FERRISBURGH, Vt. (WCAX) – People in the Addison Northwest School District hit the polls Tuesday to vote on the district’s third budget proposal. Some people say they just want a budget pass to protect teachers, while others say enough is enough, the burden needs to be taken off of taxpayers.
After two failed budget votes, ANWSD passed their third budget of $27,250,000, a $1 million reduction from the over $28 million budget put forth to voters on Town Meeting Day.
For Ferrisburgh resident Steven Audy, this comes as a relief. “My kid and everybody else’s kids deserve to have a proper education and the teachers deserve to get paid, they need materials. They shouldn’t have to pay for them out of pocket and most all of them do, so I’m happy to pay more taxes to make sure people get what they need,” said Audy.
But others at the polls Tuesday said there is a reason voters kept shooting down the budget. “Affording the schools in our area is becoming very very burdensome to the taxpayers,” said Ferrisburgh resident Douglas Sutton.
Sutton says the state should rethink how they’re funding the schools given lower enrollment and believes consolidating districts could be beneficial.
“I am sympathetic, I put my children through the school system here in Ferrisburgh… Programs continued to drop off because we couldn’t afford them in our budget. So I think it is sustainable, it is doable, if we looked at consolidating the schools and operating in a more efficient way,” said Sutton.
Mount Abe School District and Addison Northwest School District voters shot down a merger of the two districts in the fall of 2022. Both district budgets had to face a third round, with Mount Abe’s revote still pending.
Others say the voting stalls bring light to a larger issue. “We can do better for our teachers, but we can also do better for the taxpayers that we’re pushing out of Vermont right now,” said Lindsay Hausler.
Meanwhile, the revised budgets for Otter Valley Unified Union and Barstow Unified Union did not pass Tuesday night. Those school boards will be meeting soon to figure out the next steps.