To the editor:
I would like to respectfully submit some responses to the aspersions Carole Owens has cast on those who oppose the adoption of a residential tax exemption for Stockbridge:
The sewers at Mahkeenac Heights, a modest, entry-level camp-cottage community of about 50 densely packed homes on a hill above the town beach, were proposed and adopted by the town about 17 years ago to address the uniform failure of the 50 or so septic systems that were leaching downhill into the lake.
The sewer installation stopped that, and aside from also increasing the town’s assessments of the modest camp-cottages, thus raising their tax burdens, it enabled improvements, and also imposed fixed sewer fees (not based on actual usage but bedrooms), payable all year whether used or not.
I am reasonably confident the upgrade not only benefited the town but paid its way over time. Do you have sewers? Do other areas of the town? Are they free to you? Did the town install them? That, of course, is the town’s job: to provide and maintain the necessary infrastructure. Do you say it is wrong, offensive, and not of advantage to the town to do so if the community served is mostly owned by part-time residents?
Secondly, Owens suggests that mass hardship will follow from the pending 20 to 30 percent upward revaluation of the town’s total assessable real estate. That is misleading to the extreme.
As you know, the tax rate will almost certainly go down as the overall valuation goes up, unless the town seeks to raise a larger budget than before.
What the revaluation may do is change the relative values among existing properties. For example, new construction may go up more than older stock. The likely effect, not known until the assessors complete their tasks, is whether that will help or hurt anyone. The part-time population does its share of building and improvements, and I suspect their burden will thus go up compared to others, as a general matter, but the results will be case by case depending on specific facts.
As for abatement applications, they would seem merited. If the town’s general tax rate is increased by 15 to 20 percent because of an RTE, as the rough math might suggest, the market values of all residential properties will go down, no matter who owns them. That is simply how the market values the real estate.
The likely result is more uncertainty in budgeting since revenue collections will be uncertain, with lots of paperwork on both sides.
Finally, there is no difference between the full-time and part-time populations of Stockbridge. We are all people, and if you prick us, do we not cry? If you stick us, do we not bleed? And if you wrong us, do we not seek redress?
We all love Stockbridge and seek its constant betterment. Dividing us instead of uniting us will not lead to the common good. It is a bad idea for Stockbridge, it is unnecessary, it is inefficient, and it is wrong. Let’s kill the RTE and move on, united, to consider better options for whatever the wonderful Town of Stockbridge wishes to achieve.
Joe Newberg
Stockbridge
The writer has been a part-time resident of Stockbridge for 42 years – and still counting.
