This is a state of emergency.
Not because gas is expensive.
Not because groceries cost more.
Not because permits are slow.
Not because lumber, labor, and housing costs exploded.
Those are all serious problems.
But when a house in Barre goes from roughly:
$4,400 a year
tonearly $11,000
that is financial destruction for ordinary people.
And that is just the beginning.
Most rural Vermonters will not survive this financially if it continues unchecked.
If property taxes double or triple, rents will follow.
That is just math.
If you think you are immune because you rent instead of own, you are wrong.
An old farmhouse assessed at $53,000 suddenly becoming “worth” $500,000 does not mean the owner suddenly became wealthy.
It means the state found a larger taxable target.
The owner may have lived there for:
40 years
50 years
maybe generations
No mansion was built.
No luxury development happened.
The market changed around them because post-COVID cash buyers and outside wealth distorted Vermont property values far beyond what local wages support.
Now longtime Vermonters are being taxed against valuations created by a completely different economic class.
And the state effectively forced towns into market-value reassessment systems tied to the statewide education tax structure.
That is why people are panicking.
Because once:
taxes explode
rents follow
farms fail
retirees cannot afford fixed costs
and small businesses collapse
you do not just reverse that damage later.
Property transfers.
Communities change.
Families leave.
The only people who comfortably survive systems like this are:
the wealthy
institutional buyers
second-home owners
and people wealthy enough to hire law firms and tax attorneys
Ordinary Vermonters do not have that luxury.
That is why more and more people are talking about:
injunctions
emergency legal action
organized taxpayer resistance
and demanding outside scrutiny before this spirals completely out of control.
Because many Vermonters now believe this is no longer just a policy disagreement.
Come to the State House lawn while we still can before they wall themselves in.
It is an economic emergency. #VT4VT
