By Brett Yates
On second thought…
Approved just two months ago on Town Meeting Day, Pittsfield’s local option tax didn’t live long enough to see implementation. Following a petition drive led by business owners, 37 residents voted on May 10 to overturn the 1% surcharge on rooms, restaurant meals, and alcohol, which would have taken effect on July 1.
Officials counted 21 ballots in favor of the tax and one abstention. Pittsfield’s town hall accommodated a bigger crowd for Saturday’s special town meeting than it had in March, with eight additional voters in attendance.
In April, the town clerk verified 47 signatures from locals demanding a reconsideration of the Town Meeting Day article, which had passed on a voice vote. According to Select Board Chair Ann Kuendig, only four of those signatories, representing more than 10% of the registered voters in the town of 504 residents, thus triggering a mandatory revote by state law, had attended the regular annual meeting.
Although all three members of the town’s Select Board had supported the local option tax, they celebrated the petitioners’ undertaking — and the additional civic discussion and participation that it had yielded — as a triumph of the democratic process.
“Democracy works when people get to have a vote and people listen to each other respectfully,” Selectman AJ Ruben said. “It makes me so grateful to be part of this town.”
Near the start of the meeting, business owner Katie Stiles of Pittsfield’s Original General Store, The Backroom, and Vermont Farms Catering took the floor. A nonresident, Stiles had heard about the tax only after its approval and subsequently spearheaded the effort to repeal it.
“I think one of the big things was, as a business, we were never consulted about it,” Stiles said.
She noted that, prior to the town’s vote, she had already executed contracts for events that would take place in the latter half of 2025. Those contracts “never factored this in because it wasn’t a thing that existed, and now we have to turn around to our clients and tell them, ‘You have to pay more in addition to what you are already paying.’”
Stiles emphasized that her businesses already pay a number of taxes at the state level.
“To me, as a business that employs people who live in this town and people who live in the greater Vermont area, that does our very best to contribute positively to the operation of both Pittsfield and Vermont as a whole, as a small business, as people who want to see Vermont thrive — this, to us, feels very, very punitive,” she added.
Mark Stugart, owner of the Clear River Inn and Tavern, agreed with Stiles’s assessment.
“One percent is not the biggest amount in the world, but with inflation and the prices going up, it could make a difference,” he said.
Much of the townspeople’s subsequent debate, both during and after the meeting, seemed to hinge on the question of whether the local option tax constituted an exacerbation or a mitigation of what they saw as Vermont’s cost-of-living problem.
“We are the 11th most expensive state to live in, and every day it becomes more and more challenging for people to live,” one woman said in opposition to the tax. “It’s 1%this year. It’s 2% next year. It’s 3% the following year.”
Kuendig tried to present the opposite case. As she saw it, the local option tax would pass some of the cost of Pittsfield’s municipal government onto vacationers and motorists from other states, saving money for locals.
The Vermont Dept. of Taxes had estimated that the tax would raise $20,000 to $30,000 annually for the town. But per Selectwoman Joyce Stevens, that estimate did not factor in Pittsfield’s Airbnbs, which she believed would contribute another $20,000. By Kuendig’s math, $50,000 in local option revenue would reduce property taxes by $96.50 for a homeowner with a house valued at $250,000.
But Stiles countered that, amid other budgetary uncertainties, officials could not guarantee those savings. In conversations with the Mountain Times, one voter wondered whether the Select Board might use the local option revenue to increase spending instead of cutting taxes, and another pointed out that no one seemed to know what share of the new tax revenue would actually come from out-of-towners, as opposed to Pittsfield residents dining locally.
Townspeople cast their votes by circling “yes” or “no” on a small pink slip, instead of voting by voice as they had in March. Afterward, Stevens speculated that the change in method may have contributed to the changed outcome. Town Meeting Day attendees had supported the local option article in what one resident recalled as a “very lopsided” vote, and Stevens now wondered whether the absence of a secret ballot may have discouraged dissent.
“That is the reason we went to the ballot vote today — to make sure that no one felt uncomfortable about it,” Stevens said.
Pittsfield officials haven’t necessarily given up on the local option tax. Ruben brought up the possibility of a future Town Meeting Day article that would potentially seek to impose the surcharge strictly on hotel rooms (including Airbnbs), not on meals or alcoholic beverages. He promised that improved outreach would accompany such a proposal.
“We will certainly make sure that the affected businesses in town have personal knowledge,” Ruben said. “It’s not that hard to go across the street and talk to someone.”
