VLCT urges state help for town road funding, inventories and resilient design

Representatives of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT) told a legislative transportation committee on Feb. 5 that towns are facing rising costs, inconsistent inventories and shrinking relative funding for town highways, bridges, culverts and stormwater work, and asked the state to take several concrete steps to help.

VLCT said the state should lead a standardized, statewide inventory and condition assessment of municipal roads and drainage structures, consider returning some transportation revenues directly to towns, and authorize new municipal finance tools to let communities bond or manage emergency borrowing more effectively. The organization also highlighted capacity-building work it provides to towns, funded in part by a federal grant, and cited examples of municipal projects that required outside assistance to assemble funding.

The request grew out of testimony from VLCT staff that municipalities are being asked to shoulder more of the cost to maintain and upgrade local infrastructure at the same time municipal budgets are strained. "We've been around for a while since 1967," said Josh Sanford, director of intergovernmental relations at VLCT, introducing the group and its municipal services. Samantha Sheehan, VLCT municipal policy specialist, described a municipal operations support team that helps towns with grant writing and grant management and said that work is funded with a "million dollar…