Opinion

A colleague on the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) Finance Committee and I undertook a comparative analysis of the funds Brattleboro’s Human Services Committee had to allocate and similar spending by our adjoining towns and Putney and also such spending by eight towns, four just larger and four just smaller than Brattleboro in population. Data were collected in all cases for the current fiscal year.

Because all Brattleboro voters will have the unusual opportunity to express their preferences so as to advise RTM which will set a sum for social services spending in the next fiscal year, I wish to share what we found.

Brattleboro provides human service organizations with more money ($367,810) than is allocated in the 13 comparison towns. Rutland is close, at $342,243, and this is more than double what any of the other towns spend for the purpose. Brattleboro also has the highest percentage of general fund dollars set aside for social service organizations—2%. Our nearest rivals are Dummerston and Rutland (1.2% and 1.3%, respectively). Restricting attention to our neighbors, Brattleboro’s social service spending per capita is over $34; on a per capita basis, Putney comes in at $16.27 and Guilford at $11.27; the other three are below $10 per capita.

Brattleboro Town Meeting and WSESD School Board elections will be held on March 4, 2025. There are three major ways to vote in these elections.

Please note that the Town Clerk’s office hours have changed, and we are now closed from 12-1 p.m. daily.

The answer to the question of whether or not you get fair representation from the people you elect may seem elusive. Every individual has their own political agenda, so when it comes to representation the best we can hope for is that the person we elect closely holds our values.

Vermonters are extremely lucky on this account on the national level. At least Vermonters who tend to be more liberal and vote Democratic or Progressive.

Our federal delegation reflects the ideals of a majority of us and they have the courage of their convictions to work to uphold those principles.

People in many other states may feel the same way, but we all know that once people get a taste of the power they can wield in Washington they often become co-opted by a corrupt system. Especially those who stay in office for a long time. They become beholden to those with money and they eventually want to hold onto power at all costs. Once they cross that line they no longer represent the people who elected them.

Interesting story at The American Prospect – they are disclosing all of the names of the members of the Democratic National Committee:

Opening the DNC’s Black Box
Why we’re publishing a previously undisclosed list of all 448 members of the Democratic National Committee

The story says that members of the DNC generally don’t have contact information for other members, intentionally, so that they can’t organize:

Advocates and social service agencies that support homeless people are preparing for funding battles over the next four years that they know they are very likely to lose. With Republicans in control of the federal government, we can expect to see cuts to programs and a general stigmatization of homeless people as mentally ill substance abusers who should be herded into programs that should help them.

It is a false construct. Most people have come to realize that when Republicans say that homeless people need to seek out mental health support first, that the power brokers really don’t care what happens to them. The power brokers know that there are never enough people or programs to support homeless people with mental health and substance abuse issues.