At our November meeting, we made a good start on formulating a strategy to reduce our property taxes. As loyal readers, you will already know that at about $7,000 per year, these are a huge part of our overhead. If we could reduce that load, it would take a lot of pressure off our annual budget.
So what should we do? The town of Berlin, where the Hall is located is not known for its generosity in granting tax relief; in Vermont it is up to local towns to decide on what organizations get tax relief. We are in one of only 5 states which tax Grange Halls, and the Halls of other fraternal organizations–in the others, the Halls are exempt by law.
At our meeting, we debated a variety of approaches: appealing to the Town of Berlin? trying to get the State of Vermont to change the tax status of all fraternal organizations? We found that transferring the ownership to a 501c(3) (like the FCCGH) would require getting permission from the State Grange; this is not likely to be granted, under the Grange Charter. While we are responsible for the Hall’s bills, taxes, rentals and maintenance, it’s ownership is still controlled by the State Grange.
In the end, we decided that for any of the possible strategies, we need to get reliable facts with which to work. Alison Forrest, Marj P0wer and Merry Shernock volunteered to get information on the other Granges who own Halls more or less like ours, and to research the Grand List of properties in Berlin, and other towns. The goal is to compare the taxes and any tax arrangements there are for other Grange Halls. At our next meeting, on Dec. 6th, we’ll see what the next steps should be.

Offering to help our neighbors
Also at our November meeting, we talked about the pumpkin shows now being held at at least a couple of other places in Vermont–the Settlement Farm in Middlesex on Rt. 2, and one in Williamstown. Most of us also have fond memories of the “original” pumpkin show, put on for many years by Karen Moynihan of Ellie’s Farm Market, just a little south of Riverton on Rt. 12–just 5 or 10 minutes south of the Grange Hall. Karen used to carve–literally–up to a thousand pumpkins, doing all the decorative carving herself, but getting help from volunteers to “de-gut” the pumpkin shells. She used the show to collect donations for various worthy causes, as the “successor” shows are also doing.
Karen from Ellie’s gave up doing the pumpkin show a few years ago when her husband was recovering from medical problems, but has been talking about doing “one more show for the grand-kids who never saw it”. So we voted to offer volunteer help for cleaning out pumpkins if and when she is ready to take it on again. We’ll keep you posted next fall if we need to collect some volunteers for this epic task!