Web site looks great. Can you send me your e-mail, I was hoping you could post some Foundation for Belmont Education information for me.

Thanks,
Lynne Polcari

With that in mind… if I recall correctly the BCH editorial supported the Override. So contrary to the book burning censorship crowd over on the Yahoo board… I welcome diverse opinions and will keep my subscription open even though you nailed Q1 but came up short on the Roads Override

That said, he might be talking about the roads update given by Glenn Clancy Monday night which isn’t in the physical newspaper, due to space, but online here instead:

http://www.wickedlocal.com/belmont/town_info/government/x1197773748/Selectmen-notes

No on 1 was a landslide. Now let’s see what happens. Will they (Brownsberger and assoc.) go after pension reform and get rid of the corrupt legislators or will they be content with nailin the taxpayers especially in Belmont seeing the No crowd prevailed on fear… Widmer is another No advocate who should be leading the charge on pension reform. We will be watching closely come this Spring.

BTW there is an interesting article on the Roads in this coming week’s BCH. Who would have thunk

If you want to live in a place with excellent services, you chose a town that has them, and pay your tax accoringling, much like now, expcept that you can sleep well knowing that you haven’t had to shake down someone else to pay for your ammenities. Why should some people on septic in Boylston, have to pay for sewer in Lawrence, or a pool, or, or, or?

I find most people that like income taxes, and socialism (I’m sure you’re not really a socialist), aren’t paying as much as most, and therefor as it’s easy to be generous with other’s money, opt to spend it liberally for their own causes.

This would help reduce this pet-project waste of pools and other highly-optional projects in communities that aren’t paying for them. If my town wants a pool, they can bring it up at the town meeting, and if passed, add that onto my tax bill. But this allows people a way to democratically decide what is done with their tax dollars.

Remember, Question 1 does not change the tolls, fees, business taxes and other major revenue streams. All it does is shift redundant services back to the cities and towns where they can decide what’s important, and how much to spend. It doesn’t reduce their budgets, or anything of the sort as they have to make the aid they get as part of the revenue stream that they guess on.

Here’s a comment you can chalk up on the no side of Question 1. Leaving every city and town to fend for itself, as Loudelf suggests, probably wouldn’t be much worse for Belmont than the current system. (It would be a bit worse, because we’d need Prop. 2.5 overrides more often, and what are the odds we’d pass them?) But it would be a disaster for places like Lawrence, which get more money from the state because, to put it simply, they need it more. Go ahead, call me a socialist — I’m in good company.

I like the state income tax bec. it’s more progressive (read: fair) than local property taxes. In fact, I’d like to see more of the funding for cities and towns coming from the income tax and less from relatively regressive property taxes. I have no desire to see the Massachusetts tax system emulate New Hampshire’s — I live in Mass. for a reason.

PJ complains that opponents of Q.1 “provide no solution to Belmont’s $4.5m 2009 deficit besides raising taxes.” Sometimes raising taxes is the best solution. Personally, I want to live in a place that has excellent services (schools, library, safety and sanitation), attractive, up-to-date, and well-maintained public facilities (pool, town hall, senior center, schools and library again) — and roads without potholes. I’m willing to pay for it.

Thanks to Will Brownsberger for the nicely written defense of the income tax.

You don’t need to put a figure on the ‘graft’. Public safety, education, roads, etc are the largest parts of the budget. By shifting the cost and the responsibility back to the cities and towns for things that are directly related to them, you strip the need to pay for them from the state. Coming up with exact figures on fraud and abuse would require partisipation of the very parties that are purpotrating the problems, so let’s just say this — Just north of here there is a state with no income tax OR sales tax that is able to manage.

Mass would still have it’s sales tax, tolls, fees, licenses, etc that raise money for it without the income tax. The local communities only rely on money from the state because they make budgets based on what the state will give them. Take out that portion, and they have to rely on the townspeople, which can decide what they want to do about it, and will have the funds from not paying income tax to afford it.

I have personal experience dealing with government entities and their employees. Let’s just say that I don’t look there when trying to find a model of efficiency. Ever hear of “close enough for government work”? I believe a chainsaw is exactly what the state needs.

Comparing again to NH, who has a similar plan to what advocates of question 1 want, Forbes ranked NH as the 20th best state for business, while MA was 36th. Businesses will see this as a way to keep employees wanting to live in MA, and be eager to keep facilities there, and even grow them, as opposed to building them north of the border. Remember, Yes On 1 does not remove the business tax, which still generates a major portion of the state revenues, so we’ll still be able to afford 70k/year toll booth collectors, cadillacs for the governor, etc.

In all seriousness, though, you guys are all singing the same song here, which is “let’s punish corrupt legislators by taking away their money.” The problem is, you haven’t put a figure on this “graft.” As I said before, your attitude is that 100 percent of tax dollars are wasted on cushy pensions and salaries, political pork, etc. The reality is that, while cushy pensions and waste are in the system, the vast majority of our tax dollars go to support programs that help our citizens and keep the Commonwealth competitive. They nurture industries like medicine, education and biotech, as well as manufacturing and retail. They help provide health care to poor and middle class families that can’t afford it. In towns like Belmont, tax dollars support everything from teachers in the class to music and art education. As to the “we’ll still get federal dollars” — as has been pointed out here, we’ll lose federal matching funds for health, education and infrastructure improvements as we cut our investment in those things. The two are linked, so — NO– federal dollars will not cushion the blow. Just the opposite: as we stop investing in our future, the Feds will say “good riddance” and stop investing in our future too. you gotta get your facts straight before you step to it, nCitizen.

Furthermore, nobody on the “Yes” side has put a figure on this graft, waste and abuse. Carla says its $.40 on the dollar. Where does that figure come from? Well, it comes from a poll she conducted. You don’t have to be a statistics major to know that polling people isn’t a good way to arrive at objective figures about things like waste, fraud and abuse. Howell’s argument that we should pass Question 1, because a lot of people think the State wastes $.40 of every tax dollar is like arguing that we should be funding a space port in state for the UFOs that visit us, just because a majority of those polled think that UFOs are for real. Give me a break. If you’re so disengaged with the political process that you think nothing that you pay in taxes actually benefits your local community, I can see how Question 1 is appealing, in a couch potato logic kind of way. If you understand how much local communities rely on money from the state, it makes no sense at all that the best way to end waste fraud and abuse is by ending income taxes all together. Lobbying reform and tighter scrutiny of agencies like Massport and the Lottery (with the help of the Fourth Estate) can go a long way towards cutting out those cancers with a scalpel, versus the chainsaw that is Question 1. That’s my 40c.