State Legislative Priorities for 2025
The Brattleboro Selectboard attempts to influence matters that, while falling outside of the Town’s jurisdictional authority, have the potential to significantly impact the Brattleboro community. These are big issues that Brattleboro, and other municipalities across the state, need help with and cannot do on their own. As part of having a State Legislative agenda, the Selectboard has requested to meet regularly with members of the Brattleboro Legislative Delegation.
The schedule of these meetings is as follows:
• Communicate Brattleboro legislative priorities to the Delegation in September.
• Hear an update mid-session in February or March.
• Meet with the Delegation in June or July to learn the results from the past session and to prepare for the next one.
Brattleboro preliminary priorities for the 2025 Vermont Legislative Session are:
1. Drug Addiction Resources
Addressing the ongoing drug addiction crisis affecting Brattleboro and many other communities in Vermont and New England was a Brattleboro priority for the 2024 legislative session and continues to be a high priority for 2025. Adequate, timely, and effective substance use addiction treatment is lacking. This is compounded by not having a good system of accountability when treatment is part of a criminal justice response. This is leading to people being victimized in other ways. Another major gap is the lack of sober living and workforce development opportunities available to people who have undergone treatment. To these ends, ongoing priorities are focused on securing four major advances for Brattleboro:
A. Drug court in Brattleboro to increase accountability.
B. More drug addiction treatment that is of adequate duration.
C. Direct start-up incentives to develop sober living programs and beds.
D. Accountable and effective “ready-to-work” programs.
2. Mental Health Reform
Issues of mental health, decompensated behavior, and repeat offenses, along with the intertwined problems of homelessness and substance abuse, create significant problems for people who live, work, visit, and shop in downtown Brattleboro. Mental health crisis response was a Selectboard legislative priority in 2024 and progress has been made to enhance the Town’s ability, in partnership with designated agency HCRS, to de-escalate situations and protect the community from harm. Nonetheless, Brattleboro continues to lack some of the necessary tools to address the ongoing mental health demands put on the town. To that end, our ongoing priorities focus on the following for the 2025 session:
A. Fewer exceptions to receive mental health treatment.
B. Designated agency risk assessment and required treatment to respond to criminal conduct.
C. Humane facilities to move chronically mentally ill people off the street to safer situations they like.
D. Better legal options to get intervention and treatment to mentally ill people initially reluctant to receive it.
3. Violence Prevention
Calls, contacts, crimes involving repeat offenders, and violent crimes have been high in Brattleboro, and there are inadequate resources to reduce their incidence. While the Brattleboro Police Department has done excellent work on recruitment, training, and leadership, law enforcement is not the only, or even primary, need to better address violence in the community. Support from the state is critical. Therefore, priorities for the 2025 legislative session include the following:
A. Automatic court dates for offenders that violate conditions of release.
B. Better pre-trial supervision for repeat offenders.
C. Reduce discretion for pre-trial release of violent offenders.
D. Resolve the criminal court backlog.
E. A Mental Health Calming Center in Brattleboro at which violent individuals can avoid further crisis.
4. Affordable and Middle-Income Housing
The Vermont Legislature has continued to discuss and fund affordable and middle-income housing but there is, in Brattleboro, still a need for additional support because the lack of housing is constraining employers and job creation, and because it costs too much to build housing units here. Brattleboro has taken necessary steps locally to facilitate the development of housing with inclusive zoning but needs additional state-level assistance. Ongoing priorities for the 2025 session include the following:
A. Permanent Act 250 exemption for housing in Brattleboro’s designated districts.
B. Pre-development funding to spur housing projects.
C. Flexible tax increment finance legislation.
D. Reimburse towns carrying a disproportionate amount of affordable housing.
E. Housing subsidy program for essential workers relocating to Vermont.
5. Municipal Revenue Enhancement
Towns that serve a wider region have no county-wide revenue source to offset disproportionate burdens for public safety and social services. The Vermont Legislature could bolster the entire state by re-distributing funding to these key areas through any number of better mechanisms. Priorities to focus on for the 2025 session include the following:
A. Lower VTrans costs for regional roadways.
B. Increase local option tax distribution from 70-30 to 95-5.
C. Surcharge for hosting state-funded social services organizations.
D. Reduce exempt properties (state, county, non-profit) or compensate towns with a disproportionate amount.
E. Reduce tax sale delay period from two back to one year or provide state funding to underwrite the new mandate.
F. Allow a town to add municipal charges to a tax bill for collection purposes through tax sale.