I was going to do an April Fools’ story, but the Town of Brattleboro beat me to it. : )
The Town Manager has provided the Brattleboro Selectboard with an extensive overview of current town operations. Along with it, he provided a number of dramatic scenarios that could unfold if the new selectboard dared to make any cuts to the town budget.
These doomsday scenarios are really something. Department heads were asked to provide examples of what could happen if some unspecified cuts were undertaken. These were then tossed in the “make scary” machine.
The short answer – chaos and disorder, tension, delays, erosion of trust, extensive unforeseen costs, no photocopies, and more! Therefore, it is reasoned, no cuts to staff or services should be made.
As written, it is implied that Town staff currently work in perfect harmony and all runs smoothly. No one looks for other jobs. No one experiences any delays. All roads and parks are in excellent condition. The Library is the only place for help with computers. There are no problems with parking, no deadlines are missed for grants, and everyone is happy. Make adjustments and it all falls apart.
Also, once any cuts are made, no creativity or other options exist. Things can’t be done differently. It is this way or nothing.
It is quite a work, showing great imagination and creativity in how the budget discussion is being framed. Rather than a budget with numbers, there are stories. Made up stories. Fiction. They might be based on real events, and sound quite plausible, but none of this is guaranteed to happen. Not one word.
Each of us could write our own stories about the budget and what might happen. We probably should. Staff aren’t the only ones with ideas. The stories made up here do not cover the full extent of town operations, and leave out things rather not discussed.
I have taken the listed scenarios and have added some snarky commentary below. It is snarky because of course we all want all of the existing services to stay and we even want more services than what are offered. And we don’t want to pay anything for it. And we want everyone to be happy. And we like puppies, just because they are cute.
I’ve added my own scenario at the end.
….
• It is January, business license reminders have gone out. Staff cuts have resulted in one staff person leaving for another full-time position elsewhere. The workload is shifted to one full-time and one part-time employee. The Business Licensing Program cannot be run efficiently, causing loss in revenue. The Personal Property Forms have been mailed to businesses and are starting to come in. The work to check the forms is now rushed, double-checking work has been removed from the process causing potential mistakes. It is now May 26, there are 50 businesses that have not sent in their reports, ten of those are new businesses. There is no way to know what they have for assets, and the Grand List is lodged without this information. This results in revenue loss from an inaccurate and lower Grand List.
Many have forgotten that the reason for Business Licenses was not to raise revenue. It was to create a list of local businesses. At the time it was enacted, staff told taxpayers that it wasn’t about money.
Solution: Get rid of the Business Licenses. It is an unnecessary hurdle for local businesses that isn’t required in neighboring towns, and obviously an enormous amount of work requiring extra staff time.
• Assessor inspections are shifted to a smaller staff and time does not allow for all permitted properties to be inspected. There were two additions, one large garage, and three decks that did not make it to the Grand List in time. The lower the Grand List, the higher the tax rate.
Staff seems to know about those additions but didn’t add them this year. One would assume you would add them next year. Problem solved.
• Real estate transfers are entered into the Grand List system weekly, but staff cuts have caused this to be delayed. Maps are not updated in a timely manner. Someone comes in to look for the owner of a property, but the information has not been updated in the software yet, and they are told the previous owner of the property.
“Someone” will have to warned that updates to maps are slightly delayed and might have errors for the most recent transfers. Not a problem.
• A real estate agent is listing a property for sale. This property consists of one parent parcel and one contiguous parcel. There are two houses, but only one is for sale. They need to know the value of the parent parcel without the other. The Grand List and online record cards do not separate them out. They call the office, but it is closed on Fridays now and the realtor has to wait until Monday to speak to an Assessor causing them to have a delay in their listing.
Oh my, a real estate agent who didn’t notice the new hours has to wait from Friday until Monday. I think we’ll live.
• With fewer staff in the Finance Department, utility billing becomes delayed, leaving some residents confused about what they owe. Others, unaware of missing bills, miss payment deadlines and have their water or sewer services disrupted. Frustrated residents reach out to the Town with calls, but with reduced staffing, responses are slow, and tensions rise. What was once a seamless process turns into chaos, leaving both the town and its residents scrambling to fix preventable mistakes.
Chaos, eh? Chaos means “complete disorder and confusion”. I seriously doubt that will happen. But, because staff are no longer tied up with Business Licenses, they now have extra time to do billing. It works out!.
• A federal grant that would have provided Brattleboro’s Fire/EMS Department with new life-saving equipment goes unsubmitted due to staffing shortages in the Finance Department. Without the funding, aging defibrillators, stretchers, and protective gear remain in use long past their recommended lifespan, putting first responders and residents at risk. When an emergency strikes, outdated equipment slows response times and increases the chances of injury, all because there weren’t enough staff to handle the paperwork. Cutting grant management didn’t just cost the town funding—it compromised public safety.
Federal grants for emergencies appear to be going away for the foreseeable future, so the premise of this one is shakey. Assuming there is this magic grant, I have never seen the Fire Department miss an opportunity for a grant to upgrade equipment, even back before the town had a finance director.
• Overworked staff miss a critical deadline for a scheduled debt payment, triggering penalties and damaging the Town’s credit rating. The Town now faces higher interest rates on future financing, making planned projects like road repairs and facility upgrades more expensive. Residents are left paying more in taxes to cover the financial mismanagement, creating widespread frustration. What could have been prevented with adequate staffing now costs the town far more in the long run.
Wow, our Finance Department is very overworked. What are they doing that causes them to miss all the deadlines and grants and grand list updates? They are manually checking due dates and writing checks for debt payments? I suggest looking into direct pay.
• A fire started in a second-floor apartment off Canal Street, creeping along the aging walls. Flames spread quickly, and when the single engine arrived, only four firefighters stepped out—far too few to battle the growing inferno. Their outdated hoses struggled against the blaze, and without enough personnel to enter the building for rescues, those trapped on the upper floors were forced to jump. Some survived with broken bones, others never made it. By dawn, the apartment building was gone, lives were lost, and the town was left to face the consequences of a Fire Department that couldn’t respond the way it should have.
But then, a unicorn arrived and sprayed magic dust and everything returned to normal. The above story is pure fear-based fantasy.
How about some reality? A fire started across the street from the Fire Department. They couldn’t enter the building due to safety concerns and the owner of a well-known downtown bar dies, even with enough firefighters the scene.
• Your father-in-law has heart pains but since they can only staff two ambulances anymore you have to wait for them to transport people from a car crash on Putney Road before they can get to him.
Brattleboro didn’t have ambulances a few years ago. Rescue Inc is available by contract if our ambulances aren’t up to the task.
• Brattleboro’s Fire Department had kept its ISO rating at 3, ensuring affordable insurance premiums for residents and businesses. But when budget cuts reduced staffing, the rating climbed, signaling increased fire risk. Within months, homeowners saw their insurance bills rise, some by hundreds of dollars, while businesses struggled with soaring costs. New buyers hesitated, wary of the financial burden, and longtime residents paid the price for the town’s decision to cut emergency services. In trying to save money, Brattleboro had only made life more expensive.
Fire protection is a core town service that has been part of Brattleboro since the town was first settled. Don’t make the cuts here.
• Firefighters and medics pushed through, covering endless calls with half the needed personnel, stretching response times and making impossible choices. Burnout hit fast, and as frustration grew, many left for departments with better staffing, safer conditions, and higher pay. Those who remained carried the crushing weight of too many emergencies and too few hands. Brattleboro had tried to save money but ended up losing the people who kept it safe.
Half the personnel? (Tiny violins) We’re not cutting the fire department.
• As Fire Department staffing shrank, prevention efforts faded in Brattleboro— inspections were delayed, safety programs cut, and public training sessions disappeared. Unchecked hazards in homes and businesses grew, while a generation of children missed fire safety lessons. When a kitchen fire tore through a residence due to uninspected violations, the warning was clear—Brattleboro hadn’t just lost firefighters, it had lost its ability to prevent disaster.
The children!
Name a town that is able to prevent disaster.
• When Brattleboro cut HR staff, job postings for critical roles—like Finance Director, public works employees, and library staff—were delayed for months. Existing employees were forced to work overtime, with public works crews struggling through long snowplow shifts and librarians managing programs alone. Burnout led to even more resignations, making it harder to keep services running as hiring stalled. Instead of saving money, the cuts created a staffing crisis, leaving emergency services stretched thin, road maintenance delayed, and essential Town resources overwhelmed.
The HR director is a relatively new position. Nice to have but certainly not essential.
In most jobs employees face delays, work overtime and experience burnout. And sometimes people resign, which opens up positions for others.
Overwhelmed? The language is hyberbolic. Why would job postings be delayed for months?
• With HR staffed by just one person and open only four days a week, a critical data feed error on the benefits platform went unnoticed until it was too late. The mistake delayed health coverage enrollment for all new full-time hires, including an employee expecting his first child. His wife, facing a high-risk pregnancy, had essential prenatal appointments she couldn’t cancel, despite having no insurance. With wages frozen due to the town’s budget cuts, the employee took a job in Keene, where benefits began immediately. To pay off their debt, they sold their home in Brattleboro and downsized to a one-bedroom apartment—paying the price for a simple clerical error that no one was there to catch.
That former employee should sue!
I don’t really see the issue for taxpayers here. An employee found a better job in Keene due to unusual personal circumstances. And if they took a job with benefits in Keene, where is this so-called debt coming from? They got their insurance.
• When Brattleboro cut communications staff, Brattleboro.gov quickly fell out of date, leaving residents without critical updates on town meetings, permit applications, and emergency alerts. People missed Development Review Board meetings, Charter Revision Commission meetings, and other committee discussions because no one was updating the online calendar. Important roadwork projects went unnoticed, causing delays and confusion for residents and businesses alike. As trust in town leadership eroded, what seemed like a prudent budget cut turned into widespread frustration, proving that clear communication is not a luxury these days—it’s a necessity.
We have The Reformer, The Commons, iBrattleboro, social media, the town manager’s podcast, BCTV, WVEW, WTSA, WKVT and others covering Brattleboro.
Volunteers can update web sites.
There is an abundance of information about town events and meetings and numerous town calendars.
• A fire knocks out Internet service townwide. You have a virtual job interview, and you need to submit documents in advance. The library still has wi-fi, you can scan and send the documents, and you might even be able to borrow a laptop and snag a small meeting room for the interview, but the library is closed due to short staffing.
There are other places in town with wi-fi and other people have computers to borrow. Also, wi-fi works through walls! You could sit outside and login.
• You are waiting to use the upstairs bathroom in the library with your two-year-old, the sole staff member on duty unlocks the door to reveal a person who is unconscious surrounded by drug paraphernalia. The staff member rushes to call Dispatch but is too late to administer NARCAN and you need to shield your toddler, both physically and emotionally, from the scene.
Well, that’s life in the modern age. Sorry you had to experience that. Maybe a safe injection site would prevent this sort of thing happening at the Library.
• Your father has received a diagnosis, which has made everyone panic after a Google search, and you’re getting lots of weird, somewhat related social media ads and email. You need someone to help research reliable information and to help you navigate blocking exploitive emails. Unfortunately, staffing cuts mean that it is several days before you can get an appointment with the Electronic Services Specialist or Reference Librarian to meet with you. In the meantime, your father’s condition has worsened due to stress, and he has now been admitted to the hospital with chest pains.
Self-diagnosis via a search engine isn’t smart, but sure. No one should be dependent on the Library for medical attention. Call a doctor, then deal with the spam.
Waiting “several days” to help with weird ads isn’t terrible. Again, there are other resources available. The Library is not the only place in the world for tech assistance.
• Lack of funding has resulted in disrepair and a huge leak has opened in the roof above the children’s room. It occurred on Saturday evening and was not discovered until Tuesday when the library re-opened on its new schedule, resulting in a loss of much of the collection and a need to close the room to the public for months until carpet and ceiling have been replaced.
Except, the Town just approved a project to repair the roof. So, it be fixed?
And, uh, under current hours would the leak be discovered on Monday and would still have caused the damage.
• You stopped going to the library much because you kept seeing more and more troubling encounters there but you still like to stop by to pick up a hold every so often but now the hours are such that you can only go at lunch and because no one is enforcing parking you can never find a parking space anymore, so you just buy a book on Amazon because the selection at the library has got so slim for new things anyway.
Parking has gotten easier at the Post Office with no meters and no enforcement. There are always spaces available.
Are you really that lame to buy a book on Amazon and not support local book stores? Okay.
What exactly is the problem here for taxpayers?
• Due to staffing cuts, the monthly evening programs for teens have been eliminated, so there are no safe, free and supervised activities and thus, leaving teens on their own. The same cuts have made it difficult to keep an eye on the Spicy Lime teen room and afternoon shenanigans ensue resulting in injuries from good-natured roughhousing.
The children! It’s all about the children.
• Staffing cuts result in cancelling weekly Rhyme Time sessions, depriving preschoolers and their caregivers of an important opportunity for education and social connection.
They are cutting everything! The children!
Um, we can decide what programs to keep and cut.
• You have been laid off for a job you held for years. Your resume is out of date as are your computer skills. Not having a computer at home, you have no way to complete online applications for employment or for benefits; or to update and print copies of your resume. The library staff is stretched too thin to give you meaningful support in those areas or help you navigate the online classes that could increase your skills and hireability. Hours have been cut so it is difficult to even find the time to get there and get access to one of the computers that are in high demand.
You will have to call one of the other agencies that provide this service. Or a friend. Or neighbor.
The Library is not the only place that provides these services. Still, staff are too busy to help at all, ever? That seems ridiculous.
• A retaining wall has failed in town. There are state and federal programs available to help with the funding. However, due to staff cuts, the town’s Hazard Mitigation Plan has expired. Instead of taxpayers paying 20% of the cost, they now must pay 100% because we are not eligible to apply. And even if we could apply, there is not enough staff to write the grant and manage the project.
The Hazard Mitigation Plan is already written and gets updated on a regular basis. The selectboard approves it. It should be on the schedule for regular re-approval, like a Town Plan. This “problem” seems like a failure of the Town Manager and Selectboard, so I’m not seeing how staff cuts caused this.
As for writing a grant to fix the wall, part of the reason to have money set aside is for this type of circumstance – so we can afford an immediate fix. We’ve also dipped into other sources of funding to pay for emergencies.
• A property owner goes through development review to build a new commercial structure. Due to less staff and an increased workload, no one catches that the property is in the floodplain. Furthermore, the Development Review Board does not have adequate training and support and does not think to ask about floodplain status. Upon completion of the project, the property owner is notified by their mortgage company that they did not build in accordance with floodplain regulations. Flood insurance is prohibitively expensive, and the property owner forgoes the insurance. The following summer, there is a flood event and the structure is damaged. With no insurance, the property owner loses all their investment and is unable to rebuild.
No one is thinking of the floodplain? That is not Brattleboro, then. : ) Citizens are all trained to recognized impervious surfaces! It would be like forgetting about abatement of toxic materials. Not gonna happen.
This seems super-unrealistic, but maybe EVERYONE is that clueless. That would be the owner, the developer, the members of the DRB, the Planning Department, the contractors, neighbors…. yeah, right.
I like the forecast of a flood here. “There is a flood…” Since this is fiction, we should note that the arc was built successfully in time and all was well.
• The Planning Department receives a steady flow of commercial and residential redevelopment requests. These requests require prompt action, attention to detail, and a predictable development review process. Following staff reductions, developers continue to call and do not get a prompt response and decide to look elsewhere.
Maybe. Or maybe they are just frustrated and wait it out, because they were told there might be some delays.
• The State creates a new program by which development in town can be exempt from Act 250. To qualify for this program, the town is required to have a high level of professional staffing, comprehensive planning documents (Town Plan, Hazard Mitigation Plan, etc.), local zoning that meets the requirements for delegation, and capital planning. Due to cuts in the Planning Department, the town is unable to seek delegation. Act 250 is still applicable for development in Brattleboro. Developers look to other towns where exemptions exist. Brattleboro loses out on new revenues.
When did this happen?
If we are making up state programs, don’t forget about the one that funds towns to cover the costs of implementing this new program.
• Your neighbor is dumping garbage all over their front yard and you call Planning but there are only so many cases like yours that staff have time to deal with so you are told that you’re added to the list. You call back in a month when you’re seeing more and more trash and rats getting into the debris, but the answer is the same.
Interesting scenario. You got me. Raise the budget 12.1%. For the rats.
• Late one night in the Transportation Center parking garage, a Brattleboro resident is attacked while walking to their car, their screams echoing through the empty structure. They manage to call 911, but the dispatcher can only say that all available officers are tied up at a violent domestic with weapons and children involved. By the time help arrives, the attacker is long gone, leaving the victim bloodied, shaken, and in need of emergency medical care. The town had hoped to save money by cutting police staffing, but for the victim left alone that night, the cost was far greater than anyone had realized.
Screams echoing through the empty structure? Did Archer Mayer write this terrifying one?
Oh, but wait, the person wasn’t attacked, they were given a bouquet of flowers and a ticket to Rio. They found a winning lottery ticket on the ground, too. Balloons dropped from the ceiling. It was all a surprise party.
See, it’s fun to write fiction.
• With fewer detectives and crime scene personnel, investigations in Brattleboro slow to a crawl, leaving burglaries unsolved, violent crimes without leads, and justice delayed for victims. A child abuse report lingers uninvestigated because detectives trained in handling sensitive cases are stretched too thin, leaving the child at risk. Overworked investigators, buried under mounting caseloads, face burnout and begin leaving for departments with better support, making the staffing crisis even worse. As evidence goes unprocessed and cases pile up, criminals remain on the streets, and trust in the town’s ability to deliver justice begins to erode.
The children!
Note that many of these examples involve staff leaving and making it worse!
• You heard a noise in your house so you call 911 and the dispatcher snaps at you because they have been going straight through on a second shift, since we can’t fill dispatch positions anymore, they tell you to call back if you see an actual intruder.
The customer is always right. No snapping!
• With Brattleboro cutting back on police training, officers struggle to handle complex situations, increasing the risk of mistakes. Responding to a call, a young officer misinterprets the distress of a person with autism, escalating a situation that proper training could have defused. Meanwhile, a burglary case falls apart in court because an undertrained officer mishandles key evidence at the crime scene. As these preventable errors pile up, public trust erodes, lawsuits increase, and the cost of cutting training far outweighs the savings.
Wow, hired some untrained officers?
• With fewer parking enforcement officers, violations downtown increase as visitors park illegally in loading zones or overstay their time limits. Delivery drivers for local businesses struggle to find spaces, delaying shipments and hurting operations. Meanwhile, reduced revenue from parking fees impacts the town’s ability to maintain parking lots and sidewalks. Brattleboro’s once vibrant downtown begins to feel disorganized and neglected.
There are almost always parking spaces downtown now that the meters are gone. People are avoiding downtown because stores are closed and parking is weird, so there are spaces.
Parking fees cover sidewalk repairs?
• A giant pothole opens up just past your driveway and you’ve hit it three times in the past month forcing you to get a realignment and a new tire, you call the highway department but no one answers the phone, you try email but no one replies, so you stop by the yard and talk to a highway operator who tells you yeah they know about that pothole and about 45 other worse ones and there just aren’t enough people for you to expect anyone to get to it for 3-6 months.
Yup. This is true. No change to the budget will change this. Brattleboro enjoys terrible roads.
• After a heavy snowstorm, the sidewalks along High Street and Oak Street remain buried under packed snow and ice for days because Public Works no longer has enough staff to clear them quickly. Commuters walking to work, parents pushing strollers, and elderly residents trying to reach the downtown are forced into the road, dodging traffic on slippery streets. A student walking to Green Street School slips on the ice and breaks their wrist, while a senior on Grove Street falls and ends up hospitalized with a fractured hip. The town had cut sidewalk plowing to save money, but now residents are paying the price in medical bills, missed work, and dangerous daily commutes.
Global warming should mean less snow in the long term.
This describes a single snowstorm that seems unusually bad – snow and ice burying major streets for days. This is not typical, and would rarely happen, if ever. And when storms like this happen, everyone pitches in.
Not a disaster. But, the children….
• After a heavy storm, a blocked culvert on Western Avenue overflows, flooding a nearby business’ parking lot and washing debris into the road. The owner calls Public Works, but with fewer staff, the department is backlogged and can’t send a crew for days. Meanwhile, the water erodes the roadbed, creating a deep pothole that damages multiple cars before frustrated drivers put up their own warning sign. When town officials finally allocate resources to fix it, the cost has doubled because the neglected damage spread, proving that cutting staff didn’t save money—it just delayed the bill.
It’s not hard to go take a stick and poke out debris at the drains. I’ve done it many times to get the water draining again off of Cedar Street. Pitch in, people.
• With reduced staffing in Recreation and Parks, youth sports leagues and after- school programs are cut, leaving working parents scrambling for childcare. Kids who once played soccer at West River Park or participated in winter sports at Gibson-Aiken now have nowhere to go, leading to lower activity levels and fewer safe spaces for them to socialize. Without structured programs, some teens start hanging out in unsupervised areas, increasing complaints about vandalism and loitering downtown. What was once a thriving youth recreation system is now a patchwork of canceled games and disappointed families.
The children!
• At Living Memorial Park, the once well-maintained fields become patchy and uneven, while the playground equipment begins to break down due to lack of upkeep. The Brattleboro skatepark sees an increase in injuries as cracks in the pavement go unrepaired, while the dog park becomes overgrown with weeds and unusable after heavy rains. Tennis and pickleball courts sit in disrepair, keeping residents from using them, while garbage and overgrown brush make once-popular parks less inviting. Without proper maintenance, Brattleboro’s green spaces slowly fade into neglect, forcing families and athletes to seek better-maintained options in other towns.
What exactly did we cut here? All staff?
Let’s keep going with the fantasy. The fields get overgrown and it all returns to forest. Children go out and play in the wild and learn to identify flora and fauna and gain a new appreciation for the earth and its creatures. They thank their parents from breaking them free of the contraints of the SUV generation before them.
• With maintenance staff stretched too thin and seasonal hiring delays, Brattleboro’s swimming pool never opens for the summer. Families who once spent hot afternoons cooling off at the pool are left with no local lifeguarded option, forcing them to drive to other towns or go without. Kids who relied on swim lessons for safety and summer fun lose out, and lifeguards who expected summer jobs look elsewhere, making future hiring even harder. What should have been a season of laughter, lessons, and community gatherings instead becomes a reminder of what happens when staff cuts go too far.
Everyone swims at the new spot at the West River. In real, fresh water with no chemicals.
No season of laughter. The children!
• With fewer Public Works staff, roadside mowing and tree maintenance in West Brattleboro fall behind, allowing tall grass and overgrown branches to obstruct visibility at intersections. Drivers struggle to see oncoming traffic, leading to close calls and near-misses that could have been avoided. One stormy night, a weakened tree—left unchecked due to staff shortages—snaps and crashes onto Hinesburg Road, blocking both lanes and taking down power lines. What was once routine maintenance has now turned into an emergency response, costing more in overtime pay and damage repairs than regular upkeep ever would have.
A tree branch falls in a storm? OK, raise that budget 12.1%
• The Town Clerk’s office has stopped issuing birth and death certificates. Being a hospital town, this is very frustrating for the public because they have to go to other towns to get these now. However, most other towns are closed numerous days per week. The applicant needs a certified copy of their birth certificate in order to renew the driver’s license, which expires tomorrow (you need a valid form of ID like an unexpired driver’s license in order to get the birth certificate). This puts them in a spiral of needing one ID to get the other, and now not having either.
The person needing paperwork at the last minute is the one at fault here, not the town. Make better plans, or deal with waiting.
• The Town Clerk’s office has fallen way behind on keeping up with land records. When we do have time, we are constantly interrupted, meaning that mistakes are made. We do not have time to double check our work. Someone is trying to sell their property in a timely manner to avoid foreclosure, but they cannot locate their land record documents. They must hire a title searcher to do the work, but they do not have the funds to do this, as they cannot even pay their current bills. This same person then requests an abatement hearing for their taxes and utilities due to inability to pay. But they cannot get a hearing for at least a year, because the Town Clerk’s office does not have the capacity to staff the hearing, or prepare for the hearing, let alone make photocopies for all board members.
The Town Clerk’s office paralyzed. Can’t even make a copy of something. Entering mistakes. Falling behind!
There is no context for this. What was cut? Staff? Hours?
The Town Clerk is an essential town office, like fire protection, and wouldn’t be cut in my fiction.
• It is a week before election day, and a voter just found out that they need to be out of Town on election day. The Town Clerk’s office can no longer provide in-person early voting as we cannot staff the office with the required two people at a time. Not only is there limited time to mail, but we do not have the postage budget to mail ballots for absentee voting. They would like to send their spouse to pick up the ballot as they cannot get here during our limited office hours to get it themselves, only to learn that we cannot hand the ballot to anyone else. Therefore this voter is disenfranchised and cannot cast a vote.
Currently, if they tried to write-in any candidate they wanted they’d be disenfranchised, too, because the vote wouldn’t be counted, but the we don’t care about that voter. Oh well.
• A couple from New Jersey is getting married on a Saturday in Stowe, VT, and planning to stop in at our office to get their marriage license on Friday, on their way up to Stowe. Brattleboro was the only Town Clerk’s office they could get to that used to be open on Fridays. However, due to budget cuts, we are no longer open on Fridays, and they can therefore not get their marriage license in time for the event they have been planning for over a year.
Not Brattleboro taxpayers.
Planned for a year and didn’t note the hours of the office? Bull.
• The Vermont Bar Association is holding an event in Brattleboro with judges from all over the state on Wednesday. They had planned the entire event, but then their caterer had to cancel at the very last minute. On Monday, a new caterer applies for a catering permit that needs a rush because the event is in two days. However, due to budget cuts, the Town Clerk’s office is closed on Monday. On Tuesday, the Town Clerk’s office circulates the application to other departments for administrative approval, but due to budget cuts in their offices, we cannot get the necessary approval in time. Now the VT Bar Association cannot hold their event, and the Town loses the revenue from that catering permit.
Not Brattleboro taxpayers.
Use a caterer that is already permitted. The Porch, Too.
• A person’s service dog is impounded on a Friday. They fell behind on licensing the dog because they missed the appointment with the vet to update the rabies shot due to a health issue (they just did that yesterday and were planning on coming into the Town Clerk’s office on Friday to license the dog). The only way they can get their dog back is to license her through the Town Clerk’s office, but due to budget cuts, we are closed on Fridays, and they therefore must wait until Monday. This service dog is trained to help them recognize oncoming seizures, but they now must do without her for three full days while they wait for us to re-open on Monday. Over the weekend, they have a seizure and end up in the hospital.
The Town impounded a service dog under those circumstances? That would be cruel and unusual.
• With fewer staff coordinating legal services, a critical deadline for responding to a lawsuit against the town is missed. Brattleboro is forced to settle the case for a higher amount than necessary, draining funds that could have been used for public services. Meanwhile, town liabilities pile up as contracts go unreviewed, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for avoidable legal disputes. What was meant to be a cost-saving measure ends up costing the town far more in legal fees and settlements.
Brattleboro regularly settles lawsuits that cost taxpayers money.
The Town hires an outside attorney to handle all legal. If Bob Fischer missed a deadline, it would be on him.
• With fewer staff to support Town boards and committees, Selectboard, Traffic Safety Committee, and other meetings become disorganized, with missing agendas, delayed minutes, warning and procedural errors. Residents attending meetings struggle to get clear answers, while critical decisions—like infrastructure projects and town budgets—are delayed due to administrative bottlenecks. Frustrated community members lose trust in town leadership, and engagement drops as fewer people believe their voices will be heard. Instead of a smoothly run government, Brattleboro becomes bogged down in inefficiency and confusion.
With fewer staff, more residents volunteered and all was well. Even better.
• With fewer staff available to issue special event permits, local organizers of festivals, parades, and charity runs struggle to get the approvals they need. Longstanding events like Gallery Walk are delayed or canceled altogether due to bureaucratic slowdowns. Residents and businesses that once benefited from these events—through increased foot traffic and community engagement—now find the town quieter and less vibrant. Cutting staff didn’t just reduce paperwork; it drained life from the town’s cultural scene.
“Drained life…” Again. Wow.
We could not require permits for special events. Heh. Problem solved.
The Selectboard could sign off on a yearly permit for Gallery Walk. Hardly any time required if the Town feels it is important.
Gee, the Brattleboro Beer Fest held in Guilford might be in trouble. : )
• A resident calls the Municipal Center with a question about a road repair project near their home, only to find no one available to answer their call. Frustrated, they try emailing but receive an automatic reply stating there will be a delay in response due to reduced staffing. Without clear communication, misinformation spreads, and tensions rise between residents and town officials. Cutting back on public engagement doesn’t just reduce office work—it erodes trust between the Town and the people.
Usually if one gets a message saying someone will be in touch later at some time, that is good enough. It’s not knowing that drive people crazy.
….
Okay, my scenario:
A drop in the tax rate increase from 12.1% to 1% made the taxpayers of Brattleboro very happy and re-invigiorated their trust in a lean, highly-effective municipal government. This led to more volunteering and an increased love of where they lived.
