The Brattleboro Selectboard will hold a special meeting on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, at 6:15 p.m. in the Selectboard Meeting Room at the Brattleboro Municipal Center (230 Main Street, Room 212) and over Zoom.
The attached agenda contains information on how to access the meeting remotely, including the required passcode. Please note that the Zoom credentials have changed as of this meeting.
The Brattleboro Selectboard learned what the Brattleboro Charter Commission has been working on regarding the form of town governance and other possible changes to the Charter. The Commission has put over two years of work into this and the Chair seemed quite interested in being able to edit whatever they present, such as the form of town government, when it comes before the board again in September.
The next big discussion was about the old Hinsdale bridges. Hinsdale sent some semi-unanticipated reps to read Brattleboro the riot act. They seemed to take special glee in pointing out just how terrible Brattleboro’s problems are, and wanted to know if the town would agree that the bridges should be destroyed or sold. A split vote at the end of the discussion means Brattleboro does not surrender in the battle
The Brattleboro Selectboard starts July with a big meeting on the 8th. They’ll spend almost a half million dollars on DPW vehicles, authorize tax collectors going after local businesses, pay for a new $476k retaining wall, and that’s just in the consent agenda. (They’ll also retroactively consider a parade permit – if it fails, do the participants need to march backwards?)
Once the meeting gets going in full, the board will hear from the Charter Revision Commission, receive an update on the old Hinsdale bridges, set a property tax rate of $1.5835 per $100, hear about increases to water and sewer rates, spend over $500k on space for police and bathrooms downtown, and more.
You can bring up other items not on the agenda during public participation.
Isaac Evans-Frantz made some good points about the parking system and downtown business at Tuesday’s Selectboard meeting. His points deserve underlining and emphasis because he latched on to some logical flaws of the current parking system, and hinted heavily that it might be really harming downtown business.
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Isaac began by asking why, if there was a deficit in the parking fund, would the board consider offering any free parking at all during holidays.
Your water bill will go up, your sewer bills will go up, the town is buying a $73k car for the fire department, there will be a bit of free parking near the holidays, and a new sculpture park is being preliminarily proposed for the area near BMAC and he Amtrak station. All this and more at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Brattleboro Selectboard.
The Brattleboro Selectboard will approve new FY26 budgets for water, sewer and parking rate at their next regular meeting. The parking budget includes options for the possibility of some free parking in December, or perhaps not. It’s up to the board to decide.
They will also buy a new fire car, plan a retreat, and hear about plans to improve the Depot Street area of town. You can bring up other items on the agenda during public participation.
The Brattleboro Selectboard heard initial presentations about Water & Sewer and Parking budgets for FY26. This included a detailed discussion of Sunday parking, whether free parking might be better in some cases to encourage shoppers and 1% LOST income, and whether parking costs should be charged based on how popular a lot might be. The board decided to ask for no changes.
Also, pickleball courts are on the way.
Dear Neighbors,
This week Brattletboro passed a budget for the 12 months starting July 1. You can hear my thoughts (3-minute clip) on the budget here: https://www.youtube.com/live/YduOTj9stGs?feature=shared&t=1119
I supported the budget, and it passed Representative Town Meeting with flying colors (110-4, with about a dozen people abstaining). It represents compromise. We should look to the budgeting process for the following year, and time between now and then, to strengthen our Town’s financial situation, with an eye out for generations to come.
The Brattleboro Selectboard will hold a special meeting on Friday, May 30, 2025 at 12:00pm at the Brattleboro Municipal Center (230 Main Street, Room 212) and over Zoom. The attached agenda contains information on how to access the meeting remotely, including the required “passcode.” Closed captioning will be available for deaf and hard-of-hearing community members.
The Brattleboro Selectboard will hold a regular meeting on Tuesday, June 3, 2025 at 6:15pm in the Selectboard Meeting Room at the Brattleboro Municipal Center (230 Main Street, Room 212) and over Zoom. Prior to the meeting the Board will meet at 5:45pm to hold committee interviews for the Development Review Board. The attached agenda contains information on how to access the meeting remotely, including the required “passcode.” ASL interpreters will be available for deaf and hard-of-hearing community members.
The Brattleboro Selectboard heard a number of updates and reports at their second regular meeting of May. They learned how a grant was used to help with housing, how a group would like to expand passenger rail service in the region, how Green Mountain Power is burying some of the most problematic electrical circuits, and more.
More, of course, included hearing that utility rates would be increasing.
The Brattleboro Selectboard will have a regular meeting on Tuesday and will hear lots of updates and reports – on expanding rail service to Connecticut, electric company projects, state legislation, FY25 budget numbers, and the results of a Utility Rate Study to see if Brattleboro customers are paying the right amount.
You can bring up other items not on the agenda during public participation if the Chair anticipates what you are about to say is germane.
The Brattleboro Selectboard had a regular meeting and approved of more changes to the recently-changed parking system. Zones will get new names, there will be new signs and stickers, rates and times will change, and more. This will make it easier for everyone, the Town assures us.
There are big beautiful plans by locals in Brattleboro for the old Hinsdale bridges, but they are owned primarily by New Hampshire and that side of the river isn’t too keen on maintaining them in the long term. It will take might private efforts to make something happen at this juncture, but a “balanced” letter will be sent to the NH DOT, with or without support from Hinsdale.
And Kate O’Connor is again director of the Chamber of Commerce.
It has been a while, but the Brattleboro Selectboard will again hold a regular meeting to discuss items other than the FY26 budget. Instead they will examine more changes to the parking system, new murals and events, get an update on the Housing Plan, and hire a financial services company for a year to help ill in for the Finance Director.
The board will also have a discussion about the old bridges sitting in the Connecticut River and come up with a list of requests for the state of New Hampshire to consider. You can bring up other items not on the agenda during public participation.
The Brattleboro Selectboard held a May Day meeting to discuss and pass their new budget, which takes the overall municipal tax increase down from 12.1% to 10.8%, shaving 1.3% from the budget rejected by Representative Town Meeting.
The public, those allowed to speak, weren’t very impressed.
Chair McLoughlin began by apologizing for being rude to young people at the previous board meeting. Later on, she shut down the meeting with gavel banging and demands for an adult to stop speaking about something she said could not be tolerated- a discussion of Rescue Inc correcting the record.
Town Manager John Potter did what the Brattleboro Selectboard asked and has revised the FY26 budget with an additional $317k in savings. Here’s his memo to the board explaining the cuts he made on their behalf.
And yes, there are un-chill cuts to the Library.
Rescue Inc sent a letter to the Brattleboro Selectboard asking them to use correct numbers when discussing their services. In it, they calculate that the net cost to the town for FY26 EMS services would have been $255,846.00.
Full letter below:
Elected politicians, on all the levels, and the people who support government on a daily basis often have nothing in common. There are no requirements to run for office except for age in some instances. It is one of the great elements of democracy and, for better or worse, we end up with people in power who may have no understanding of how government works. If they have enough money they can win office and once they are in it is hard to get rid of them, That is also what democracy is about.
As we lose our democracy on a national level this disconnect could not be clearer. Trump and Musk have no interest in learning what all the people do who actually do the work of our government. If they even had a shred of interest in trying to understand how government agencies work they might have somehow found a little bit of common sense and talked to all these people and asked them how they might be more efficient.
The Brattleboro Selectboard held another in their month of many meetings to focus on decisions around solid waste and to hear the results of their budget decisions thus far. Those results were not good. They also warned a special Representative Town meeting to vote on the revised FY26 budget, which will face further revision.
As with last week, I’m watching this second meeting of the week but not typing up every word. I’ll summarize again.
Over five hours and the agenda topic – possible reductions in public safety services – was barely discussed by the board. There were over 70 items on the list to be discussed that didn’t get much of a mention.
Tuesday’s meeting seemed designed to prevent the board from having an on-topic discussion. It was stuffed with information previously presented and comments already taken. The people we most wanted to hear from – new board members – didn’t get to have a robust discussion, and their limited discussion didn’t begin until well after 10 pm.
At tomorrow’s meeting, the new members will be told that they are out of time and have to go with the budget as presented. They will be told it is their budget. Buck will be passed back to them now for RTM.
The Brattleboro Selectboard continued their month of many meetings with a discussion of potential service reductions in public safety.
It was a long meeting, mostly because the police and fire departments were given hours to speak of the value they provide to the town. After that, the public spoke about how much they valued the police and fire departments. In the end, no changes will happen and the town may end up hiring more fire department staff. To save money.
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