First, some context:
In 2020, a millionaire named Raj Bhakta purchased the former campus of Green Mountain College in my hometown for $5 million (the campus was estimated to be worth roughly $20 million) and moved his young family onto the property.
In 2022, Mr. Bhakta asked the town for a tax stabilization deal that would help encourage potential financial backers to support his development plans.
In 2023, Mr. Bhakta submitted development papers outlining his plan for the campus, explaining that he’d like to “turn the property into a regional destination for agrotourism, hospitality, small businesses, and post-graduate food and beverage education.”
It is now two years later. In the intervening years, Mr. Bhakta has done an admirable job maintaining the beauty of the 121-acre property at the same time as he develops his company, Bhakta Spirits, and his family’s independent school, the Green Mountain Community School. The Bhakta family employs local individuals in some capacities and has enticed other professionals to the area to work for him.
To reduce his liability, he revoked the townpeople’s access to the swimming hole at the back of the campus and asked that the public treat the campus as it would any other private property, as is his right and responsibility. He also turned the area around the swimming hole into a luxurious riverside spot for his friends and family (and one would imagine his potential backers and future customers), while graciously allowing tourists and locals to use the biking, walking, and snowmobiling trails that run along the river. He converted a building that once held offices for professors and administrators into a beautiful private home for his family, and it is also my understanding (which may be inaccurate) that he has turned the college’s former atheletic facility into a garage for his vehicles and converted the college’s former library into a tasting room and bottling facility for his company’s liquors. All of which is his right as the property owner.
However, though the town’s Selectboard was granted the power almost three years ago to “explore the possibility of entering into a tax stabilization agreement” with Mr. Bhakta, the Selectboard has not finalized any such deal.
Today, just a few days before our annual town meeting, many of my neighbors received a “Dear Neighbor” letter from Mr. Bhakta, and as a neighbor, I’d like to respond.
Here is the letter sent by Mr. Bhakta.
Dear Mr. Bhakta,
I was one of your neighbors who attended the meeting you held on campus in 2022 to encourage voters to support your initiative on that year’s town meeting ballot. As you know, the initiative read, “Shall the Town provide limited authority to the Selectboard to explore the possibility of entering into a tax stabilization agreement with [your business] to promote [your development project], which agreement shall become effective upon ratification by a majority of those present and voting at an annual or special meeting warned for that purpose…?”
During the meeting, you threatened that if the town did not support your initiative, you would be forced to sell the property, most likely to a tax-exempt religious group. While I did not appreciate the threat, I understood its value as a negotiating tactic: fewer tax dollars from you would be better than zero tax dollars from a religious group.
I ended up voting in favor of the initiative for one reason only: it required any deal negotiated by the Selectboard to be voted on by the rest of the town. The Selectboard could negotiate the terms, but the deal would have to be validated only through a truly democratic process.
The letter you posted in the mail today contains an outright lie. You say that the town “voted for a tax stabilization deal,” but in fact, we did not. We voted in favor of giving the Selectboard “limited authority to explore the possibility” of a deal.
Again, I voted for the initiative that appeared on my ballot. I most certainly did not vote to give you a deal.
You state that your business has made many phone calls, sent many emails and text messages, and had many meetings with the town, and yet a deal is no closer to being put in writing than it was three years ago. Unfortunately, because those negotiations (as far as I’m aware) took place during executive sessions, townsfolk like me do not have the right to learn what was said, and so no one outside of that room has any idea how close the parties are to structuring the deal or what the sticking points might be.
For all I know, the Selectboard refuses to entertain your business’s demand that it be allowed to install a helicopter landing pad on the campus’ front lawn, and so you refuse to negotiate further. That’s probably not true, of course — but you’ve already demonstrated your willingness to lie in public and in writing with your claim above, so unless the town could see the actual state of the current negotiation, how are we to know any differently?
I appreciate that your business has spent over $6 million on the campus since 2020, but investment alone does not entitle you to bypass the democratic process. You own the property, so it only makes sense for you to maintain it. The voters did not ask you to buy the campus, and you didn’t do us any favors by making the purchase. After all, yours wasn’t the only bid the day of the auction; who’s to say whether many of us wouldn’t have preferred a different owner?
Of course, our preferences don’t matter, nor should they — you made a private real-estate purchase, and in America, one’s neighbors thankfully don’t get a say on who can move in next door.
Now, I’ve said publicly that I’m generally in favor of your development plans.
I am not, however, in favor of a blanket tax stabilization deal. The people of Poultney should leverage this moment to ensure your development project employs a certain percentage of contractors, construction workers, and service industry folks from our local pool (however that gets defined), and we should require you set aside a certain percentage of the 40+ apartments you plan to build in Phase 2 for low-income Vermonters.
But more importantly, I am not in favor of individuals who lie to my neighbors about the facts of a case. When you try to tell us that we voted “OVERWHELMINGLY” in favor of a deal when, in plain fact, we did not cast a single vote in favor of one, you do not just misinterpret what happened, you lie about it in hopes that we misremember or misunderstand.
Your bald tactic reminds me of a certain political leader who lies often enough and loud enough (and sometimes in all caps, like you) in hopes that many of us will forget the truth.
We gave “limited authority to the Selectboard to explore the possibility of entering into a tax stabilization agreement.”
We did not give them a mandate to make a deal.
You’re correct: it takes two to tango. But if negotiations have stalled, perhaps it is because the Selectboard is doing its job—ensuring that any deal benefits our town, not just your business and family. Rushing into an agreement could mean we shoulder the burden while your promises go unfulfilled.
So yes, it takes two to tango.
But it only takes a single ounce of integrity to tell the truth.
Sincerely, your neighbor,
Kyle Callahan
I encourage any of my neighbors who happen to be reading this letter to attend the upcoming town meeting and put your questions to the Selectboard directly. If we allow misinformation to shape our decisions, we risk giving up more than we bargained for.