This month brings a veritable plethora (aka “a lot”) of action for all:

New member Erin Barry has followed up on her plans to launch a clothing-and-toy exchange, holding the first session on the 2nd Saturday of February.  We voted to support this as a Grange activity at our January meeting, and Erin has wasted no time getting started.    She reports that 18 families, plus a small crew of volunteers came on 2/13, and had a good time.  She had a good variety of initial donations of kids’ clothes, from Infant to Junior sizes, plus toys, and bins to store them in.
Kids came and played on a big rug in the basement, parents met and shared stories, kids got to play some games upstairs–all in all a great start.   Please spread the word that the next opportunity will be March 12th, from 9:30 to 1:30 AM.  A minimal charge of $3 per family helps to keep the project going.  Open to everyone, as are all Grange events!

As I have told you, our dedicated volunteers got enough signatures to get our TAX RELIEF petition placed on the Berlin Town Meeting Ballot!   We have found out that our question will be debated and voted on at the Town Meeting, not by “Australian Ballot”, as we thought.   This means that we don’t have to reach voters “in bulk” as we originally expected, but do have to make a persuasive case to a small group.   We will need to be ready to advocate for our proposal–or rather to have Berlin residents do so!  And we will want to get as many Berlin supporters who are registered voters to the meeting as possible!
Come to our next Grange Meeting, on Saturday, Feb. 6th to discuss the specifics with Merry, our team leader for this effort, and the rest of the interested Grange members.
Why is the tax relief so important?  Well, I’m putting this section in red ink for a reason!
Over the last 10 years that I have been Grange Master, we have been having trouble keeping up with our bills–even with generous donations by the Contra Dance Umbrella, and more recently with fundraisers run by the Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall, we have been losing at least some money every year.  Our savings have been exhausted–we have only a small reserve fund in a CD right now, about $10,000 that we need to maintain in case of emergencies.   We’re not in good shape, financially speaking, even as we see more and more people using our Hall.
We’ve made huge improvements in our physical plant (our new bathrooms are the latest chapter), and have cut our expenses with improvements in insulation and energy efficiency.  We’ve remodeled our facility, to draw more renters–and all of these changes have paid off as much as they can.   We’re all volunteers, so we can’t cut payroll!  We pay for snow-plowing and sanding, for some cleaning services, for heating oil, electricity, propane, phone, internet access for our WiFi–all essential.
Our single biggest expense is our property tax bill, currently about $7,200 per year.   This is more than a quarter of our yearly budget!  Eliminating that annual burden will give us financial stability, and the ability to plan for even more improvements with some certainty that we can afford them.
We feel that as a community service organization that draws people to the central VT region, and provides multiple organizations–almost all non-profit ones–with an attractive, inexpensive venue for their events, we are entitled to ask for help from our “host town” of Berlin.  We are eager to provide more services to the town–so we have also offered to allow free use of the Hall to Berlin organizations and citizens, at least 2 times per month, in return for this tax relief.  These opportunities, available when they will not displace paying rentals and events will provide Berlin with a “Community Center” that it currently lacks.  It will do so with the least expenditure possible–no planning, no construction costs, no upkeep and maintenance costs for the Town.   For the Grange, this will extend our community service mission to support local people doing events for local causes–including things like family celebrations, memorial services, meetings, and more.   We’ll be excited to see the possibilities explored by this “new” set of users.
So all of this is why it is vital to get this tax exemption.   We need your help to make the case–especially if you live in Berlin, or can recruit friends, family and acquaintances who are registered voters there.  At our Grange meeting, we’ll be talking about ways to make sure our supporters are registered, and how to make sure they get to the meeting.  We’ll discuss how to get influential Berlin residents on our side before and at the meeting.   And we can use YOUR help!
If you can’t make it to the meeting, please contact Merry:  merrykaysings@gmail.com or me:  swartztim15@gmail.com

We began a major discussion about changing our name at our meeting last Saturday, Jan. 16th, but came to a consensus that it was too complicated to decide in one meeting.   Our conversations brought up a number of issues we need to consider–one of the values of having a group process.
As I said in the Grange Notes sent out last week, a few Berlin residents have questioned why we should be given property tax-exemption, if we are so Montpelier focused that our name is still “Capital City”, after being part of Berlin since 1952.   The VT State Grange indicated to Patty Giavara and me,when we met with them in December that we could choose to take on a new name–they are very supportive of our efforts to remove the burden of the $7200 in property taxes we are paying to Berlin this year.
As we prepare to campaign for the exemption vote on Mar. 1st, Town Meeting Day, we want to emphasize our potential to be a community hall for Berlin, along with the many events we already host (see below for a recent selection).   We have offered free use of the Hall for Berlin events–doing more for our host town is right in line with the community service purpose of the whole Grange organization.  That was the genesis of the idea of changing our name to include “Berlin”.  Adding “Community” to our name seems like an obvious idea, emphasizing our mission of building connections by working and playing together.
Our discussion at the Grange meeting touched on this possible change–but questioned whether we want our name to focus so exclusively on our (prospective) Berlin connections.   In reality, we serve a regional population of dancers that extends even to neighboring states,  as well as events for local institutions like schools and cultural groups, frequent meetings of the VT State Grange’s committees, regular church meetings, weddings and baby showers and much more.   We are not limited in our “service area”–and our strategic location is part of our value.  We are near the middle of Vermont, easy to get to on major roads that bring visitors and locals to our doors.
So our meeting considered other names we could choose:  Capital Area Grange?  Central VT Grange?  Would name choices like those better indicate our real identity?   There may be other possibilities as well.  It is certainly true that we are not only a Montpelier institution, as well as not being solely a Berlin one, now and in the future.
Another reason to not change the name too quickly is that it is part of publicity for events already planned and listed by performers and organizers.   If we do change our name, we will need a transition period, and a plan to communicate the new name.
We also need to be concentrating on our tax relief plan between now and Berlin’s Town Meeting–it will be fine to be able to tell voters as you talk to them that we are not wedded to the name we have now–and to solicit their input on the name question.
So that is the plan for now–I’ve gotten a lot of reactions from others besides the Grange members at the meeting, and we’ll be happy to get more input–what do you think we should do about our name?   Come to the meetings and be part of the process.  Our next meeting will be on Feb. 6th, starting at 4:30–and it will be followed by the usual tasty and social potluck dinner.