A conversation sparked by snow
Over the past several days, social media has been filled with frustration over snow removal. Residents have shared experiences of unplowed streets, delays, and uneven responses, often paired with the same question:
“With all the money we spend in taxes, how does this still happen?”
Before going further, two things need to be stated clearly.
First, this is not a criticism of the public employees who were out working in difficult conditions. I thank and applaud them.
Second, I am not personally upset about the snow removal. My own experience was fine.
What matters here isn’t any single storm. It’s the reaction. It reveals a deeper disconnect between how residents think about government spending and how government actually operates.
Most people see a tax bill. Government sees a burn rate.
Most residents experience local government through their property tax bill. That’s natural. That’s fair.
But local government does not operate on individual tax bills. It operates on total spending, across multiple entities, every day of the year.
When you look at our town’s major local budgets:
- Municipal government: approximately $83 million
- K–8 school district: approximately $151 million
- High school district: approximately $93 million
That’s roughly $327 million per year in combined local public spending.
Divided by 365 days, that equals:
About $896,000 spent every single day
What this number does not include
It’s important to note what this figure does not include.
It does not include:
- Fire districts
- County government spending
- County taxes that appear on property tax bills
Those are separate layers of government with separate funding streams. I am also going to completely leave out State taxes.
This matters — especially when discussing snow removal.
Municipal roads vs. State and county roads
Most of the recent complaints involved municipal roads, not state or county roads.
County and state roads are plowed, maintained, and funded by the those budgets — using their own taxes and crews. That work is separate from municipal operations.
The nearly $900,000 per day figure includes the municipal budget, which is responsible for maintaining local streets, daily operations, and core services at the town level.
So when residents ask why municipal roads weren’t cleared as expected, they are not talking about county or state performance. They are talking about municipal outcomes, funded by that municipal spending.
Spending level vs. service reliability
This isn’t about expecting perfection. Weather events happen. Logistics are complicated.
But when a local government spends nearly $900,000 every day, residents are justified in expecting that basic services work consistently. Especially predictable ones like winter road maintenance.
When they don’t, the issue isn’t effort or intent. It’s priorities, systems, and accountability. Again, these are NOT the fault of our municipal employees. They are just the boots on the ground following orders from those elected and appointed at the top. Those at the top are who should be accountable for their priorities and systems they create and maintain.
The frustration people are expressing online isn’t really about snow. It’s about the feeling that the scale of spending and the quality of results don’t always line up.
What a daily burn rate should demand from leadership
Looking at local government through a daily burn rate lens forces a different set of questions. This is not about effort, but about leadership and preparedness.
Our elected officials and senior administrators are not new to this. Many have been in place through years of winter storms, including major events going back decades. This wasn’t an unprecedented concept. It was a predictable challenge.
At this level of spending, residents are entitled to ask:
- Have lessons from past storms been documented, refined, and institutionalized?
- Do we have clear plans that scale from minor snow events to major ones?
- Are leadership decisions guided by established playbooks, or do we just improvise each time?
- Are we measuring success by whether roads are passable in real time, not by how hard people worked afterward?
Smaller storms are supposed to build the roadmap for larger ones. Each event should reduce uncertainty, not reset it.
Snow removal didn’t create this conversation. It simply reminded people that with nearly a million dollars spent every day, experience should translate into preparedness — and preparedness should translate into results.