Election news

Door to door campaigning has been a real pleasure as I've gotten to know more residents in town.
Many, however, are really suffering as the direct result of high taxes here. Some people tell us their taxes have doubled, if not gone up more, in the past six years. Many feel they will have to leave their homes because they can no longer afford the high cost of living here. Some of these people are long-time residents.

Taxes are driven, in large part, by spending and the current administration has been spending at break-neck speed. Capital project on top of capital project has sent us more than $13 million in debt, according to figures obtained by the State Comptroller's office. Other figures obtained from that office show a 114.94% increase in debt service from 2006 to 2007; from $290,047 in 2006 to $795, 764 in 2007. The total cost for principal and interest as the result of this debt totaled $1,488,119 in 2007.
(2007 is the latest data available in this area from the Comptroller's office)
Other data from the CO's office shows that in 2007 revenues were $8,056,774 versus $12,028,438 in expenditures. This is a difference of $3,971,772 that needed to be raised by taxes.

This cycle of over-spending, over-borrowing and over-taxing needs to end. We need to get the state comptroller into the town offices to help us figure out our budget path. It can not be to continually raise taxes!!

To me, being fiscally conservative means not spending more than you bring in. Yes, we needed some of the capital projects which we've undertaken the past six years, but not to the extent that the taxpayers have paid.

For example. a new town hall was needed, but such an extravagant building, purchased without a public vote and which remains about 1/2 empty? There were other options that were not explored. But now that we own it, we need to move on. How about renting some of the space? How about consolidating the town offices into two floors and renting the third? We could also look at the cost of retro-fitting the town hall to include the police department.
This town owns four municipal properties: the existing and former town halls, the police department and the highway garage. Wouldn't it be sweet to eliminate at least one of those properties, the sale of which could help us pay down our debt?

And how about the new townhall well field off Route 150. Following a court order, water lines were run about two miles from that well field up Route 20 to accommodate about half a dozen people whose wells had been contaminated by the town, with salt.
But the town didn't stop with that more than million dollar project! Instead they tacked on another $3 million to study and expand the well field. To me, this was more of a "wish list" project; one that may pay off way down the road, but which is haivng a huge toll on residents now. This project could have waited until some of our debt was paid.

These are two examples. I know others. Anyone else?