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.