CLT
UPDATE
Friday, March 24 2006
Proposition 2½ overrides sprout like
crocuses
Don’t believe all the excuses from town hall on why
we supposedly “need” this override. The reason why they want to grab
your hard-earned money is because Wrentham has been on a wild spending
spree over the last nine years. In 1997 the town budget was $14.8
million dollars; it’s now approaching $30 million....
Handing money over to the same people who caused overspending is like
giving a hopped-up teenager a new Corvette to drive. Lastly, if this
override fails, they will have a million dollars less to spend out of 30
million. In other words, 97% of the budget will remain. This is a
problem?
The Attleboro Sun-Chronicle
Friday, March 24, 2006
Stop Wrentham overspending
By Francis J. "Chip" Faulkner
Three words to remember as the season of Proposition 2½
overrides begins: "For the children."
Pay raises for the teachers’ union - it’s for the children.
Full payment of health insurance for all town employees - for the children.
A surcharge on property taxes to buy more open spaces to drive housing prices up
even further - for the children....
Natick appears to be the first town up with an override vote, followed
by Wrentham, then Norwood and Harvard and beyond that only the Mass.
Teachers Association can keep track of the schedule of override votes....
More and more, these Prop 2½ battles in the towns are flat-out class struggles.
It’s the townies versus the Trustafarians. The natives, who grew up in the towns
and are now financially strapped, simply can’t afford any more increases in
their property taxes....
"We thought the override would only be for emergencies, like court-ordered
assessments," recalled CLT leader Barbara Anderson yesterday. "It never
occurred to us that people would be insane enough to approve increasing their
own property taxes for a town’s operational expenses."
The Boston Herald
Friday, March 24, 2006
Prop 2½ pits townies vs. Trustafarians
By Howie Carr
Chip Ford's CLT Commentary
Spring has arrived and, as Barbara wrote in her March
2000 column ("Spring
brings arrival of the crocuses and the gimmee bird"):
The golden crocuses are blooming in my front yard,
and you know what that means.
It's the time of year when Proposition 2½ overrides sprout like skunk
cabbage, and the sound of the gimmee cuckoo is heard in the land. "Gimmee,
gimmee, gimmee" it shrieks at town meetings, city council meetings,
and budget hearings on Beacon Hill.
It's no different in 2006, with more and more
"reasons" and excuses mounting in time for what's become the annual rite
of passage, Proposition 2½ overrides across the
wakening land.
Google provides a free news
service, "Google
Alerts." By signing up and providing key words, e.g., Proposition 2,
override, debt exclusion, etc., each day I receive all the online news
reports on overrides from across the state. These Goggle Alerts
reports continue to grow.
More Is Never Enough -- MINE --
and never will be, no matter how much government takes from us.
They will always be back for more, always. At least with
Proposition 2½ taxpayers have a fighting chance; municipalities must
come to its voting residents and ask, not simply take by fiat.
As Chip Faulkner observed, "Handing money over to the
same people who caused overspending is like giving a hopped-up teenager
a new Corvette to drive." You know they'll only be back for a new
car next year after destroying the easy-come-easy-go new one, probably
expecting a Ferrari next time.
Remember, CLT's "How To Defeat An Override" booklet
is available to members-in-good-standing whose city or town has
scheduled a Proposition 2½ override. You and your neighbors can
organize, fight back, and win -- or sit back and be steamrolled,
bulldozed over.
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Chip Ford |
The Attleboro Sun-Chronicle
Friday, March 24, 2006
Stop Wrentham overspending
By Francis J. "Chip" Faulkner
Jim and Jan O’Malley may have gotten out of Wrentham just in time. They
moved out of town a few years ago when they saw the property tax bill on
their Chestnut street home hurtling toward $5,000. Worse, they saw no
end in sight with all the bills coming due a few years down the road.
However even the O’Malley’s never envisioned there would be an almost $6
million cost overrun on the K.P. project, that one public safety
building would be built for the price of two and that Wrentham would be
facing TWO property tax hikes on the town ballot AT THE SAME TIME. I’m
referring to the $1.1 million dollar general override and the Community
Preservation Act “surcharge” facing voters this April 3rd. “Surcharge is
just another name for an additional 2% hike on property taxes that are
already going through the roof.
Did anybody mention that the $1.1 million dollar tax hike, if approved
by the voters, is permanent and will be part of the tax levy forever?
At the recent candidates night someone talked about voters approving an
underride later if we don’t need the extra money from the override. An
underride would need the votes of at least three selectmen to be put on
the ballot. Take this to the bank: As long as Dion, Labonte and Langley
are selectmen, you will never see that happen or for that matter, any
other form of tax relief for homeowners.
Don’t believe all the excuses from town hall on why we supposedly “need”
this override. The reason why they want to grab your hard-earned money
is because Wrentham has been on a wild spending spree over the last nine
years. In 1997 the town budget was $14.8 million dollars; it’s now
approaching $30 million. It’s more than doubled in just nine years; this
rate of spending cannot be sustained. They say the town has “grown.” Not
really. From 1996 to 2005 the population grew by only 371 individuals,
an average of 41 persons yearly to the present figure of 10,662. Oh
yeah, they’re just pouring into town by land, sea and air.
You can’t blame the spending increases on inflation which has been
approximately 3% annually over the last decade. Are other towns in the
same fix? Randolph has a $66 million dollar budget for 31,000 people.
Their spending is twice Wrentham’s for triple the population. Closer to
home, Plainville’s budget is $20 million with 8,000 people. Comparing
populations with Plainville, Wrentham should be spending $4 million
less.
The overspending could be confronted head-on by asking a few questions
and demanding some answers:
None of these questions will be answered or even
addressed if Wrentham voters give this crew a million dollars more to
spend. Handing money over to the same people who caused overspending is
like giving a hopped-up teenager a new Corvette to drive.
Lastly, if this override fails, they will have a
million dollars less to spend out of 30 million. In other words, 97% of
the budget will remain. This is a problem?
Send a message that you’ve had enough. Vote NO!
P.S. The O’Malley’s now reside in Greensboro, North Carolina. They tell
me their town services are great. The property tax bill on their home is
$984 a year.
Francis J. "Chip" Faulkner is Associate Director
of Citizens for Limited Taxation and a Wrentham resident.
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The Boston Herald
Friday, March 24, 2006
Prop 2½ pits townies vs. Trustafarians
By Howie Carr
Three words to remember as the season of Proposition 2½ overrides
begins: "For the children."
Pay raises for the teachers’ union - it’s for the children.
Full payment of health insurance for all town employees - for the
children.
A surcharge on property taxes to buy more open spaces to drive housing
prices up even further - for the children.
Natick appears to be the first town up with an override vote, followed
by Wrentham, then Norwood and Harvard and beyond that only the Mass.
Teachers Association can keep track of the schedule of override votes.
More and more, these Prop 2½ battles in the towns are flat-out class
struggles. It’s the townies versus the Trustafarians. The natives, who
grew up in the towns and are now financially strapped, simply can’t
afford any more increases in their property taxes.
That pits them against the avaricious Town Hall hacks and their allies,
the Yuppie blow-ins in the new subdivisions who in three to five years
will be moving on to Park City or Boca Raton or wherever their trust
funds take them.
The only legacy these drifters leave behind is a higher property tax
rate, and ever more bloated school bureaucracies operating in new Taj
Mahal public high schools.
This wasn’t the way the people who invented Proposition 2½ imagined it
would turn out. Back in 1980, Prop 2½ was seen as a way to restrict
local property tax increases to 2.5 percent a year.
But the sponsors, Citizens for Limited Taxation, wrote in a
provision allowing for an override of the levy limit, but only if the
voters approved increasing their own taxes.
"We thought the override would only be for emergencies, like
court-ordered assessments," recalled CLT leader Barbara Anderson
yesterday. "It never occurred to us that people would be insane enough
to approve increasing their own property taxes for a town’s operational
expenses."
But in 1980, the Trustafarians were a mere blip on the demographic
screen. Their parents were alive, and controlled the money. The future
SUV drivers of suburbia were in grad school in Cambridge or Ann Arbor,
smoking pot and demonstrating against ... whatever.
Now their parents are dead and the Trustafarians live off the inherited
dough in the suburbs.
In the town where I live, the higher-tax crusaders have rejected bumper
stickers this year in favor of large magnets, which of course won’t
damage the paint on their new Lexuses and Expeditions.
Their license plates often have whales’ tails on them and a huge
percentage of the override crowd also sport snotty airport stickers on
their back windshields. The airports, as if you didn’t know, are MVY
(Martha’s Vineyard) or ACK (Nantucket).
They’re very concerned about "working families," except the ones that
are going to have to move out of the towns they’ve always lived in
because they can’t afford the property taxes that their newly arrived
betters are ordering them to pay out of the wages that they actually
have to earn, rather than inherit.
A few years ago, a Natick Trustafarian wrote a letter to the editor of
the local paper, sneering that the local yokels could afford to pay for
the override if only they gave up their "cigarettes and Lottery
tickets."
Barbara Anderson, who lives in Marblehead, swears she once listened as a
pro-tax woman with the typical hair and scarf sneer at an old lady who
complained that she could no longer make ends meet on her fixed income:
"If you can’t afford to pay your property taxes," the Beautiful Person
lectured, "then you’re probably not managing your portfolio correctly."
Get thee to a nursing home, Granny. It’s for the children.
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