"Ask anyone how many towns there are in Vermont and you’ll hear a range: 251, 252, maybe 256 depending on whether you count unincorporated towns and gores. What doesn’t change is this crucial fact: nearly all of them rely on the labor of love of volunteers. Neighbors serve on selectboards, planning commissions, development review boards, nonprofit boards, and fire departments and emergency services.

At the same time, municipal revenues have remained constrained with competing priorities from increasing healthcare and infrastructure costs, natural disasters, and the impacts of declining grand lists. There is little room in municipal budgets, if any, to hire additional staff to manage the increasingly complex world of grants, compliance requirements, infrastructure financing, housing development, and economic revitalization.

The result is that the towns with the least capacity are often the ones least able to compete for the very resources meant to help them thrive. Some towns have part-time staff. Some have a town administrator. Many have very little administrative capacity at all."

Read the rest of this commentary "Strengthening Small Towns is an Investment in Vermont’s Future" by Denise Smith, Executive director, at the link below: