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Live updates: Vermonters vote local on Town Meeting Day 2026
Town Meeting Day is an election day for everything local in Vermont: your town government, your local school district, and sometimes other institutions like water districts.
And if you're lucky, there's pie.
Find answers to your questions in our Town Meeting Day guide, and catch up on our preview coverage:
- Waterbury voters will weigh $4.3M flood plain project
- Frustration mounts in Rutland over write-in-only election for mayor
- Voters to weigh school closures, multimillion-dollar bond
- Coventry voters contemplate life after the landfill
- Brattleboro Town Meeting Day ballot offers solutions and confusion
- Castleton voters will weigh in on proposed senior housing facility after years of opposition
- Federal disaster relief is uncertain. So these towns want to help themselves
Get more in-depth local reporting from Vermont Public every weekday in The Frequency newsletter.
Williston pitches $13.9M library expansion
The town of Williston is asking voters to pay for a library expansion this Town Meeting Day.
The $13.9 million bond would help update the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library and Village Green.
Planners say the town’s population has outgrown the library since its last addition in 1998. They estimate the bond would cost an extra $10 a month for the average taxpayer.
If approved, library construction is expected to finish in late 2028.
Emerald ash borers show up in town meeting materials
A handful of Vermont communities will vote this Town Meeting Day to clean up after an invasive species — the emerald ash borer.
The beetles chew on ash trees and ultimately kill them. The town of Grand Isle is asking residents for $25,000 to remove dead ash trees.
Ron Bushway is the town moderator, select board member and road commissioner. He told Vermont Edition on Monday that the dead trees can't be ignored.
"Oh no, they're too dangerous," Bushway said. "If you let them go over time, the tree rots on the inside. It becomes just like a Styrofoam cup. There's no structure to it. They might just fall over any in any direction."
Londonderry and South Hero will vote on allocating $3,000 apiece to an infestation reserve fund. Norwich is asking residents for $60,000 to remove ash trees along public roads.
MAP: Emerald ash borer is now killing trees in at least 68 Vermont towns
Proposed school budgets would raise property taxes about 10% statewide
The school budgets that Vermonters will vote on today aren’t rising as steeply as elected officials once feared.
Gov. Phil Scott's administration was previously predicting a nearly 6% increase in education spending, based on a survey of school districts last fall.
But lawmakers got updated numbers last week that show proposed budget increases coming in at 4.2%.
That figure would still result in an approximately 10% increase in average statewide property tax bills.
But lawmakers and the governor are contemplating using more than $100 million in one-time money to cut that increase by more than half.
School budget votes can be a bellwether of voter sentiment midway through the legislative session, and angst over property taxes has fueled lawmakers' current education reform effort. Last week, Scott told reporters he'd personally vote no on his school budget in Berlin.
Here's your 2026 bingo card
It's a Vermont Public tradition: Save this bingo card to your phone, or print it out, and bring it with you to your town meeting.
