Today’s Globe has a must-read article on the dozens of upcoming Prop. 2-1/2 override votes whose sole purpose is to crank up local property taxes because local governments have no other way to pay for schools, teachers, and cops.
Across the state, the [Prop. 2-1/2] limit puts into focus two deeply contradictory themes: the steadily increasing demands of local governments to pay for services, and the weariness of property owners fed up with their taxes, which averaged $4,007 for a single-family home in the current fiscal year.
Last year, voters rejected 59 of 89 override proposals, marking the lowest approval rate statewide since 1999. The average override attempt was about $630,000 last year. This year, the average request is $1.9 million among the 25 towns that have scheduled votes; a similar number of towns are considering votes but have not formally decided. The average request does not include overrides used to pay off debt, formally called debt exclusions, which are as high as $20 million.
The math is pretty simple, and pretty scary.
“Proposition 2 1/2 is failing us,” Joseph Denneen, chairman of the Walpole Board of Selectmen, had said earlier in the day. “The increase that is allowed by Proposition 2 1/2 does not even cover the increases in medical insurance premiums for our employees. So right away, before you’re even talking about funding a contract or giving someone a raise or buying a new pickup truck, you’re in the hole.”
The ideas put on the table by Governor Patrick seem to me to be important steps in the right direction.
As governor, [Patrick] has proposed allowing communities to assess a $1 or $2 tax on meals and hotels; eliminating the exemption on property taxes enjoyed by telecommunications companies for their poles and wires on city streets; opening up the state Group Insurance Commission to local government employees; and changing the way pensions funds are invested and administered. For taxpayers, Patrick wants to expand a property tax credit for low-income seniors to include homeowners of any age.
Patrick has proposed a $312 million local aid increase, about 5 percent over this fiscal year. “We’ve increased local aid, but not to the amount we would have liked,” said Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray . “We are working on a series of short-term efforts to get more money to the cities and towns.”
On controlling health care costs, if anything the Governor’s proposal doesn’t go far enough (its requirement for union sign-off on transferring responsibility for health care benefits to the state-level Group Insurance Commission seems likely only to prevent the transfers from happening).
The Globe article reports that override votes are failing more often than they are succeeding (59 of 89 votes failed last year). So there are obviously only so many times local governments can go to that well. Yet, as we all know, there doesn’t appear to be much appetite in the legislature for the local option taxes, and there was apparently even resistance to the no-brainer idea of taking over underperforming local pension systems. And God forbid the lege should look to closing business tax loopholes to generate some new revenue. Nor does it look like the lege has any interest in doing much for the locals on Chapter 70 school aid.
So let’s review. Governor Patrick: try to avoid overrides by giving locals more non-property-tax revenue options, and by helping them reduce costs via buying into the state health insurance program and taking over underperforming pensions. Also, give lower-income property owners some relief. And let’s look to loopholes in the business tax laws as an additional revenue source to avoid drawing down the rainy day fund while helping the locals take pressure off the property tax.
Lege: Uh, we got nothin’. Good luck, guys.
OK, then!
Maybe projects like this are where we should start. Do they really need 5 basketball courts? And a multi-tiered audotorium, and $500 a pop lockers (do a Froogle.com search, I found some locker for $233 for 3 of them). Oh and maybe if we opened up construction to non-union builders the price would come down.
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Not to talk about making sure that civic employees pay more of their fair share of their own health care costs.
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And how about pension reform?
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We can get there without raising taxes. So lets do it.
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Don’t forget them is pronounced “tem”. đŸ˜‰
You’re dreaming in Technicoleur!
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Also, you sing like a casserole and drive like a foot!
is the state paying for the high school?
This is a thread about Property Taxes. The Newton North High School is being paid for by increased Property Taxes.
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It’s helpful because it shows what happens when you let the fox guard the henhouse. This school is a complete waste of money and shows the larger issues at the city and town level where they just can’t control spending.
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If you can’t see that through whatever prism you view the world, I’m sorry.
From the original article:
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Then from the Newton North article:
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From this you get higher local property taxes?
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I honestly thought you were somehow trying to include the state and Patrick and costs. But in all honesty what does the folks in Chestnut Hill have to do with this post?
If you see the graphic on the original article, it lists all towns with 2 1/2 override votes, who’s not listed? Newton.
They’ve already voted for property tax increase for the school construction.
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And yes, the state will be picking up at least part of the tab for this monstrosity.
The election earlier this year was whether or not to build the high school, not on funding. An override may yet be in play. It seemed as if there was an override, when driving through Newton and reading about the vote. Alas there was not and I apologize.
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Here is a nifty map of that election, showing the unofficial results.
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However it doesn’t change the basic underlying point that is we are never going to control spending when we are building monstrosities such as this that cost $7million just to design
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Rich people live in Newton specifically for the school system, that’s what drives the property values there. An advertising display of a school might be worth the people’s money if it’s reflected in their home values, plus that’s why a lot of them live there anyways.
see that Lincoln Sudbury completed a high school for half the cost. And last time I checked Lincoln and Sudbury were a much higher cost of living town than Newton. There are still affordable pockets of Netwon, there are none in Lincoln or Sudbury.
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The irregular Frank Gehry inspired design of this building is what is costing the extra money.
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Finally, if the City of Newton wants this monstrosity and they can afford it because they are “rich” then any crying they do to the state for increased local aid should fall on deaf ears. If that is your logic lets follow it through to the full logical conclusion.
Especially about the increased local aid – if they didn’t even need to pass a debt exemption to get this school, they’re doing fine.
If you read the full Globe article you will see that Lincoln Sudbury completed a high school for half the cost.
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What you will find is that Lincoln Sudbury completed a high school for half of the estimated cost. There is a difference, which you may wish to ignore.
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Last night, on German television (N-TV), there was a very interesting documentary about Boston’s Big Dig project. What is interesting is that they sanitized it, not emphasizing the immense corruption that went on during the project.
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I contrast the Big Dig with a 17 mile (or so) bridge-tunnel (half bridge, half tunnel) between Denmark and Sweden that came in at about US$4 billion in the mid 1990s. Why could they do that at such a price, while the Bostonians could not do a 3 mile (or so) tunnel do it much cheaper? Corruption.
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I’m sorry, but the corruption in the USofA on these construction projects has become so great that they are impossible to pursue.
I said half the cost. You say half the “estimated” cost. Your comment shows that Newton could be even worse, the multiplier of cost from Lincoln could be more than 2x.
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Thanks for helping strengthen my case.
…they may go with a debt exclusion instead.
My central argument was that we will never get a handle on the property tax problem until we stop building taj mahals.
…but a debt exclusion works a little different. It doesn’t go on the rate, but allows the municipality to issue bonds for the project. Often, with schools, School Building Assistance will reimburse the bulk, leaving a debt service payment that CAN be handled without raising taxes. Maybe. But the tendenacy to build Taj Mahals argues against the ability of the town to have the self-discipline to go this route.
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And in no way is this intended as a defence to bloated local projects which will be subsidized on EVERYBODY’s dime. My kids don’t get no theatre and sauna 400 miles away, if you know what I mean.
Is what is being proposed any different from the schools that most attended in the up until the 1960’s?
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Starting in the mid-60’s, schools transformed from grand statements in the community into uniform utilitarian boxes. Now, God forbid we make a school look good — design and architecture now represent “waste”.
Unbelieveable that the city would go forward with a vote on a site plan and not couple that with vote on a funding plan.
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Looks like a shell game to me.
But after voting for a couple of 2 and 1/2 overrides in my town under the same threats of cut backs that I read in the article (and the reality of kids having to pay to take the bus and play sports), I went to a small meeting with my superintendent and his staff regarding a community related matter.
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The superintendent is a real professional…but maybe a little too candid. At one point he remarked at how small our regional school system was (about 4,000 total students) and in many parts of the country superintendents oversee a county school system with far more students. He didn’t mention the aside that he would probably be paid about the same money as that Superintendent…but that crossed my mind.
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Later it occurred to me that our small system also had an assistant superintendent and a business manager. And each of these three had there own assistants. And of course this small high school had a principal and vice principal.
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My point being is that scare tactics are being used to pass these overrides. Real education (and I consider sports to be part of that) and essential services (like transporting a kid to school) are being cut while less essential overhead is maintained.
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David, I’ve voted for over rides, I voted to stop income tax decreases…but where is the other side of the coin? Where are the reforms? Even if it’s symbolic reforms that only save a few bucks? But frankly, pension reform, ending sweet heart jobs, passing the bill to allow cities and towns to pay into the state medical system and so many other things, those real money savers and where they. I’m losing hope and ready to check out.
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How can you get on any band wagon that increases any tax when you’ve got the same old same old going on?
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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!
I don’t mind paying taxws and I don’t mind paying high taxes. What I mind is paying high taxes so so light bulb changer on the Mass Pike can make over 250 K a year, or all the state police brass making a quarter million A PIECE on the turnpike, or these ridiculous cathedrals now schools with lavish accourtements like a five start hotel and a heating bill to match, the redundancy and overstaffing in the public sector, state workers who are layabouts—it’s endless Government simply does not care because they do not earn their money via diligence, they EXTORT it, At least in this state. New hampshire seems to have their heads screwed on properly.
From today’s Lowell Sun
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Taxes are fine, it’s spending that isn’t being controlled….wait, you said that…it’s April Fool’s Day and you’re joshing wid me, right ?
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Oh well, if not, only Nixon could visit China.
…it’s impossible to tell the left-left liberals from just the center-left ones. I have the same issue with you or Strom Thurmond…or is there any difference?
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Well, he’s dead.
Lowell City Manager found that joining the state would be more expensive than keeping separate.
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And in the end, what would happen when everyone was on the one plan.. would we be dealing with expensive plans such as we already have with car insurance?
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And.. on the other hand.. when you compare the cost of plans provided by the towns/cities with those provided by employers, we are seeing that the governments are already paying much more per employee than private business.
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With major politicians jumping ship to go to work in the health care industry.. i think there’s more to this story than meets the eye.
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Peter Porcupine was given a soapbox over at the Globe’s Override Central, and there was even a BMG shoutout.
We are one of the largest towns in MA and we are facing a Prop 2 1/2-override vote. I think it will pass. However thanks to many people getting involved and bring their expertise to the table wide spread corruption in our town’s management is surfacing. At a recent Town Finance committee meeting the public school business manager was asked why over the last 5 years the RFP’s he has written specifically state bus companies biding for a 1 year town school bus contract had to buy 27 new school buses priced at $67,000 a bus to even be part of the bidding process. A RFP is short for Request for Proposal and basically tells a company what the town needs as far as services. There is no need to buy new buses other then to eliminate competition. Buying new school buses every year is not a state safety requirement and because of this wording only one bus company in our area bids. So instead of paying 1.6 million for school bus transportation we pay 2. 4 million because there is no competition for the contract. To make matters worse this SOB makes one-year contracts instead of 3 year ones. This further insures smaller companies will not even attempt to enter the bidding process because they need to take a loan, and for one year that is crazy. This practice of limiting competition is wide spread in our town, but no longer a secret.
The town persists in re electing the same hacks, corrupt officials and appointing people who are lining their own pockets and taking care of their friends. It’s a microcosm of the state.What percentage of the town turns out to vote or goes to town meeting? People love to complain and then refuse to participate. You get what you pay for.
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Or: you get what you play for
I was struck by several comments which said basically, “I’m fine with taxes but I don’t like xyz extravagance”. Reasonable but misses the mega-point. Given the “real” costs of increasing health care for public employees, heat/utilities, general inflation for operations – costs are rising regularly beyond 2.5%. If we just assume a 5-10% annual increase for towns and cities just to stay afloat, it should be clear that the expense line in a graph continues to climb more steeply than the maximum revenue line. This is the gap that muncipalities cannot sustain. Even if everyone’s pet peeve project in their town/city was scraped, this fundamental scenario would prevail. And this is before multiple years of cuts and under-funding were initiated by the state, forcing towns to pay more for things like Special ed, regional school transportation, etc. which the Commonwealth long ago agreed to fund.
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What is needed is a comprehensive approach to increasing taxes. I’d like to invite all those who said they voted for overrides previously to consider that we all need to ante up to the statewide pot; town by town doesn’t do it.
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While we as residents need to support this, the Governor and the legislative leaders need to find the courage to put this on the table. As the Globe article articulates, this is an unsustainable situation and its last for years now. For background, see my post at: http://www.michaelde…
to run the government, when inflation is only going up around 3-4 and the pay of workers is stagnant. Than we are in for a scenario when we are all paying 60% of more of what we earn to pay for government.
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This is not what this nation is about. This nation is about limited government. You want my solutions.
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1) Reduce all non-police, fire, or education government employees by half. Through attrition and early retirement buyouts. NOW. Force those that are left to do their jobs. Government productivity is abysmal. Reward innovation and efficiency, base all raises on objective performance standards. This is how the real world works people, it is also how government should work.
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2) Stop all public building projects not in the hopper. Set measured priorities to see what is necessary. Schools necessary – $500 lockers, not necessary.
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3) Require all state and municipal employees to pay 25% of their health insurance, now. Don’t give them extra money to pay for it. Just do it. I’m sorry but I’m not paying anybody for a benefit that I don’t get myself as a private citizen.
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4) Stop paying for sick days. Immediately end the practice of paying out sick days at the end of the year. Use em with a doctors not for true sickenesses or lose em. That’s how the real world works. Welcome to it.
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5) Cap pensions at $50,000. Phase in over 5 years. I’m sorry but nobody deserves six figure pensions. another benefit that is not available in the private sector.
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Those are a quick five. The answer is not, the costs are going up we can’t do anything about them. Because dammit you can, you just don’t want to.
I don’t agree with your assumption that this nation is about limited government. That is what some people believe and what the anti-government republicans would have you believe- except when they are pushing huge contracts to their buddies through creation of huge govt like Homeland Security, etc.
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There is nothing that says that his nation is supposed to be have small government. Rather our Constitution starts…
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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
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Is is the goals of justice, domestic tranquility, general welfare, etc. for which this nation was created- it is the result not the measure of the govt by which we should measure success. In many of these ways, we are doing quite poorly given the advocacy of small govt people.
you won’t find many. Certainly not many by official representatives of colonies or states.
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In short: Federalist Papers aren’t official. Interesting, historically enlightening, sure. Good enough for government work? Nope.
What the FPs are telling you is that the US Constitution was not written in a vacuum. The US Constitution was written in a background of accepted and generally understood law. That is what the FPs are important for. They tell you what the background is, and why they made choices that they did in writing the US Constitution.
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Do you know, instinctively, what “legislative power” means? What “executive power” means? What “judicial power” means? I would not, had I not read the FPs. It was the FP78 usw that told me that it was presumed that “judicial power” included the power of the judiciary to strike down laws passed by the legislature and signed by the executive as being unconstitutional.
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You are quite correct that the FPs are not definitive legal documents. But enlightening? Most assuredly. Good enough for government work? Most definitely.
….is very interesting coming from you since so much contained within the Federalist Papers is antithetical to your view of what govt. should be particularly in respect to the tyranny of the masses and the need for representative rather than majoritarian democracy.
You didn’t run for governor? Send this on to Gov Patrick it may serve as an inspiration.
Like Regional School Transprotation. It was zeroed out for two years, and is only back to 50% now. But the towns have to keep coming up with that money. THAT is what is wrong with trying to solve this problem at the state end – the State cannot be relied upon to fund things they say they will.
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Deval must really be wishing he hadn’t opened this Pandora’s Box right now, just because it sounded good in the campaign commercials. The state has very little to do with setting property tax rates – the towns set them. Again, I have problems with subsidizing inefficient towns that neighbor me, much less across the state. Towns determine what priorities they want to spend on. My own town only has an override overy 2 – 3 years, this year being one of them. Another Cape town has them virtually annually. I look at their budget, and at all the assistants to the assistants, and see why.
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Ryan – that’s the problem with 3 1/2. Spending will swell to the amount collected in most towns. In my town, every town meeting, we apply ALL free cash, i.e., unspent tax money, to LOWER the tax rate, and THEN we proceed to vote the budget. It sounds simplistic, but it gives us one of the lowest tax rates in the state – with damn near no local aid – by having zero based budgeting every year. Another town on Cape had an underride. But most towns will FIND a way to squander money in any year they did unexpected well, to ensure that they can continue to pump the tax rate up. There’s ALWAYS another program.
YES! I have lived in my town for over thirty years and I cannot ever remember having a 2 1/2 over ride on the ballot. Our first MAY be upcoming. One of the reasons I moved here is because the town was very blue collar and folks were VERY tight with the buck. When rail was restored and the “new” people started moving in, they wanted cops/fire/ new schools/ new this and new that. The townies have been able to resist, but the regional school superintendent of schools et al are leading a charge for the over ride. They bamboozled the town into building a regional school that looks like a giant Mayan Temple complex and now they can’t afford the heat and maintenance.
The whole affair has been an unmitigated disaster.
Their fallback, ” We were deceived.” All well and good, but who is going to pick up the tab?
The point is not to increase the tax burden it’s to eliminate fraud, waste,abuse,redundancy, and non performers.
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Example: Post 9/11 GW Bush and Congress appropriated and spent 9 billion dollars to be parcelled out to states for prevention and treatment of bioterrorism and other disease outbreaks. To date CDC cannot account for a penny of this.
I know for a fact that Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health took their portion of the money, spent it on nonsense and blew the remainder on hiring political cronies to cobble together a “response plan”.Millions are being squandered and this is just a sliver. Government does nothing efficiently. What the private sector pays a dollar for, government pays two. Not because it must, it’s because it is ill managed.
and he we telling me about their bio-hazard trainings and new equipment. One could argue that the trainings don’t go far enough and it would be good to get details on how money was spent. But I don’t know if there was in fact details on what they spent because you haven’t provided anything that support it one way or the other. You seem to know a lot of things “for a fact” but never provide and supporting information.
and ask them for a rough accounting and see what you get for a response? They are about to get a FOIA.
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It took me several weeks to ascertain the convolutions of subcontractors that DPH has retained. Even more puzzling is that no one in the front office seems to know how these contracts were awarded and the compensation. It’s like the Big Dig. Then of course we have the 20 million legal tab for the Mass Turnpike Authority last year which was to cover the legal work that the legal whiz kids that the Pike has on retainer couldn’t figure out. But that’s OK.
Seems that the downtown law firm that benefited from this little plum are tight with the solons. Another shock.
Maybe a part of the solution to this tax crisis is to turn prop 2 1/2 to prop 3 1/2. With the way inflation is going, towns and cities just can’t come anywhere near breaking even.
the “not enough money” half.
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It would exacerbate the other half of the crisis, the “property taxes are too high” half.
Ultimately, property taxes are going to have to move with inflation. The problem was caused because costs to towns and cities were going up way beyond inflation. A 3 1/2% prop would still be reasonable, force towns to be fiscally responsible and help them deal with the health care crisis… at least until we can solve the health care crisis (which I don’t think can happen until we go to a fully universal system, but that’s a subject for a different time).
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Why do you say that? Or do you just mean that’s what you think property taxes should do?
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It certainly does not describe what property taxes have done in the past 25 years.
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More to the point, raising property taxes to keep up with inflation is, in the long run, a prescription for increased social stratification. New Hampshire, with its 7% property-tax rates and wide variation in education and other services by town, is not a good model for us.
You want towns to continually have less to work with, all the while costs go up. I’m not an expert on New Hampshire’s system, but what you described seems to be a system of disaster.
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PS: You forget one thing about New Hampshire – they don’t have an income tax. Apples and oranges, my friends.
How about this: You say what you mean, I’ll say what I mean. If you think I’m wrong say so.
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But please don’t tell me what I mean. Fair enough?
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I’ll return the courtesy.
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As for what I “want,” I think I have been pretty outspoken about that.
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New Hampshire is relevent as a cautionary tale precisely because there is no income tax to pay for local services, and there is great inequality and stratification as a result.
Inflation is not the problem.
At least where I live- Saugus. We have the smallest representative town meeting with 50 members. A significant number of the members are town employees who can vote on appropriations for their own salaries and wages. The conflict of interest rules do not apply. In addition, many members do not seem to have a very good grasp of their role in the town government or of the basics of town finance. Part of the problem may be that the town manager does not understand that part of his job is to educate people ahead of time about the need for certain items in the budget, but I think a great deal of the problem is that the town meeting form of government has seen better days. It was better suited for slower, less complicated times when voters had the time to pay attention. I think the town meeting form of government now only serves to make it harder for the average voter to figure out who to hold accountable for the problems facing a town and what to do about it.
The Cape is LADEN with retired Fortune 500 executives who go over the town budget as if it were their own household! WHY did you buy those new staplers – couldn’t the old ones be repaired? Did you get full scrap value for them? WHY NOT?
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I’v never understood Representative Town Meeting
– if you’re going to govern with Representatives, then have a Board of Selectmen so empowered! If you want town meeting – and over 200 Mass. communities still DO use open town meeting – then everybody needs to come!
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I will not even COMMENT on the unscrupulousness of town employees serving as members – it may be legal, but it isn’t right – and wonder why you don’t run yourself.
Has representative town meeting and it’s not working. Plymouth is a classic example of a town that has crushing financial problems which will reach critical mass within two or three years.
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I think it’s a really elegant issue on which to run for town meeting — “I can’t vote myself a pay raise, and OPPONENT JOE shouldn’t be allowed to either.”
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But better yet, if it’s the purse strings you’re interested in hanging on to, get yo-sef on a budget committee, wouldja?
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I think one of the elegances of a representative town meeting is the (relatively) low barrier to entry. If you want to influence change, you don’t need a network of campaign donors, friends at the newspaper, and a neighborhood in which your family ties run. That’s not to say that running for town meeting is easy — but it can be done by a “layperson” and not require a 2 month sabbatical from work to pull off.
The problem is not just the fact that there are town employees serving as town meeting members, it is that the form of government has outlasted its usefulness. The structure itself makes it so much harder for the average voter to figure out who to hold accountable for bad decisions when things go wrong and makes it easier for the elected officials to blame each other. We do not have retired Fortune 500 executives living in Saugus…. but even if we did, I would still be working to change the form of government to a town council/town manager form or to a major/city councul form of government. It is time.
Civil servants who reside within the town in which they are employed woke up one morning and discovered that they could seize control of the government legitimately and the sheeple are oblivious. When the tax bills go out there is bleating for a few weeks then silence.
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Personally, I think that many people are now afraid of speaking at town meeting for fear of being un PC, sounding like “hate speech”, or offending someone.
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Now, instead of people getting the message and participating in government, they sell their home and move out of state, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. My neighbor just took a 100K hit on his home to expedite his departure. He found a similar job in Illinois, so it’s not the weather.