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Volume 51 Number 27
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Shelburne option tax could net $1 mil a year
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July 7, 2022
On duty
Committee makes presentation to selectboard COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
The Shelburne finance committee made its first presentation to the selectboard on a potential local option tax, which officials say could generate upwards of $1 million a year in revenue for the town. During a selectboard meeting June 28, the finance committee, which was tasked by the board to investigate the potential for the tax, used a number of data sources to show revenue projections and other markers “to make a determination whether the concept merits further investigation and community discussion,” Don Porter, chair of the finance committee, said. “Nobody likes taxes,” he said.
“But we have to look at the reality, taxes are the only resources we have to fund all of the improvements we make to our town, to run our services and to continue to move forward.” A local option tax essentially allows the town to tack on an additional 1 percent tax on Vermont’s retail sales, meals, rooms and alcohol beverage taxes — including online sales. The town could individually adopt any one of those options, or any combination of those, town manager Lee Krohn said. “Anything that is taxable at the state level is subject to a local option tax,” Porter said. There are some exemptions: clothing, over-the-counter mediSee OPTION TAX on page 12
PHOTO BY LEE KROHN
Members of the Shelburne Fire Department provide waterfront support at the Burlington fireworks June 3.
After 130 years: Union Bank still local, still growing TOMMY GARDNER STAFF WRITER
The brick building on Morrisville’s Main Street has one of those oval historical society plaques attached to it adorned with the date 1892. One-hundred thirty years later, the company that constructed that building is still growing. In a landscape full of lending institutions and credit unions with headquarters far removed from the
people they serve, Union Bank is part of a dying breed: a community bank that still serves the community. In this case, several communities. Union Bank, founded in July 1891 a year before it hung its shingle in the still-standing Main Street edifice, most recently opened its 18th full-service branch in the town of Shelburne. The company now employs roughly
200 full-time employees and tends to staff the local branches with local people. President and CEO David Silverman said when he first started with Union Bank in the 1980s, there were 35-40 independent banks in Vermont. Now, he said, there are seven. “Some of that has happened during recessionary times where, in the industry, when you have a difficult time and if a bank is not
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as capitalized as it should be, it is a natural thing for those banks to essentially get merged into somebody else,” Silverman said. “Our strategy has always been that we take pride in being who we are and our independence, and as long as we can take care of our shareholders well, take care of our customers well and take care of our communities well, we’re better for all three of those groups by staying independent.”
A foot in three centuries The Union Savings Bank & Trust Co. was established in 1891 and built its headquarters in the heart of Morrisville’s downtown — it has expanded numerous times in that spot, but still controls much of the expanse of ruddy brick façade that makes up the corner of Lower Main and Portland streets. See BANK on page 4
Shelburne Road, S. Burlington Maple Tree Place, Williston
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