McLaren: “Yes In My Backyard” tax credit could help defray education taxes

May 27, 2026  |  By Ryan McLaren

Vermont is getting harder and harder to afford.

That’s not an abstract policy problem. It’s the math around kitchen tables: rent, mortgage, property taxes, child care, groceries, gas, and whether there’s enough left over to keep building a life here.

When young people cannot afford to live here, our communities get older. When workers cannot find homes near their jobs, our businesses struggle. When families leave, our schools lose students. And when our grand lists stop growing, the cost of public education falls harder on the people who are still here.

For the last few years, Montpelier has responded to rising education property taxes with one-time buy-downs as a band-aid to make the increase smaller for a year. 

The first time, I understood it. It bought the state some time.

But now we’ve done it again and again.

From 2023 to 2025, Vermont spent roughly $175 million filling the structural hole in our Education Fund. Now, in 2026, state leaders are talking about using roughly $105 million in surplus income tax revenue for another one-time buy-down.

There are real opportunity costs to this. This band-aid funding leaves less money for lowering health care costs, or expanding child care access and workforce development. 

At some point, we have to be honest with ourselves. If we keep using one-time money to buy one more year, we shouldn’t be surprised when we end up back in the same place the next year. 

That’s not a plan.

We have a choice: do we want property taxes to go down for one year, or do we want to build the kind of Vermont where they can go down for good?

I think the answer is clear.

The best way to protect public schools and lower property taxes is to grow the number of homes, families, workers, students, and taxpayers that support them.

That’s why I am proposing the Yes In My Back Yard Tax Credit.
The “YIMBY Tax Credit” connects the two things we all say we want: lower taxes and lower-cost housing. If a community says yes to new homes, the state should say yes to property tax relief. By using money we’re already spending to incentivize new homes, we can add billions of dollars to our grand lists and shrink taxes long term.

For every new home a municipality fully permits, that community would receive $25,000 in education property tax relief. That relief would reduce the municipality’s Education Fund obligation, spreading across the entire grand list, lowering property taxes for everyone in that community.

So when a town permits new homes, existing homeowners get relief.

This is not a call to cut education or ask schools to do more with less. And it’s not an argument that we can avoid the hard work of education reform. We still need to take seriously the cost of the system and the quality of the education we’re delivering to every child in Vermont. But we also need to admit something else: we cannot lower education costs long-term if the number of people who can afford to live here keeps shrinking.

This matters because, right now, too many communities experience change as a burden. And too often, the easiest thing to do is say no, slow things down, or wait for somebody else to solve the problem.

But we’re out of time for that.

Under my plan, a $105 million buy-down could become up to 4,000 new homes: homes for working families, seniors, young people, middle-income, and low-income Vermonters who have been failed by a housing market that simply does not have enough places for people to live.

This has to work for rural Vermont, too.

Small towns want to be part of the solution. But many do not have the same staff, planning capacity, infrastructure, or technical support as larger municipalities. They deserve the same chance to say yes to homes.

That’s why this plan sets aside half of the funding for communities under 5,000 people. It would guarantee $50,000 planning grants for underinvested municipalities, including flood-impacted communities still working to rebuild. And it would guarantee $20,000 municipal planning grants for towns that do not currently have zoning.

I know this proposal will not solve everything by itself. No single policy will.

But, if we had used the roughly $175 million already spent on temporary buy-downs this way, we could have supported thousands of new homes and added billions of dollars to municipal grand lists already.

Instead, Montpelier is debating another short-term fix.

Vermonters deserve better than that. Montpelier can keep buying one more year.

Or Vermont can build its way out. I believe we should build the Vermont we want for the future.

Ryan McLaren, of Essex Junction, is a democratic candidate for lieutenant governor.