Press Release: Town Funding

Newfane Town Meeting, March 5, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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, 22 communities, representing 86% of Windham region residents, voted to support the SeVEDS municipal funding effort, resulting in an investment of nearly $116,000 in regional planning and economic initiatives.

Funding requests for fiscal year 2025 were approved at Town Meetings that spanned from March 5 through April 1 in the towns of Athens, Brookline, Dover, Dummerston, Halifax, Jamaica, Londonderry, Marlboro, Newfane, Putney, Readsboro, Rockingham, Stratton, Townshend, Vernon, Wardsboro, Weston, Whitingham, Windham and Winhall. The Town of Brattleboro separately approved the funding request at a Select Board meeting on March 21, 2024; and the Wilmington Select Board approved the request from the Town’s 1% fund on May 7, 2024.

For a grassroots organization like SeVEDS, this level of support 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.

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 to create the 2024 Southern Vermont Zone CEDS is currently underway.

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/