Oscar Heller is running for a three year seat on the Brattleboro Selectboard.
….
Tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you and why are you running for a three year seat?
Hi there! My name is Oscar Heller. I live on Elliot Street in an apartment I used to rent and now own. I’ve started two small businesses, 10F Design and Winterland Marketing, and we work out of the Hooker Dunham building downtown.
I’ve been involved with Brattleboro’s town politics for eight years. I think local government is now more important than ever, and I’ve always felt a pull to be involved and contribute what I can. I started on the Energy Committee, am currently a Town Meeting representative for District 9, and have served on the Finance Committee for the last six years, including this year as chair.
I’m running because I want to help my town. I think I have the skills and experience to be a good public servant. I’m also interested in representing a younger generation of political engagement (I turned 37 on Tuesday). And finally, I love doing it!
Is there any particular issue that is motivating you to run? Why did you gather signatures?
Let me focus on one in particular: how painfully divisive Brattleboro’s politics have become in the last year. I’ve followed local politics for years and I cannot remember a moment when we’ve seemed more divided.
But I still come back to this simple truth: if you picked up Brattleboro and dropped us into a conservative state, we would be the tightest community you’ve ever seen. People who won’t look each other in the eye today would cross the street to shake hands and hug, and to thank each other for their solidarity and their political courage. I don’t want to see our town descend into a political mud fight just because we don’t have a common enemy to unite us!
How would you quickly describe Brattleboro to someone who has never been here?
I describe it as a wonderful place! I know we have our problems, but so does everywhere else. I could live elsewhere, but I choose to live here because I love it. Clean air, quiet, walkable, surrounded by nature, but still with the vigor to support a music scene, an art scene, multiple sports clubs and leagues, multiple schools…the list goes on and on. I don’t think you can do much better if you’re interested in the small town experience.
What problems do see at the top of Brattleboro’s list in 2025?
The first job the Selectboard will have to tackle is the budget and the budget process. I could talk about this for thousands of words (and the 30-page Finance Committee report will be out next week to prove it). But in a nutshell, while how much we spend is a community decision with no right or wrong answer, if you ever find yourself faced with a 22% property tax increase, and after cutting it it’s still 12%, your long-term strategic planning has failed.
What are your priorities? Have any new ideas for solving any of our problems?
The budget is #1 with a bullet. We have to fix our budget process and our long-term planning. It may sound dry, but it’s vital. We don’t get to do the fun, creative stuff if we don’t keep our house in order.
We need to bring back some form of annual, public, long-term financial planning. We need to resume some form of annual, public, department-by-department budget meetings. We need to update and extend the planning documents we do maintain. Planning ahead lets us make smart decisions and avoid, for example, budget crises.
What impresses you about Brattleboro – why be here? What are our strengths and how can we tap into them?
We have so many strengths to build on. We can continue to develop recreation opportunities to take advantage of our surroundings, improve walkability and bikeability, keep connecting new trails. We have really interesting art and music scenes here – how can we nurture them and help them thrive? Brattleboro is packed with cool businesses and creative people. We just need to find simple ways to make them more visible and help people make the connections they lead.
When you think of the future, how do you see Brattleboro?
There’s a ton of potential! Obviously we have some problems we need to fix, and we have systemic challenges like anywhere else. But, given all our strengths, and the creativity and work ethic of my friends and neighbors, I see a bright future for Brattleboro.
How do climate issues figure into your vision?
We need to do everything we can to address climate change at the local level. Obviously that will be tempered by what’s doable, but when there’s a chance to make a good decision that will help with climate change, I believe we have both a practical and a moral responsibility to take action. That means green energy and green infrastructure, but it also means climate mitigation and resilience, and economic planning for changes in the ecosystem.
12.1% seems like an enormous property tax increase for taxpayers. Thoughts?
It is enormous. Unprecedented might be a better word. And while I think you can make an on-paper argument for every addition to this year’s budget, the very fact that we’re confronting this problem at all points to a breakdown in our long-term strategic planning. That’s something the Finance Committee has been calling out for years. We have to fix it.
Could we get better budgets if we reversed our current system and instead had Representative Town Meeting create the town budget and let the Selectboard approve it?
I’ll hear the idea out, but I don’t see how that would be practical. Town staff creates the budget draft, a weeks-long process that requires the combined efforts of multiple full-time staff members who do this for a living. When the Selectboard considers it, they spend many hours-long meetings on that process. We would need a series of town meeting sessions in a row. Not to mention that drafting something as complicated as a $25M town budget in a 150-person committee sounds like a practical nightmare. I don’t see how this would work.
Do you expect the advisory vote on human services funding to give you good feedback? Was it smart to limit the question to human services funding and not other parts of the budget, say staffing or program cuts?
It’s always better to have more information rather than less. That said, I don’t think a single question is a good replacement for the open debate that happens at town meeting. I’m interested in the results of the vote, and it’ll be a useful data point, but it’s a very blunt tool for understanding such a hotly debated and complicated question.
I also do think it’s short-sighted to just question human services funding in a year where we should be questioning everything. Human services funding is 2% of our budget – what about the other 98%? What we need is a long, public, transparent budget process where we talk about our priorities as a town, not one ballot question on one tiny sliver of the budget.
In your view, would it be better to have a central indoor location for people to use needles for drug injections, or should we keep things as they are currently (ie, any locations around town, out in the open)?
I don’t know. Obviously the status quo isn’t some excellent state we should be desperate to maintain, but I understand the worries around the idea of an overdose prevention center and sympathize with them.
I’m eager to follow Burlington’s pilot program and see how it does. Brattleboro’s in a very desirable position right now: we get to watch and learn and decide once all the facts are in.
Are you satisfied with Brattleboro’s support of its farming community? What’s working and what can we do better?
I’m no expert, but I know we’ll need to pull together to support our local farms, particularly since many of them receive federal funding that may be uncertain or gone entirely. They’re a big part of our community. (Especially in a time of egg shortages!)
Are you satisfied with public engagement in town matters? Is local democracy strong?
We’ve seen a surge this year in people running for RTM and the Selectboard, but I’d like to see more. I also hope we see high turnout.
My concern with public engagement actually goes in the other direction. I want to see the Selectboard work harder to solicit input from the public and from RTM. One example of what I’d like to see: every time the board plans to consider something that will affect daily life (for example: downtown parking), put a banner across Main Street with the meeting info. Parking is a prime example of not having enough input. I was at the meeting where that decision was made, along with maybe a dozen members of the public. That is not a representative sample of the community. And lo and behold, I hear complaints about the new parking system on a daily basis. Public engagement lets the Selectboard make better decisions. Let’s find ways to encourage it.
The Community Safety Review Committee recommended, generally, that we should aim to reduce policing and increase human services in Brattleboro. Do we respect the work of committees?
The Community Safety Report should have been the starting point for a community-wide conversation about safety. Instead, Selectboards found ways to keep the whole conversation in a drawer for years. I think it’s no coincidence that we finally had an outburst of frustration against the Selectboard this summer. We never let people (on all sides of the issue!) have their say. Whether it was out of fear of what was likely to be a painful conversation, or for some other reason, I don’t know, but I think it was the wrong decision. I believe it’s usually best to say things out loud and talk them out.
Along similar lines, the current board and staff ignored the Finance Committee’s requests this year. What message did that send to people participating in your committee? What did the community miss out on learning?
As the chair of the Finance Committee, I want to be clear about the limits of our authority, and not make some right to the Selectboard’s attention that we don’t actually have. The Finance Committee is a creation of Representative Town Meeting, not the Selectboard. Our role is to research, analyze, and report on the Selectboard’s draft budget, and make recommendations regarding it, for the benefit of RTM. We make no claim to authority of any kind over the Selectboard and they don’t owe any deference to us. When we do speak at Selectboard meetings, it’s as private citizens trying to help the town with whatever knowledge we might have gathered along the way.
Recommend some books, movies, and/or music for us…. what is interesting you lately?
Feel good political movie: Dave
Least feel good political biography: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Robert Caro)
Megan Fox was pretty good in it: Jennifer’s Body
Nicholas Cage was pretty good in it: The Rock
Favorite album I bought on cassette at Turn It Up: Avalon (Roxy Music)
Possible best novel of all time: The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula le Guin)
Is there anything you’d like to mention that hasn’t been asked?
I hope that, if I’m elected, you’ll all stay in touch. The more I hear from everybody, the better a job I’ll do.
And if you come to vote in person on Tuesday, come say hi!
What’s the best way for voters to reach you?
Either through my website, oscarheller.com, or by email at oheller25@gmail.com. I’m always down to grab coffee or get a drink and hear what’s on your mind. It’s actually my favorite part of this whole process!
