A single flood can cause more damage than a small town brings in in taxes each year.
That can force communities to take on debt to keep their roads open and lights on, that only costs local taxpayers more long term.
And since federal disaster relief is uncertain, towns are looking for ways to help themselves.
The central Vermont community of Worcester is one of them. Back-to-back floods in 2023 and 2024 left the municipality with more than five times the town's annual budget’s worth of damages.
“It put us in a very, very tough position,” said town Treasurer Katie Miller.
And while federal and state aid helped, Miller says the town had to take on debt. It’s a situation the town would like to avoid in the future.
The Northeast now sees 50% more extreme precipitation than it did before 1995. It’s a trend climate scientists say is likely to continue as humans burn fossil fuels.
Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the federal government is making big changes to programs that provide towns like Worcester with disaster relief. And the president has said he’d like to see states foot more of the bill for cleanup.
In 2025, the Federal Emergency Management Agency outright denied Vermont’s disaster declaration for flooding in the Northeast Kingdom.
It created an uncertainty voters in Waitsfield are familiar with. Emergency Manager Fred Messer says the Mad River Valley town is still paying off debt it took on to rebuild after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
Voters there will decide at town meeting whether to set aside $10,000 for a new disaster reserve fund.
“We thought it would be prudent … so we’d have a little bit of money available when the next event hits,” Messer said. “We all know it’s going to happen.”
Plymouth, Chittenden, Greensboro and Waterbury are also looking to establish special funds that function as saving accounts to pay for natural disasters.
They’re asking voters for support to sock away anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000.
"We thought it would be prudent… so we’d have a little bit of money available when the next event hits. We all know it’s going to happen."Fred Messer, Waitsfield emergency manager
Katie Buckley with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns recommends towns consider saving between 15% and 17% of their annual operating budget each year in a reserve fund to help keep costs in check.
She also recommends making the funds as flexible as possible to account for an uncertain future.
"You're going to see more and more towns looking inward saying, all right, what do we need to plan for? What do we need to save for, and what can we do without?” she said.
And while these funds are a drop in the bucket compared to the damage a big storm can cause, Buckley and others say it’s one thing communities can do to try to insulate taxpayers from the costs of climate change.
