ROYALTON — Town officials are seeking feedback from residents and business owners about implementing local option taxes to help fund the cost of replacing the Foxstand Bridge.
“We’re looking for ways to increase revenue without adding additional burden to the property taxpayer,” Royalton Town Administrator Ryan Britch said in a phone interview last week.
The Selectboard will host a listening session on Tuesday, June 2, beginning at 6 p.m. at the Academy Building. Residents can also stream the meeting via royaltonvt.gov/news_detail_T28_R198.php.
The Selectboard will discuss four potential local option taxes, at 1% each, on sales, rooms, meals and alcohol. Vermont’s sales tax is currently 6%; meals and rooms tax is 9%; and alcohol tax is 10%, according to the Vermont Department of Taxes. The majority of the revenue generated by additional 1% local option taxes benefits the municipality that passes it.
“We’re really looking for citizen and business input first before any decisions are made,” Britch said, adding that the Selectboard has not scheduled a town-wide vote on the matter. “It really depends on how the listening session is going to go.”
Royalton residents rejected local option taxes on meals, alcohol and rooms during the town’s 2025 Town Meeting, with a 51-51 deadlock.
“I think the opportunity to strike while the iron is hot is now,” Britch said about why he thinks residents might be open to reconsidering a local option sales tax. “The increasing costs have gotten worse.”
Last July, the Vermont Agency of Transportation informed town officials that the Foxstand Bridge — which has been closed since April 2024 — would cost $6 million to replace and Royalton would have to contribute nearly $348,000, Britch said. This March, a more thorough estimate revealed that a new bridge would cost $11.3 million, with the town on the hook for around $568,000.
The bridge, which was built in 1928, spans the White River and connects Gilman and Royalton Hill roads to Route 14, near Exit 3 on Interstate 89. Current plans call for the bridge to be replaced by September 2028.
The town currently has $182,000 saved and must raise $193,000 each year for the next two years — $111,000 more per year than initially planned — to meet the match.
“At the same time that construction costs have risen, the reliability of state and federal aid has become less certain,” the Selectboard wrote in a recent letter to residents posted on the town’s website. “Royalton needs to be able to deliver vital public services — without unsustainable burden on property taxpayers.”
Town officials decided to consider local option taxes now because they need the money to put toward the Foxstand Bridge project prior to Town Meeting 2027.
“If we don’t start until July (2027) we wouldn’t have time to collect all the revenue we need to compensate for this gap in funding,” Britch said.
Other options could include asking residents to pass a bond or working with VTrans to come up with a payment plan.
“If we can push some of that responsibility and burden onto tourists and law students and visitors, that would be ideal,” Britch said, emphasizing that officials want to avoid raising property taxes.
The town could raise around $130,000 if it implemented a local option sales tax and $27,000 from a local option meals tax, according to estimates town officials compiled using state tax data. (The town did not have data to make reliable estimates on the alcohol and rooms local option taxes, Britch said.)
“These additional funds would allow the town to address the funding shortage for Foxstand Bridge and to strengthen the Highway Fund,” according to the information sheet prepared by town officials.
If Royalton passes a local option tax, it would join other Upper Valley towns that have already done so. Woodstock approved a local option sales tax in March 2024, and Hartford voters did the same in March 2025. This spring, West Windsor voters approved local option taxes on rooms, meals and alcohol, while Pomfret adopted all four local option taxes.
Woodstock passed a local option tax on rooms, meals and alcohol in July 2015. In addition, Hartford has had a local option tax on rooms, meals and alcohol since 2014, but must obtain voter approval to spend money raised by those levies.
