MRJ on Southington Sr Tax Freeze
According to this Meriden RJ editorial, the Southington senior tax freeze was overturned due to process, as well as substance.
Tim White
Town Council, 4th District
Saturday, December 16, 2006
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8 comments:
Sr. Tax Freeze
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Middle class tax hike
It was just a transparent effort to elect Zoni, and the air has gone out of both balloons
The tax freeze will hurt youg families and should not be considered in Cheshire, ever.
Seniors moving out of Cheshire would hurt young families more!!!
The seniors are not leaving and I don't understand how them leaving hurts families. The senior only elect candidates that support things like zero increases in the school budget, now that hurts families.
anon 9:09 Maybe not all the seniors are considering leaving, but many, with the rising taxes and rising heating costs, will have to choose between paying their taxes and buying medicine or food.
Here's how the seniors leaving hurts the younger residents - the senior moves and sells their house to a family of say 5 (2 adults and 3 school age kids). If the cost to educate the three kids is 9K plus for each kid there's an added 28K to the education budget whereas with the senior there's no expense to the education budget. Do you get it yet?
How does a 0% increase to the education budget hurt families? Keep in mind there has never been a 0% inc....that particular year the education budget was increased by $234K...no teachers were laid off and no programs were eliminated. It's called living within a budget responsibly.
How much is too much to spend on education? If we're spending something like 53 million now, what should the budget request be come Jan.'07? Overall enrollment is decreasing. Is another 2 million ok with you? And how about the year after...another 2 million? Do you really think spending more money will make the schools better??
Cheshire's education spending was 133 out of 166 towns in Connecticut. Each child doesn't cost $9k to educate. If a family moved out today and took 3 kids with them the budget is NOT reduced $27k. There will be no teacher layoffs, the building will still be heated, etc. It is not ture that each kid costs $9k. A ZERO budget was a personel attack on the schools, it caused the maintenance and tech. to fall behind. That hurts young families and old because people move to this town for the education with out it property values will decline. That will hurt all.
A tax freeze for the seniors will ot cost the other taxpayers any money at all. That is the propoganda used by the people who oppose the tax freeze.
If a senior cannot afford to pay taxes today, they sure will not be able to afford any tax increases. By freezing their taxes at the current level or some number below the current level we allow the senior to have a better capability to spend their limited income. There are currently about 450 senior homes or 4.97% of the total homes in Cheshire in the program. If all of the 450 homes paid their entire share of taxes it would equal about 1.5 million dollars of revenue, out of the total Town budget of 86 million. Under the current program the 450 seniors are asked as a group to only pay $357,000 less than the $1.5 million.
Consider this: reduce the 450 homes to 50% of their property taxes base don valuation, that would equal about $750,000 less dollars to the Town. If we cannot find an operational savings of $750,000 in a budget of $86 million, we, as a cllective group, have a more serious problem.
The issue is not to pit one group against another, the challenge is how do we manage our community. By all means it is not if we reduce one group's taxes other groups have to pick up the expense. The task is to find operational cost savings, cost avoidance programs that will allow us to reduce unneeded expenses and fund what is right.
A few examples of budget line items that are out of control. The Department of Public Works built the majority of the new sidewalks and landscaped walls on Saturday mornings, all some level of overtime. Ask yourself why? why was it not done on normal hours? The medical benefits for the school system is overpriced and has been for years. The Town Manger refuses to allow the BOE to go out and hire their own medical benefits broker because he will lose out on the Town side due to the police department. Fine, but the overall result of having the separation would still provide an overall decrease to the total dollars spent.
The senior tax freeze will not hurt any taxpayer in Town, it will cause the Town Manger and the Town Council to make the proper decisions to manage the Town correctly.
The senior population is steadily decreasing number, the tax freeze will ot open the doors to a huge amount of seniors that decide to relocate to Cheshire. How many seniors do you know that would sell their current property outside of Cheshire to relocate to Cheshire, pay $500,000 for a home, $10,000 a year in taxes, pay higher costs for food, fuel and everything else? Not one would do it.
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