9 Things That Confuse Everyone Who Moves to Vermont

Some parts of living in Vermont make sense only after a local explains them.

Until then, newcomers are left trying to figure out why familiar parts of everyday life suddenly work so differently.

These are the things that confuse everyone who moves to Vermont.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Land-use and local road rules vary and are subject to change, so confirm the specifics with Vermont’s Land Use Review Board or your municipal clerk.

1. No Billboards Allowed

Vermont banned roadside billboards in 1968, one of only four states, alongside Maine, Hawaii and Alaska, to do it.

The last billboard came down by 1974.

None has gone up since.

Newcomers drive in expecting the usual wall of gas and fast-food logos promising an exit ahead, and find tree lines instead.

Vermont still marks services with small blue signs at each interstate interchange, but the 50-foot signs and flashing arches common elsewhere simply aren’t part of the skyline.

2. Mud Season’s Road Closures

Vermont’s dirt roads turn to deep mud every spring, and towns post weight limits to keep heavy trucks off them.

Morristown, for example, caps two-axle trucks around 15,000 pounds during the thaw, with higher limits for bigger rigs.

Vermont exempts milk and sap trucks from the weight limit.

Everyone else waits it out.

Newcomers scheduling a delivery, a moving truck or a propane refill in March quickly learn what a posted road means.

A routine errand turns into a phone call asking for a smaller vehicle.

3. Town Meeting Day in March

Vermont holds town meeting day on the first Tuesday in March, a tradition running for roughly 250 years.

Residents show up and vote in person on the town budget, local officers and town questions, often by voice or a show of hands.

Vermont law gives employees the right to unpaid leave from work to attend, as long as they give their employer seven days’ notice.

The business can still ask them to stay if it needs them on the job that day.

Attendance counts.

Newcomers used to voting once every two years by mail are surprised to find democracy happening in a gymnasium.

A show of hands settles road budgets and school spending right there on the spot.

4. No County Government

Vermont has 14 counties on the map, but none of them run local government the way a typical American county does.

Vermont elects two assistant judges per county to act as its executives, and their job is mostly limited to the courthouse, the county budget and the sheriff’s department.

The town selectboard runs everything else, from the budget to the roads to the liquor licenses.

Nothing goes to the county.

Transplants looking for a county assessor, a county building department or a county road crew learn fast that Vermont keeps that work at the town level, not the county one.

5. Roads That Just End

Vermont classifies some town roads as Class 4, and state law frees the town from any duty to maintain them under 19 V.S.A. § 310(b).

Some of these roads turn into legal trails instead, open to the public but built for a horse and cart, not a car.

Nothing plows them.

Spring doesn’t bring a grader either.

Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation apps routinely send ordinary drivers down these roads anyway, with no warning that the pavement is about to run out.

A Brownington selectboard member reported three vehicles stuck on one Class 4 road in a single stretch, each driver following turn-by-turn directions instead of a road sign.

A newcomer who buys a cheap, secluded lot at the end of one of these roads risks the same trouble at closing, only permanently.

The town owes that road nothing.

6. Act 250, Not Just for Developers

Vermont’s Act 250 review isn’t only for big commercial developers, and newcomers who try to split off a piece of land for their kid find that out fast.

Vermont created Act 250 in 1970, requiring a regional citizen commission to review new construction and land subdivisions before anyone breaks ground.

The review doesn’t wait for a project to get big.

A landowner who divides a lot to hand a piece to a grown child faces the same Act 250 disclosure statement a commercial developer files.

Vermont checks whether that family member divided land nearby within the past five years before letting the split go through.

Family transfers get no exemption.

7. Bottle Deposits Without Wine

Vermont has run a bottle deposit system since 1972, and a nickel deposit covers beer, wine coolers, other malt beverages and pre-mixed cocktails.

Sodas and other carbonated drinks carry that same nickel deposit.

Liquor and spirits over 50 milliliters carry a steeper 15-cent deposit instead.

Wine doesn’t count.

Wine and hard cider carry no deposit under Vermont’s law.

Newcomers haul a case of empties to the redemption center expecting a nickel for every bottle.

The wine bottles in the same bag were never worth a cent.

8. Towns That Pay Your Tuition

Vermont ties every homeowner’s property tax rate to how much their town spends per pupil.

That math runs the same way whether the town operates a school or writes tuition checks instead.

Vermont has run its town tuitioning program since 1869, the oldest school choice arrangement in the country.

Dozens of small Vermont towns operate no public school at some grade level, sending each family’s kids to a public or approved independent school of the family’s choosing.

The town folds that tuition bill into its per-pupil spending, and that number is exactly what sets the town’s homestead tax rate.

Everyone’s bill reflects it.

There’s no building.

A newcomer without kids in school still pays whatever the tuitioning adds up to, right alongside the family sending three kids to a school forty minutes away.

A newcomer who assumes their new town runs a normal K-12 public school finds only a check the town cuts twice a year instead.

A 2025 law tightened which schools qualify for that money, cutting the list of eligible independent schools from 46 to 18 statewide.

9. No Food Scraps in the Trash

Newcomers who grew up chucking every food wrapper and banana peel into one trash can find Vermont’s hauler leaving the bin at the curb instead.

Vermont has banned tossing food scraps in the regular trash since July 2020, under a law passed back in 2012.

Coffee grounds, banana peels and last night’s leftovers all count.

Everyone has to comply.

Food scraps go in a compost bin, a backyard pile or a scrap collection service instead.

Landlords and trash haulers serving apartment buildings have to offer that collection too.

The General Store That Fills the Gaps

Vermont’s small towns often run on one general store that serves as the grocery, the hardware aisle, the deli counter and the post office pickup window all at once.

Vermont historian Dennis Báthory-Kitsz counts only about 70 stores like this left statewide today, down from around 125 in 2001.

That’s a steep drop.