It’s not all bad news (though there’s plenty of that). Governor Patrick’s proposed FY 2010 budget has some good ideas that should raise some needed revenue and should also make Massachusetts a better place. The entire document is online at this link.
- Expanded bottle bill. The Governor proposes expanding the 5-cent deposit now charged on beer and soda to bottled water, Gatorade, and similar drinks. Excellent idea. There is no shortage of discarded water bottles lying on a sidewalk near you (and you, and you). Any revenue this raises will go to environmental programs. Note, of course, that this doesn’t have to be a “tax,” as long as you take the trouble to return the bottles.
- Remove the sales tax exemption on alcohol, candy, and sugary drinks. Why these things were ever exempt is beyond me. This change is expected to raise around $120 million a year, and that money will help avoid some painful cuts to public health programs.
- Consolidated line items. The Gov’s budget does not break down agency line items to specify which non-profit gets how much. Instead, it gives far more discretion to the agency commissioners. This is a good idea, though I’d be surprised if it survives the legislative process. We’ll see.
Other noteworthy proposals include a major shift on charter schools:
While about 60 more charters can still open statewide, many urban districts such as Boston are near the local cap, which limits each school district’s spending on charter tuition at 9 percent. The governor’s proposal would increase the cap to 12 percent in the 50 lowest performing districts, creating 4,500 new seats as more than 20,000 students statewide are on charter school waiting lists.
If approved by the Legislature, the change would offer the most immediate relief in 12 districts closest to reaching the cap: Boston, Holyoke, Lowell, Fall River, Somerville, Randolph, Salem, Everett, Malden, North Adams, Revere, and Cambridge.
And, of course, the obligatory request for state employees making more than $50,000 to pay 25%, rather than 15%, of their health insurance premiums. Can we please finally do this?
Much more to come, no doubt.
is ridiculously low. A six-pack of cheapest beer is about $6. To collect enough money from empty bottles to get a six-pack, one needs to bring 120 bottles to the store – absolutely not realistic. So any amount of bottles you bring doesn’t really buy you anything and the incentive to return the bottles is just not there.
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p>Compare that to the former Soviet Union; when I grew up, a bottle of milk was 23 kopecks, of which 15 were the bottle deposit and 8 was the price of milk. Of course, you would make sure the bottle doesn’t get broken and is returned.
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p>The deposit should be mandatory for any glass and plastic containers and should be something like $1, if not more. Then you will really encourage people to recycle. Right now it’s economically more viable to just throw the bottle away then go through the trouble of returning the bottles.
how’d that work out? Seems like a great way to take money out of circulation.
doesn’t mean that all of them were wrong. I never seen as much broken glass and thrown plastic bottles there as I see here quite often.
It’s just the part of me raised during the cold war which has this thing about the Soviet Union. On a more personal note; welcome. I’m glad you’ve come to the US and I hope you find the opportunities and goodwill which should be available to all legal immigrants. Again-nothing personal.
You don’t have to go to college. This isn’t Russia. Is this Russia? This isn’t Russia, is it?
– Ty Webb
Ten cents is certainly more effective than five, as shown in Michigan. I’d also add a $0.25 deposit to wine and liquor bottles.
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p>If you’ve got curbside recycling, it’s just as economically viable to put a bottle in the recycle bin than the trash — doesn’t always happen though. If your town has PAYT, you’ve got a financial incentive to put it in the recycle bin.
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p>A nickle is enough to encourage scavengers in many communities. A dime would expand their territory, and there’d be fewer parks and roadsides with bottles on the side. A dollar is a bazooka when a flyswatter is needed.
I work in Boston, I see about 1 or less trash bin per block, and never have seen a recycle bin on the street.
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p>My town wouldn’t collect trash or recyclable materials from our condo complex – it doesn’t matter that we all pay city taxes somehow, 20 apartments in one house is something the city wouldn’t deal with. Nevertheless, we went through additional expense and installed recycle bins, so we are paying extra to recycle.
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p>Recycling should be 1) easier and 2) cheaper than not recycling. Kudos to MIT – in many of its buildings it’s harder to find a trash bin than a recycling one.
I don’t know what town you live in, but some thoughts:
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p>1. Yes, there ought to be recycle bins on sidewalks: paper if near a newsbin or place where people wait (bus stop, etc), and commingled where people are likely to be with food (near commercial areas, at parks, etc).
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p>2. Many towns won’t serve large apartment buildings, where large may be as few as 4 units. It’s frustrating to be sure, but single/2/3 family homes’ needs (weekly pickup, bags or smaller barrels) often don’t jibe with larger buildings’ needs (multiple pickups per week, dumpster). Furthermore, in all likelihood even if your town did offer your building recycling services, they’d probably have to charge far more than a private contractor like Save That Stuff.
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p>3. Recycling is cheaper than not recycling — the tipping fee for trash is roughly $80/ton and for commingled is closer to $30/ton (and paper is $0/ton). But, you’ve got to create a second system of collection to handle it, and that’s not free.
In part through excise taxes, but mostly through this indirect, but very heavy, tax called a “liquor license”, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in some towns. (cough Boston cough cough)
just the other day he had an interesting post on the subject. I was thinking of raising it here as a post and asked why alcohol has been pretty much spared on any taxation?
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p>It’s exempt in MA, but Federally:
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p>
Here’s the current tax schedule for liquor:
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p>http://www.ttb.gov/tax_audit/a…
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p>If you compare that with the Massachusetts tax link in my first post you’ll see that Massachusetts rates is on average about 1/3rd of the Federal rate. Combined you have about 30 or 40 cents of you six pack or bottle of wine and $3 for something harder going to the government. That’s generally less than the 5% sales tax, unless you get really cheap stuff.
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p>However, as I mentioned earlier, liquor licenses are very expensive in this state, so that should be considered a form of taxation as well.
A spoonful of tax sugar, as it were đŸ˜‰
You have gone hog wild on taxes David!
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p>Raise the meals tax
hotel tax
tax alcohol
tax sugary drinks
tax candy
expand the bottle bill
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p>and you just can’t understand why we are not taxing all of these things?
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p>We will know you have completely lost it when you favor a 2% tax on lawyer services. It’s only 2 cents on every dollar. I’m sure people won’t mind paying it and since lawyers can pass the cost along they won’t care either.
do you think these are bad ideas? If so, why?
It’s the aggregate that I am worried about.
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p>There are some taxes that I oppose because I think they will do more harm than good (like raising the meals tax) and in general I’m not a huge fan of raising sin taxes. However, I do believe that you can’t look at these taxes on an individual basis and either support them or not . They have to be looked at in the aggregate. We have to understand the positive and negative effects they have individually and in the aggregate and have a plan to solve our the underlying problems so we are not coming back and raising them again.
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p>RE the meals tax, I might support a meals tax on meals over $50 because that would have much less of an impact small business (yes I know we disagree on that).
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p>I would ask you to consider this. The cost of doing business for small restaurants have risen quite a bit and with the recent downturn in the economy it is nearly impossible for them to raise prices to cover those increased costs. If you increase the meals tax and increase the deposit on bottles you are going to make it even more difficult from them to compensate for their increased cost because raising prices will be put off even further. Some WILL go out of business.
And I agree with David — I do not believe that the 2% would have any effect on, well, anything, except for raising more dough for the state. If you can point to an economist who tells us that the 2% tax will have the de-stimulating effect you say it will, I’ll consider the argument. But at first blush, I totally don’t buy it.
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p>We always have to choose what set of problems we want to have. We’re laying off/going to lay off cops, firefighters, teachers, mental health workers, etc. This has a real effect on real people. If some of that pain can be allayed by making restaurant owners pay a few extra cents/bucks … then that’s an easy trade for me.
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p>Yes, raise the taxes and keep the services, please. When the economy is back to something approaching normal, we’ll talk.
I went and asked a bunch of small sub store/restaurant owners and asked them a series of questions to try and get a feel for what the current financial situation is for them, talked to them about there ability (or inability) to raise prices to counter the rising costs they face and asked them and some of their customers about what impact this tax would have (in Everett and Lynn) and all I have heard from David and you is I don’t believe – go get me an economist? Really? What else do you have other than a belief to defend your position?
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p>I’m not saying we shouldn’t raise taxes, just that if you are going support raising a specific tax you need to have more data than “I don’t believe!” to back it up.
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p>I do support a graduated state income tax (one that would lower taxes for low income families, keep them the same for middle income and raise them for upper income). Go ahead raise the hotel tax. I would consider others, but not until I have done the research to understand the consequences.
No offense to the sub store owners, but is it possible that they are just parroting the standard anti-tax rhetoric back to you?
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p>We are talking about an increase of 5 cents on a $5 sub.
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p>If my sub shop raised prices by 25 cents on a $5 sub, I’m not going to stop going there. If they raise it by $2, then I might — it would depend on how much I liked it. On the other hand, if they switched bread to cut costs, I would definitely stop going there.
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p>And those sub owners might not be doing so well if a billion dollars is taken out of this state’s economy in the form of worker layoffs. Nor might they be doing so well if there are more mentally ill people walking the streets, or more criminals being released earlier with less supervision.
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p>I guess they might do well if there is a larger pool of uneducated, unskilled, otherwise unemployable workers out there — maybe they can push for a minimum wage repeal and then hire people at a buck an hour to wash their dishes.
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p>By the way, my local sub shop has increased the price of a large sub from $5 to $8 over the past 2 years through a series of increases, and then capped it off by removing the “sales tax included in price” sign. They did it mostly in response to the fuel price increases. An extra nickel or dime in there would have been just noise.
You have absolutely no concept of how these stores are run, what the margins are and what financial shape they are in.
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p>While not directly relevant – there are no dishwashers at a sub store!
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p>8 bucks for a sub? I’m talking about stores with mostly lower income customers. They have regular customers that walk in the store with exact change for their subs, there are lists of people who owe the owner money because they can’t pay for their meal until the next assistance check comes in. They work 60+ hours just to scrape by.
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p>Why not put it in for meals over say $25 or $50 to help protect small businesses? Why the meals tax to begin with? If this will have no impact why do you think the restaurant lobby is opposing this?
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p>Because it will have an impact. You have offered no evidence to the contrary other than casual observation.
No tax on groceries. Tax on prepared food.
No tax on clothing. Tax on
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p>The former is necessary. The latter convenience/bling. You gotta eat and you gotta be clothed, but you don’t need to dine out at a sub shop and you don’t need chains.
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p>The exemption isn’t needed for low cost prepared meals — it’s needed for groceries and it’s provided for groceries.
I understand the necessity component but do you have get your clothes dry cleaned? Why not on tax on that service?
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p>Do you have to hire movers? Why not tax that. The list is endless.
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p>Why specifically the meals tax?
Whether or not to tax services is a whole different discussion, and one I thing ought to be had (on another thread).
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p>But goods vs. services isn’t really related to necessities vs. non-necessities.
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p>Why specifically the meals tax? Dunno. I’d like a three cent local options gas tax myself [one cent for local mass trans, one cent for state gen fund, one cent for town gen fund].
Food is a necessity, but because there is a service performed with the food (the preparation and delivery) it can be taxed. Therefore – Meals tax != Tax on goods (just trying to see how long we can carry this…)
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p>A gas tax IS more equitable than a meals tax.
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p>
I’m sorry, you’re just not going to convince me that charging a customer 5 cents more on a $5 grinder or 1 cent more on a $1 slice of pizza is going to break anyone.
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p>I don’t have evidence other than logical thought, but you have no evidence that it will, other than peoples claims, people who have been subjected to a lot of propaganda over the past 30 years that “taxes = bad”.
Taxes != bad. Bad taxes = bad.
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p>It is not simply 2%. Most people factor in the 5% and forgot about it. Like most times I can’t tell you what a stamp cost. But when the price rises, I reevaluate the value. The same will happen here.
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p>”You know I’m not paying a 7% tax because I don’t believe it is fair, so I’m going to eat out less”. Especially in the months following the rate hike, which will be crucial given the current economic times.
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p>We disagree. So be it.
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p>It’s the kiss of death for those sugary, liquor filled candies on my hotel pillow I guess.
like, $5 each when we’re done with them. Or you’ll get a Tic-Tac instead.
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p>I seem to recall in the 80s there was a brief attempt to sales tax certain services. The attempt either failed or else, the effort never gained traction. It was aimed at legal, accounting, architect … services. Don’t recall what stopped it.
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p>If I remember correctly, Dukakis proposed it. The rationale, at least in part, was that as the economy became more service-oriented, services should be taxed.
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p>I think we still had a Republican Party in Massachusetts in the 1980s. They might have had something to do with killing it. I’m sure attorneys in the Commonwealth wouldn’t have opposed the measure. Right?
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p>Mark
Whenever you’re talking about laying people off, it’s really ridiculous to be talking about pay raises — http://www.bostonherald.com/ne… Especially when, as today, cost of living has dropped because of declines in fuel and housing costs.
I’ve ranted against the bottle bill in an old thread, but I’ll go on the record again here and say that the one reform I’d like to see is mandatory acceptance of all returnables at all stores. I don’t care if the store doesn’t sell that particular beverage — they should have to take back anything with a deposit. This would make it a whole lot easier to actually return stuff and actually encourage people to return bottles, instead of putting them in the trash (or putting them out on the street at night for the scavengers).
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p>I still have no idea why we can’t have more effective curbside recycling instead of the whole bottle bill nonsense to begin with. If you want people to recycle, you have to make it convenient and relatively easy. If I could just put everything in one or two bins and leave it at the curb, I’d be much more likely to actually recycle everything. As it is now, I can put some bottles (wine, liquor) in the curbside recycling, some have to go back to the grocery store, and others have to go back to the liquor store.
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p>I know, not the worst inconvenience in the world, but I’d really much rather pay a small tax on all bottles that was devoted solely to increase and improve curbside recycling programs.
After all, the increased revenues are supposed to help pay for environmental programs.
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p>I still think $0.10 per bottle makes more sense that $0.05, to your point about revenue.
Interesting link on unclaimed bottle deposits. Mass, Calif and Michigan keep the change. Other states allow the bottlers to keep it.
1: Raise the bottle deposit rate too high, and more people will actually return the bottles. A desired result if you’re pursuing environmental ends, but no revenue to the state.
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p>2: Keep the redemption rate quite low and return rates are reduced, and the state keeps the change and the bottles end up whereever.
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p>It appears by keeping the rate low, but extending it to other items, the State has opted for Public Polic #2.
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p>The bottle bill is more effective.
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p>Which state has the highest recycling rate of commingled [bottles and cans]? Michigan. Why? $0.10 deposit. Who comes next? Maine. Why? Nickle deposit, even on non-carbonated bev (except dairy, unprocessed cider). Who’s next? CT, DE, MA, HI, IA, VT, OR, NY. Why? Nickle deposit? Who’s next? CA. Why? 2.5 cents deposit*. Who’s next? Every other state.
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p>Deposit results in higher rates of recycling than curbside, even if that curbside is single stream (throw all paper, glass, steel, aluminum, plastic together). The bottle bill increases the rates of recycling.
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p>
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p>But wait, there’s more:
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p> * It saves cities and towns money
– It costs about $75-$150/ton to collect and process commingled recyclables. By expanding the deposit bill, towns will have less tons of commingled to process, saving money. Why less? Homeowners or scavengers will remove those water, tea, etc bottles from the recycle bin before the DPW gets there.
– Cities and towns have to empty the public litter and recycle barrels. With an expanded deposit, they’ll need to be emptied less frequently because (a) some people will bring them home for the nickle themselves, and (b) scavengers will dig through the barrel to recover those cans.
* It reduces litter. Walk through a park in Boston metro, and pay close attention to places which aren’t convenient to get to but are accessible. You’ll see plenty of bottles and cans for water, tea, even liquor. You won’t see nearly as many for soda or beer. Scavengers recover the bottles in parks and other public places, reducing litter at no gov’t cost.
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p>
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p>I’ve been pushing for this for years.** In fact, the very first time I met Deval Patrick when he was brand new to the campaign, I mentioned it to him. I’ve mentioned it to him in the dozenish other times I’ve seen him. He cracked a smile every time, not buying into the idea (he was a former exec at Coca-Cola, after all). I’m glad he’s changed his mind.
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p>
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p>* Was 2.5 cents. Raised last year to 5 cents for most, 10 cents for bottles more than 24 oz. Recycling data not in yet.
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p>** Posts online include:
Expand the Bottle Bill on dp.com
Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here on bmg.com.
just never convince me that this is a good idea. Sorry. I know this is one of your pet issues, but I just fundamentally disagree with you.
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p>And is scavenging through the trash really something we want to encourage? Honestly, I’d rather pay more to provide better services to people than tell them to go dig in the trash for the money to buy their next meal. Is this what we want a civilized and compassionate society to be like?
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p>As I’ve said before, scavenging makes a god-awful mess of the neighborhood and is a complete public nuisance. People drag carts of bottles up and down the street at all hours, ripping open trash bags, breaking bottles, etc and then leave the trash in the street. So now I don’t have bottles in the street, but I do have my neighbor’s used kleenex and food scraps. Not a very good trade off in my book.
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p>And then there’s the actual process of returning the stuff. Ever had a couple of 12 packs to return and you get stuck behind the guy with three shopping carts full of cans who’s using three of the machines at once? Really makes me want to recycle.
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p>In my mind, the bottle bill’s time has come and gone. It’s an idea from the 1970’s and 1980’s. You mean to tell me that no one can come up with a better way?
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p>At the very least, I hope you agree with my idea that everyone who takes back returnables has to take back everything with a deposit. But something tells me we’re way too far apart on this to ever find common ground.
It’s now less about recycling and more about revenue. The state takes in over $20 million per year in unclaimed deposits. They’ve broadened it beyond carbonated bottles to other stuff, in order to increase their take.
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p>Classic Baptists and bootleggers.* Remember to begin with, all the money from deposits goes to the State, and if you, the consumer, don’t return the bottle, the state keeps the change.
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p>If the State really wanted more recycling, it would raise the deposit to, say a dime rather than the current nickle. The trouble is, that would actually cause more people to recycle, and that would mean fewer coins for the state to keep. The solution therefore isn’t for the state to raise the deposit, but rather for the state to expand the requirement to other containers. The Baptists (aka the Greenies) swoon; the bootleggers (aka the state) profit.
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p>
more every time you use it.
I don’t know if a dime would fly. I’m all for it, but I don’t know if the voters will go for it. What do you think the fallout will be on the expansion of bottles? What do you think the fallout would be if they pushed it up to a dime? Which single action do you think would result in more total recycling?
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p>It’s a cute story gary, and there may be some truth to it. But frankly, since the recycle rate on soda cans is higher than tea bottles and since the percent of drinks which are tea bottles is so much bigger than it was 10 years ago, I’d bet that expanding the deposit to cover more kinds of bottles will result in more total recycling than increasing the current deposit to 10 cents only on current deposit canisters.
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p>
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p>Yes, expanding the breadth to all canisters and depth to ten cents would have the largest recycling impact, but the question is: is it politically feasible in MA to do both at the same time? I’m not so sure.
There’s also notably less trash along the streets and highways there, at least during my last visit.
In Springfield, the percentage of residents of renters who recycle falls below the percentage of homeowners who recycle. Why? Because there is no effective way to convince someone only marginally attached to the community to recycle. Sure, you can refuse to pick the trash up, but that affects the property owner, not the renter.
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p>Might an expanded bottle bill be incentive for less-attached renters to “recycle” their bottles by bringing them back to a store, thereby keeping this out of the solid waste stream?
My community just doesn’t have a problem with scavengers. We have scavengers, sure… but they know the neighborhood and know where to look. I’ve watched them a number of times… generally it means fishing through the already open blue bin. My experiences in CT and MA have never included scavengers spewing trash everywhere.
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p>As for trash cans and the like, I see it like this: scavenging is an honorable job, as honorable as throwing barrels of trash into a truck. I’d also point out that I always scavenged as a kid — walk through the neighborhood and collect littered cans and bottles. While I don’t go out of my way searching any more, I still make an effort to grab recyclable bottles that are littered. I’d bend over and pick up a nickle, why not bend over and pick up a nickle and make my neighborhood a little cleaner?
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p>As for returning the stuff, I return about 20 cans a week, in units of 20. I bring back 20 to my local spa on my walk home, and get a buck. Easy peasy, at least for me-asy.
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p>I’m not telling you that nobody can come up with a better way — I’m telling you that the data shows that nobody has yet come up with a better way. The broader and deeper the bottle bill in a state, the more bottles and cans get recycled. The correlation is very tight. In my opinion, the decreased litter in park space and roadside, the financial savings each city and town gov’t will gain, and the massive decrease in landfill-bound bottles makes the deposit scheme worth the hassle.
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p>As for the take-it-all-back, the problem likely lies in the way that the bottles get from the store to the recycling center. It’d have to be overhauled so that all the bottlers consolidate their returns and then re-separate them to know how many nickels they’ve got to return each. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, but I am saying that it would take some effort and might cost more than zero. Before seeing those impacts to process and pocketbook, I can’t really support or oppose such a proposal. I certainly do agree that it would be easier [though I might distinguish between alcohol and non-alcoholic containers].
that you have such honorable scavengers. Unfortunately, my neighborhood does not, and they tend to make a mess every trash day. While some people use the blue bins, not everyone does, so the scavengers feel like they have to rip open half the trash bags, just in case they missed something. Sad to say, but expanding the bottle bill will probably only make the situation worse.
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p>I disagree about scavenging. I have nothing against people who do it, but I’m just not sure the state should be actively encouraging it.
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p>My “local” spot to return stuff isn’t really within walking distance either, at least for anything over about 10 cans. So it’s an extra trip in the car, etc.
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p>Well, I can only hope that the folks on Beacon Hill agree with me and not you, but I doubt it. They have $$ in their eyes already. It’s not often I agree with Gary, but as he said upthread, this is really a revenue collection measure loosely disguised as a recycling measure.
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p>2. Call the cops. Ripping open trash bags and getting trash everywhere certainly is neither honorable nor acceptable. I would hope the police officer would be gentle enough to encourage not making a mess, and firm enough to assure the person that making a mess won’t be tolerated.
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p>Given that the problem seems to exist for you now, I encourage you to employ (1) and (2) since whether or not DP’s plan passes you’ve still got to live with it.
Just don’t care. We’ve tried, and most of the people that own are pretty good about it, but I live in a VERY densely populated neighborhood with a good number of renters and most people don’t have any outside space for trash. So the blue bins get stolen or misplaced or the garbage men drop them five houses down, or people don’t want to haul a blue bin down four flights of stairs so they split the stuff up in regular trash bags.
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p>As for calling the cops, I really think there are better things for the cops to be doing. And in Boston, with no 311 system, you have to dial 911 to reach anyone in the BPD. Not a very good use of the 911 operators.
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p>It’s bad enough as it is, I don’t want to make the problem worse. And that’s exactly what this will do.
at 3am than cruising neighborhood streets keeping an eye on people who don’t live on that block wandering around?
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p>Obviously they’d respond to an emergency if there were one, but short of that emergency this is exactly what the cops ought to be doing. Don’t call 911… arrange a patrol ahead of time.
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p>Frankly, it seems like you’re all about not willing to actually do anything in your community to try and make the current problem you face any better. If you’re willing to complain on a message board but not willing to take action in your own neighborhood to improve its quality of life, what can I say?
Maybe where you live this is the most important thing the cops do, I have no idea. I’d rather have BPD actually catching people doing really terrible things — like killing other people, assaulting other people, etc.
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p>The scavengers were only one part of my arguments against the bottle bill. I didn’t mean to get that hung up on it in the comments since it’s not my main problem with it.
The police do not respond to those calls in Springfield. Their position is that trash on the treebelt is no longer the property of the homeowner, so it isn’t a crime to go through it — even if they are ripping open bags.
but it is a crime to litter, no?
the scavengers pick them clean… and don’t go near the trash.
So, Deval says he’s going to anchor our education policy on some sort of “Readiness Report”. Experts are gathered to furrow brows and push papers.
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p>Deval’s signs up many “Readiness reps” — loyal foot soldiers who promise to promote the report before they even read it. His people troll Democratic meetings for more people.
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p>A pie in the sky “finance report” details how he’s going to pay for everything. Magic, it seems.
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p>None of this mentions the type of charters he drops into the budget.
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p>Meanwhile…
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p>The TIMSS “study” shows that Massachusetts public school students are at an elite level against worldwide competition. It’s mixing our average in with the other states that brings America down.
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p>We barely have enough money to keep public education going.
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p>A charter school is ordered to be shut down at year’s end by the DOE yesterday. The place had horrific results and wasn’t even housed in a school — it rented space from the Y.
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p>So…
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p>What does Deval do? Push for more charter schools!!!
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p>No matter what the situation is in education, Deval seems to think the solution is more charters, hopefully easier to get.
Raise the caps on charter schools, the same year local aid is reduced. I can’t wait until we get rid of this Romney guy in the corner office.
Chapter 70 money was held constant both in the emergency 09 reductions and for FY 2010.
Sure, Chap 70 is the same, but other local aid will be cut. Selectmen and City Councils will hold up FY10 School budget in order to share the pain. Example Town A get local aid cut by 1 million, share of school budget 60% FY10 school budget will be held up until 600,000 is cut from school budget, muni budget cut by 400,000.
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p>This is what will happen at the local level.
and Republicans on education reform is relatively small. Clinton followed Bush 41’s plans which followed Reagan’s. Obama’s plan falls pretty much in line with the neo-liberal tradition.
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p>As far as our governor goes, exactly where has he had a coherent policy?
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p>Mark
This is an embarassingly unprogressive euphemism. Charter school “relief”? Tax relief?
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p>Mark
Hey, Governor I am STILL waiting for my campaigned promised property tax relief!
state employees pay 10% more in health care expenses? You’re asking a lot of middle class people to take a big pay cut, David.
(a) It brings them in line with the private sector, where paying 25% is common for all pay levels, including well below $50K;
(b) At least they have good health care, so they’re starting out ahead of the game; and
(c) It’ll bring in $60 million, which otherwise will have to be found elsewhere (as in, laying off more DMH case workers, or whatever).
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p>What’s your alternative?
private sector salary?
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p>The head of a major bureaucratic agency in Massachusetts may make low 6 figures. The same person heading up a major nonprofit in Massachusetts makes half a million or more. The same person heading up a major corporate division makes millions.
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p>I’ll take the low 3 figure salary and 25% contribution to health insurance, thanks.
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p>My alternative? Raise taxes .5%. Our budget problems for the next few years, at least, is largely solved. In the meantime, that buys us time to grapple with health care expenses and bring those rising costs closer to the rate of inflation (or go single payer and instantly save billions).
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p>You’re proposing a pay cut as well?
No. If public employees want to work in the private sector, that option is of course available to them. Presumably they stay in the public sector because, even though comparable salaries may be lower, there are countervailing benefits. Pension is certainly among them; there are plenty of others.
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p>
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p>Me too. But I think you meant 15%.
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p>I’ll give you credit for this: at least you have an alternative. I don’t happen to agree that it’s either politically feasible or a good idea, but it’s an alternative.
attract the best and brightest to the public sector. Slapping them in the face isn’t a good way to do that.
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p>I’m tired of this notion among many liberals that public sector employees should be willing to work at a salary that pales in comparison to other sectors, out of some absurd notion that they should just be happy to work for the government and have a ‘do-gooder’ job.
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p>Government employees deserve compensation on par with the private sector. Now, I’m not talking CEO pay – that’s grossly inflated and needs to be scaled back – but certainly someone who makes $55k working at the RMV or in the administration doesn’t deserve a big pay cut, especially in this economic climate. That person may just leave, making us lose all that institutional knowledge, which could have a far greater impact on this state than coming up with that person’s 10% of their health costs that we’ve managed to come up with for decades. Remember, our last governor of Massachusetts worked for free and left our state in rack and ruin. In life, we get what we pay for.
“My alternative? Raise taxes .5%. Our budget problems for the next few years, at least, is largely solved. In the meantime, that buys us time to grapple with health care expenses and bring those rising costs closer to the rate of inflation (or go single payer and instantly save billions).”
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p>When are you running? you’ve got my vote.
I think you forgot to include his pension from the other state job he retired from at age 50. You know, the pension that got hugely inflated when he sold his unused vacation and sick time back to the state before he retired, doubling his income for that year, and skewing the pension calculations.
You can’t “double dip” working in the public sector, with the rarest of rare exceptions in K-12 education that requires a DoE waiver, making up a tiny percentage of our public teachers at large (less than 1%) and even then only on a short term basis, because no qualified chemistry or calculus teacher could be found.
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p>Good joke. Made me laugh. But keep on trying to kill the public sector, Don Quixote.
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p>
Turns out this isn’t true.
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p>But what we really need is a tax hike.
I’m for that too–by giving everyone affordable health care.
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p>David, your argument is only persuasive if you think private compensation is adequate.
What is that supposed to mean?
last I checked, the private sector’s health benefits are often craptastic and increasingly so, more expensive every year – along with stagnated wages for the past 8+ years.
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p>I think he makes a good point.
I think most people pay too much for health care.
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p>My preferred solution is not to make even more people pay too much for health care.
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p>In a crisis I think a case can be made, especially for a means-tested increase such as you propose, but I react strongly to the whole “in line with the private sector” bit. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
They have to cut spending either way… right now, the way they are going to do that is largely through layoffs. That’s neither wise nor equitable.
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we don’t have to cut spending. that’s programmed thinking courtesy of too many years with Karl Rove and the Republicans controlling the dialogue.
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p>We have another option. It’s called raising revenue. Perhaps, for once, we should try it.
You have an alternative. And we can debate the policy all day. But it’s just not going to happen, not to the extent necessary to close state and local budget deficits. The Gov’s budget includes some revenue increase — meals tax, telecom, RMV fees (which I hate), etc. But some spending cuts have to be made. That is the fact in the reality-based world. The question, then, is how to do that — targeted vs. across-the-board, salary freeze/cuts vs. layoffs, pensions/benefits (which is a disproportional % increase in the budget every year) vs. salaries, capital vs. operating.
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p>I also have to say your response to any policy decision of “raise taxes” is starting to sound like the mirror image of the GOP’s reflexive “cut taxes” mantra.
It’s apparent that Governor Patrick has pulled out Romney’s 2003 playbook and is using it line-by-line to find his inner-Romney:
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p>1: Raise the fees;
2: Cut the departments;
3: Cut local aid;
4: Raise the taxes ‘around the edge’. You know, a few pennies in gas, pennies in recyling, pennies in sales tax.
5: Hope and pray that revenues rebound.
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p>Frankly, I’m surprised that there’s been no effort to increase the income tax rate. To me anyway, the obvious play (not my choice, but obvious) is to introduce a higher income tax rate BUT at the same time introduce a property tax credit for say, $500. A refundable creditable against income tax. Reason: election time is approaching and Governor Patrick is nowhere with his pledge to reduce property taxes.
all we do is make cuts. I’m glad the Governor finally started to look at increasing revenue, but it’s small beans. We need to seriously raise revenue after decades of slashing the budget. .5% is absolutely feasible and, really, quite inevitable. If people have the ‘we-can’t-do-it’ attitude, it’ll take years to pass it, making everyone suffer, or we could all demand our politicians collectively grow up and deal with this budget responsibly.
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p>Your parting slap is honestly meaningless. The GOP “mantra” is exactly what happened for decades. Cut after cut after cut. When’s the last time this state raised taxes to deal with a fiscal crunch? When Bart Simpson went on the air? Usually, when there’s a budget shortfall, you look at a balanced approach to meet the gap – but we’ve been ignoring half of that balanced approach for more than a decade to disastrous consequences. Indeed, it is time for some people to ‘grow up’ and be responsible adults.
Looks like CC is dead. History, no? Having spent $5.5 million over last 2 years on nothing, it’s good to spend nothing, on same.
As a career employee of DET I’d like to dispel a couple myths about state worker compensation:
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p>1. The average state worker pension is in the low 20sK.
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p>2. State workers hired for the past 10-15 years basically fund their entire pension themselves. The state contributes nothing to the pension for these workers.
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p>3.the governors health insurance plan pretends to take into account an employees ability to pay. They assume that a det worker making 55K can absorb a $2500/year pay cut in the form of the premium hike. What if that employee is a single mom with three kids? This cut would be devastating. Likewise, a $25K employee would have a hike in take home pay even if their spouse makes 200 grand a year.
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but I think teachers also fund their entire pensions themselves as well.
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p>By the way, the other health insurance programs Patrick alludes to include one in Hampshire County to which my town belongs. That’s why Granby hasn’t joined the GIC.
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p>Some of these revenue and savings suggestions were mentioned in Readiness Project’s follow up committee. True to the Governor’s version of progressivism, it was completely made up of executives and educational people were outnumbered by business people. Appoint managerial hammers to solve a problem and employees all look like nails.
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p>Mark
public schools. I’m all for public charter schools, but I am against using public funds to subsidize private schools.
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p>This stuff isn’t very progressive. I hate sin taxes. The idea is supposed to be to get people to buy less junk, which in turn would choke off the revenue they are supposed to create. I agree with the restaurant tax, at least that’s seems somewhat more progressive in that I would guess diners have more expendable income than junk food buyers, by and large.
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p>Here’s an idea, if Deval wants to use these tax increases to drive up revenue, how about something for the rest of us, like opening up the Massachusetts health plan to all residents, or at least those of use who are self-employed? The rates for the private insurance is absurd.
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p>I think it’s just disgusting to ask state employees to pay more for the health coverage in a recession while the legislature is passing a pay raise for themselves.
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p>Maybe me need a small asset tax, say for estates over 5 million or something.
It happens automatically. A few years back the voters approved a state constitutional amendment (Article 118) that automatically gave legislators a pay raise (or cut) every two years based on whatever had happened to median incomes in the state over the preceding two years.
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p>I thought this was a bad idea and voted against it, but I was in the minority.
It’s not progressive to cut any employee’s health insurance benefit, including state employees. We live in a society which could provide affordable health insurance for everyone but doesn’t.
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p>We should promote an expectation that people will have affordable health insurance. We should bring those that don’t have it up to the levels of people that do have it, not the other way around.
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p>The proper response to the costs problem for employers is to get employers to advocate for single payer or some other real solution to the problem. Yes, that does present a dilemma for real world managers (like the Governor) but it’s the job of progressives to push the people in charge in the right direction, not to promote compromises that encourage a race to the bottom.
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p>You were in the State Legislature? No wonder you do so much commenting … you’re living off your fat pension!
It was a state constitutional amendment. We all got to vote on it, provided of course that you were living in the commonwealth and were over 18 at the time, that is.
Example…
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p>According to Boston Public Schools, they spent $947 million on 57,000 students.
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p>(It’s on page 83, hard to find!).
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p>District per student: $16,600.
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p>If you discount all external funds, then it is $827 million, or $14,500 per student.
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p>According to Massachusetts DOE, during this year Boston has 5,025 kids in charter schools, for which the state gives $64 million.
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p>Charter per student: $12,700.
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p>* * * * *
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p>P.S. BPS gets reimbursed $18 million by the state for those kids it no longer educates.
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p>So BPS “loss” per student is 64m – 18m = 48m, or $9,500 per student per year.
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and I don’t know “which way” it’s unfair, but I am sure that Boston public school expenditures don’t hit the statewide median or mean per pupil…
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p>P.S. Saw in the Metro that a charter school just lost it’s charter yesterday. That’s for another thread though…
StomV, it’s inherent to the way charters are funding:
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p>They start with the per-pupil amount spent by the district, they subtract a bunch of stuff, and then charters end up with some lesser amount.
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p>The exact same formula applies to Boston, Worcester, Saugus, North Adams, wherever.
What did you think of that Uphams Corner School closure?
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p>Weirdly, MA charter supporters have lobbied FOR closing weak charters, and charter opponents on the Board of Ed have generally voted to NOT CLOSE weak charters.
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p>It’s one of those areas where Pablo and I agree: close ’em.
If only to avoid the trash strewn around my neighborhood after trash day, as all of our recycle bins are dumped by folks looking for returnables.
I accumulate all those bloody cans and bottles and by the time it’s worth a visit to the recycling center, they’re disgusting. Get to the center, which is disgusting, stand around the machine which works most of the time, then fully 10% of the cans aren’t accepted because they aren’t sold at the particular store, or else they’re crunched so the bar code doesn’t scan.
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p>Meanwhile, the state’s just looking at the whole plan as a revenue spigot. In my office we just throw them away.
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p>Mass Government: cha-ching! Those sugary, carbonated drinks have something like a 15% sales tax after counting the i) deposit tax ii) sin tax iii) sales tax.
and they end up funding a holiday party or parting gifts for employees or flowers for deceased family members or whatever…