"Money follows money." I’ve been thinking about this phrase since last week when I attended the Rotary Club of Stafford’s event at Willington Nameplate. They hosted the state’s Chief Manufacturing Officer, Paul Lavoie, and I had the chance to ask how Stafford could attract more industry to town. His first piece of advice was to invest in making it the kind of town where people want to work and live.
Listen, I’m already living out my Stars Hollow dreams in this quirky little town filled with great people, but if other people and companies are going to invest in this town, they want to know we’re willing to invest as well. And that would be a hard case to make based on how the public votes at budget referendums.
If you follow the Stafford Free Press on Facebook, you may have noticed that over the past couple of weeks, I've been digging around in some data. From historical mill rates to the tax burdens placed on property owners in towns in our area, I’ve been sharing many data-driven findings that go beyond mill rates to look at the fuller picture. After all of this, I can't help but think Stafford operates on a budget that teeters on neglect.
No one wants to pay more in taxes. Personally, my husband and I have two old cars with problems, and we’re starting to face the reality that we’ll need to replace at least one this year. Meanwhile, the tech recession hit my business hard in 2023, and the thought of having a car payment again makes me want to crawl under my desk. So, sure, I’d love it if we somehow saw a reduction in taxes… but things cost what they cost. And I understand that living in a thriving town with a good school system is ultimately good for my property values and overall fiscal health.
The budget that just passed the Board of Finance would result in a 1.83 mill increase for a total of 38.59 mills, or a 4.967% increase. Based on the median home value, that would be an increase of $248.19 per year for the average homeowner (or $20.68 per month extra in your mortgage payment). If that’s what it costs to start making some progress to ultimately achieve the other economic development goals I’m sure we’d all like to see, I’ll pay it.
I sit in more meetings than the average person, and it's clear to me that everyone is doing the best they can. From the Board of Selectmen to the Board of Education, they have been looking for cuts and savings wherever they can find them, but at some point, more cuts become counterproductive. If we want more retail and industry in town, we need to be willing to invest. We need to create an educated workforce, have affordable places for people to live, and ensure they can get to work without losing a tire in a pothole. But it goes beyond that.
Really increasing the amount of business in town would likely mean we have to expand the water pollution control facility at some point, at a cost of many millions of dollars. In order to attract new residents with enough disposable income to spend at stores and restaurants that aren’t of the “Dollar” variety, we need schools those people are willing to put their kids in.
With the help of ARPA funds, we’ve managed to create an even more attractive and vibrant downtown—precisely the kind of thing Lavoie would say helps attract new business. And he seems to be correct, as in my few short years in Stafford, I’ve watched a new brewery, a record shop, a rock shop, and a bath and body store open up as progress on Main Street facelifts keeps chugging along. First Selectman Bill Morrison has told me more than once that the Selectmen from surrounding towns ask him the secret to our downtown success.* But a thriving downtown is just one piece of the economic puzzle.
Businesses that benefit from foot traffic are attracted to cute little Main Streets like ours, and so are visitors. (I’ve personally met more than one person who stopped to explore and spend money just because they thought downtown was cute.) However, to attract bigger businesses that impact the tax base and help the ones we already have grow, we need to think about how the budget decisions we make now will impact the future.
If Stafford were a house, its roof would leak, and the furnace might need replacing, but the owners would gripe about the price and put off the repairs. But anyone who has had a leaky roof or a boiler flooding the basement knows that when you put off necessary maintenance, you end up with a bigger problem. There is no homeowner’s insurance that is going to replace our metaphorically water-logged drywall, so it’s time we think about what actually needs to get done before we have no choice but to shell out big bucks to respond to a crisis.
*FYI: The secret to the downtown transformation is the tireless efforts of people like Amber Wakley-Whaley, who was instrumental in the Haymarket Common park facelift, Stafford Cidery owner Jodi Harmon, who has been the driving force behind Arts on Main for years, and the Events & Celebration Committee of which they are both members. Not to mention property owners who have used their position to give small businesses like the Cidery and the Coffee Shop a place to get a foothold and start a chain reaction. And they will all hate that I embarrassed them by pointing out just how much they do and mean to this town, but I firmly believe that regardless of who is in office, it’s people like these who really make a difference in a town.