Barre, Vermont: security deposit interest

The duty was never an ordinance in the first place — it lived in the city charter, at 24 App. V.S.A. ch. 1, § 528, and the General Assembly repealed §§ 526 through 528 by 2019, No. M-12 (Adj. Sess.), § 5(b). Barre did not re-enact it by ordinance afterwards: the city's current Chapter 7 Minimum Housing ordinance, approved in October 2024 and so four years later than the repeal, mentions a security deposit exactly once, in a definition that excludes deposits from "rent," and contains no interest duty at all. Vermont's own deposit statute, 9 V.S.A. § 4461, requires no interest either, so a Barre tenant today is owed none — and any source still listing Barre among Vermont's deposit-interest cities is quoting law that died in 2020.

Barre deposit interest at a glance

The rate history

Barre published no rate schedule. The repealed charter section measured the payment against a savings benchmark rather than a city-set figure; the text still circulating on legal-research sites reads, "Interest equivalent to a Vermont passbook savings account shall be paid on the deposit." No Barre figures survive on any city or state source, and the provision is gone from the official charter.

How this interacts with state law

Vermont expressly invites municipalities into this area, and Barre is the example of one that came and left. Under 9 V.S.A. § 4461(g), "a town or municipality may adopt an ordinance governing security deposits on dwellings," supplemental to and not inconsistent with the statute's minimum protections; the same subsection says such an ordinance "may not limit how a security deposit is held" but "may authorize the payment of interest on a security deposit." That grant is not confined to charter cities — it reaches any town or municipality. Vermont's own statute requires no interest, so once Barre's charter provision was repealed nothing was left to fill the space.

Notes and caveats

• A legal-research site still serves the repealed text — Justia's 2005 and 2011 Vermont code snapshots still publish § 1-528, including its sentence about interest equivalent to a Vermont passbook savings account, with nothing on the page to indicate a repeal. Those snapshots were accurate for their years and have simply never been marked. The official Vermont Statutes Online entry for §§ 526 through 528 now reads only "Repealed. 2019, No. M-12 (Adj. Sess.), § 5(b), eff. Nov. 1, 2020." Anything describing Barre's rule in the present tense is reading an old snapshot.
• It was a charter provision, not an ordinance — That matters for where to look and who can change it. Vermont municipal charters are state law, printed in Title 24 Appendix and amended or repealed by the General Assembly, so Barre's rule was never in the city's ordinance books and its repeal will not be found in a city council record. Vermont's separate authorization for municipal deposit ordinances, 9 V.S.A. § 4461(g), is the route a Vermont town would use today; Barre has not used it since the charter repeal.
• Barre City and Barre Town are different places — Vermont has both, they have separate governments and separate codes, and the deposit-interest history described here belongs to the City of Barre only. A search that lands on Barre Town's code is looking at a different municipality.
• The current housing ordinance says nothing about it — Barre City's Chapter 7 Minimum Housing ordinance, approved October 2024, is the city's direct equivalent of the housing chapters that carry deposit rules elsewhere in Vermont. Its only mention of a deposit is exclusionary — rent means payments made to or for the benefit of the owner under the rental agreement, "not including security deposits" — and its only use of the word "interest" is about a person whose claim or interest in the property arises after an order is recorded. There is no passbook rate, no accrual rule and no payment duty anywhere in it.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Barre, Vermont: security deposit interest (verified August 28, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/deposit-interest/vermont/barre/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified).

Citations

• 24 App. V.S.A. ch. 1 (City of Barre charter), §§ 526–528 — repeal line · §§ 526–528 (verified 2026) Official source
• 9 V.S.A. § 4461 (Security deposits), subsec. (g) · (g) (verified 2026) Official source
• City of Barre, Chapter 7 Minimum Housing ordinance (approved October 2024) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Barre City's charter read on Vermont Statutes Online at 24 App. V.S.A. ch. 1, subch. 5, where §§ 526–528 carry the repeal line, confirmed against the chapter's own section index and its surrounding repeal entries; 9 V.S.A. § 4461 read in full, including subsection (g)'s authorization for municipal security-deposit ordinances; and Barre City's current Chapter 7 Minimum Housing ordinance, approved October 2024, downloaded from the city's charter-and-ordinance page and read in full, with each occurrence of 'deposit', 'interest' and 'passbook' examined in context.

This page records local law on deposit interest. The statewide position — Vermont law does not require a landlord to pay interest on a security deposit — but it expressly lets a town require it, and Burlington does. — lives on the Vermont deposit-interest page with its own citations and verification date.