Above: Halifax Town Meeting, March 4, 2025 (BDCC Staff photo)
Each year, Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies (SeVEDS) asks voters in the 27 Windham Region towns to invest in regional economic development efforts at the level of $3 per resident. This year, 21 communities, representing 82% of the Windham region’s residents, voted to support the SeVEDS municipal funding effort, resulting in an investment of over $110,000 for regional economic development planning and initiatives.
Funding requests for fiscal year 2026 were approved at March 2025 Town Meetings in the towns of Athens, Brookline, Dover, Dummerston, Halifax, Jamaica, Londonderry, Marlboro, Newfane, Putney, Readsboro, Rockingham, Stratton, Townshend, Wardsboro, Weston, Whitingham, Windham and Winhall. The Town of Brattleboro separately approved the funding request at a Select Board meeting on December 3, 2024; and the Wilmington Select Board approved a request from the Town’s 1% fund on May 7, 2025.
For a grassroots organization like SeVEDS, a high level of support across the region is a critical metric. Broad municipal funding helps create a regional approach, with programs that can take on economic and community development issues that are beyond the scope of a single municipality to address on its own. Importantly, the annual funds raised by SeVEDS are leveraged 5-20 times as partner organization Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC) works to match municipal support with philanthropic, private, state and federal dollars, as well as funding from BDCC revenues. The funds are deployed for a variety of regional community, economic, and workforce development programs, including the Pipelines and Pathways programs in Windham Region schools, regional Bizconnect meetings that help local small businesses connect with resources and support, and the Southern VT Economy Project, which provides technical support and training for locally driven projects and organizations.
SeVEDS grew from a broad-based regional effort, initiated by BDCC in 2008, to understand and create the long term strategies needed to reverse the economic decline of the Windham Region and plan for the economic impacts from the closure of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. In 2014, after multiple years of regional input, education and data gathering, SeVEDS received federal recognition for the Windham Region’s 5 year S.M.A.R.T. Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS). Following the establishment of the Southern Vermont Economic Development Zone in Vermont statute, SeVEDS partnered with Bennington’s Regional Economic Development Group in 2018, and received a federal funding match to develop the 2019 Southern Vermont Zone CEDS. A public process and 5-year update took place in 2024 and the updated Southern Vermont Zone CEDS is currently waiting for final federal approval by the US Economic Development Authority.
For more information on BDCC & SeVEDS programs please visit https://brattleborodevelopment.com/; for information on the Southern Vermont Zone and CEDS visit https://www.sovermontzone.com/
