By STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—The Otter Valley Unified Union (OVUU) school budget for 2025-2026 passed by a single vote on Tuesday, with a final tally of 817 yes to 816 no. That one vote margin approved expenditures of $28,022,099, a 4.53% increase over the current year’s budget.
According to Brandon Town Clerk Susan Gage, the ballot-reading machines had initially tallied 815 yes to 814 no, a margin so slim that a manual recount was undertaken. During the recount, 4 ballots were revealed to have stray marks that rendered them unreadable to the computer but of which two were clearly intended in favor of the budget and two were clearly not in favor, bringing the final, official totals to 817 yes and 816 no.
Though the final margin remained a single vote, the passage of the OVUU budget on the first ballot stands in contrast to last spring’s contentious process, in which it took three attempts to pass a school budget. Voters had been discontented by high taxes throughout the state, with numerous districts failing to pass their budgets on the first attempt.
The resentment toward last year’s tax increases also led voters to end the Democrats’ supermajority in the Statehouse, hoping that the shakeup in Montpelier would spur education-finance reform. Brandon was among the districts to replace a Democratic state representative with a Republican.
On Tuesday, OVUU voters also elected the following members to the OVUU School Board:
- Lauren Thomas to represent Brandon
- Brett Mullin to represent Pittsford
- Lesley Bienvenue to represent Leicester
- Jessica Markowski to represent Pittsford
- Laurie Bertrand to represent Sudbury
- Barbara Ebling as an at-large director
The seat from Whiting and another at-large seat remain unfilled. No one ran for either seat and no write-in candidate received sufficient votes.
