To The Editor:
Regarding the legislative bill H.454, to assess a higher tax on homes that are not homesteads or do not have a landlord certificate, I am asking my neighbors who are allowed to vote to consider the proposal from a different perspective than what appears on the surface to be a simple and deceptively pain-free solution to increase state revenue for schools.
We are your neighbors. Our story is my father-in-law moved to The Valley full time and built his house here in the 1970s. My husband has been coming to The Valley for 50 years, and I with him 40 years. We’ve inherited the family home.
We are not rich; we are retired living on a mostly fixed income. Our homestead is a modest 1200-square-foot duplex in another state and family obligations prevent us from making Vermont our full-time home.
When we are not in Vermont, we have rented our house as a seasonal rental to families who come every week to enjoy and participate in The Valley’s offerings and local economy. We have rented it out for even longer stretches of time to local families in need of a temporary place to live due to tragedy and other unexpected turn of events in their lives. We have rented it out to Sugarbush employees who work seasonally or full time.
For those of us in The Valley who do rent to local tenants, consider that increasing our taxes necessitates passing the increased cost on to our next tenants in the form of increased rent. We love Vermont but we also cannot afford to be an unrepresented endless source of funds for school budget shortfalls.
Jane Kontoff
Fayston
