only services, and residents in the Town will pay for services in the town outside the Village.
Merger
If the Village of Essex Junction and the Town of Essex merge then special taxation districts will be created to cover the costs of services, such as sidewalk clearing, that the Village currently enjoys but the town does not. There is a bit of a myth that there’s an entire slew of services that the Village has voted into creation along with the associated tax liabilities, which is just misinformation. There are no “boutique” services “that not even Burlington enjoys”. It’s hard to say what types of services those would even be – free haircuts, maybe?
The ironic truth of the matter is that it is the residents living in the Village of Essex Junction that are paying for services they don’t use, not the residents living in the town outside of the village.
