MONTPELIER, Vt. -
The first week of Vermont's legislative session is mainly symbolic, but one house committee wasted little time returning to work.
"It's not humongous but it's just one more thing," said Senior Fiscal Analyst Mark Perrault
Ways and means members heard from state financial leaders about why they're projecting an increase to next years property tax.
Leaders say it's because of education.
Even though the state is losing students, its costs keep rising.
"If enrollment is declining when do we get savings and what savings should we anticipate?" said State Rep. Janet Ancel.
The problem mainly lies with teacher salaries and that's forcing school spending to rise by nearly 5% next year.
To make up the difference lawmakers are considering increasing property taxes statewide by 5-cents per $100 dollars of assessed value.
"I think a 5 cent increase is going to be very difficult for property tax payers to absorb," said Ancel.
What would a five-cent increase look like?
For example, joint fiscal leaders say if your property is valued at $200,000 dollars you would see an increase of nearly $125-dollars.
And if you're taxed by your income, a $75,000 dollar household would pay an increase of more than $60 dollars.
This of course could change, because the numbers are based on projected school budgets, which won't be finalized until Town Meeting Day in March.
"It's the tax that keeps going up," said Ancel.
Lawmakers are also waiting to hear from Governor Peter Shumlin to make his budget address. Shumlin has said he does not want to see any broad base tax increase for next year.
