Letter: Mr. Grove will work to help all taxpayers

Posted 10/27/16

To the editor:

At the recent candidate forum, Kate Weymouth accused my brother Geoff Grove of being a member of the ‘party of know,’ and he is. Knowledge is power. 

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Letter: Mr. Grove will work to help all taxpayers

Posted

To the editor:

At the recent candidate forum, Kate Weymouth accused my brother Geoff Grove of being a member of the ‘party of know,’ and he is. Knowledge is power. 

Understanding the effect of an 8 percent tax increase on the residents of our town is something that I want in a town councilor. Understanding the budgets is essential to developing policies that affect the taxpayers because property taxes are not voluntary. They are mandatory, and the penalty for not paying them is steep — tax liens and foreclosure.

I think Mrs. Weymouth and her cohorts have forgotten that. She stated that she wants to be reelected to “stay the course.” But, the course she has set us on is leading to difficult choices between large tax increases and painful budget cuts. We need look no further than Providence to see what happens when a municipality spends without considering future demands on the budget. We must consider the cost of employee benefits, capital equipment, and roads when deciding on school facilities and tax breaks for housing development.

Most people do not know that our unfunded liability for the employee pension is over $50 million. When the pension plan is forced to lower the expected annual rate of return for the fund from 7.5 percent, we will immediately see a substantial increase in contribution demanded. This will not be an optional payment. It will jump to the top of the priority list and force a tax increase or cuts to the budget.

The Sokoloff Plan that Mrs. Weymouth and Mr. Boyajian have been promoting is yet another misguided attempt to address a bad affordable housing law. And, by redirecting $2.3 million in potential tax revenue from the Zion property senior housing project to the Housing Trust to implement that dubious scheme, they have taken away valuable revenue that could have offset the large demands on the budget from the pension, increased employee compensation, and needed improvements to the middle school.

The voters will now decide whether to approve a $68.4 million bond to raze the existing middle school and build a new one at the same site. Approval will likely result in an approximate 8 percent tax increase. This will create a heavy burden for many residents, and heartbreaking decisions for some. And if the bond doesn’t pass, it will create problems of another kind. We will be under the gun to come up with a new plan, and we will go to the back of the line for state funding. The Democrats on the town council voted to advance this proposal against their stated reservations, over the objections of the appropriations committee, and despite the concerns of town officials. The town council had the responsibility to act in the best interest of the town, and should have done so.

We need leaders on the town council to deal with the outcome of the BMS bond referendum, whatever it is. If Geoff is elected to the town council and if the bond passes, Barrington townspeople can trust he will work tirelessly to guarantee that promises to lower the cost of the middle school project are realized. We all know that we need to address the middle school now. Geoff knows what an 8 percent tax increase will do to our town budget. No, he won’t be a yes man.

Ted Grove 

Barrington

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.