It’s been claimed that there is a tax shift happening that moves funds FROM the Town of Essex TO the Village of Essex Junction. Is that true?
Let’s start with some basic facts.
The Village of Essex Junction is part of the Town of Essex. Everyone in the town pays for the town’s municipal services.
Residents that live in the Village of Essex Junction also pay for services that are specific to the Village (such as sidewalk plowing in the winter).
Residents that do not live in the Village do NOT PAY FOR ANY VILLAGE SPECIFIC SERVICES. So residents in the Village of Essex Junction are paying twice for libraries, fire departments, recreation departments, capital projects, and community development. The budget presentation where Sara Macy, the Finance Director for the Village of Essex Junction and the Town of Essex, presents that information can be found here.
You will notice that on page 3, under the section titled “Final Thoughts”, the Finance Director states that, “There are inequities in the way government is funded in our current situation. Village taxpayers are paying for services they are not eligible to receive, and are paying more for services that they and TOV taxpayers have equal access to. This means that TOV taxpayers are paying less than the true cost for some services.” (Emphasis added)
That’s a pretty sweet deal for us in the Town, but it’s a pretty terrible deal for those living in the Village. Yet the conspiracy theory website the Essex Retorter and its sister site the NoMergerNow PAC have managed to convince people that its the Town Outside the Village that is paying twice. Simple common sense shows that isn’t true.
The owner of the Essex Retorter is notoriously bad at math, but you don’t need anything more complicated than basic addition to understand that what has been said by the No Merger PAC is obviously false. Here’s an infographic that summarizes the situation in broad terms.
As you can see, the inequities in the budget favor residents living in the Town Outside the Village at the expense of residents living in the Town Inside the Village. As the Finance Director stated in her public presentation, there are ways to fix these inequities, namely: merger or separation into two distinct municipal entities. That is what is now on ballots for the April 2021 vote.