Letter: Vote for candidates who know how to keep taxes down

Posted 10/26/16

To the editor:

A number of the new Town Council candidates, primarily Democrats, are promoting the idea that aggressively attracting business to town needs to be a top priority in order to …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Register to post events


If you'd like to post an event to our calendar, you can create a free account by clicking here.

Note that free accounts do not have access to our subscriber-only content.

Day pass subscribers

Are you a day pass subscriber who needs to log in? Click here to continue.


Letter: Vote for candidates who know how to keep taxes down

Posted

To the editor:

A number of the new Town Council candidates, primarily Democrats, are promoting the idea that aggressively attracting business to town needs to be a top priority in order to stabilize our property taxes.

There is an easy estimate of just how much commercial development it would take to stabilize property taxes. The present town budget is about $60 million. Raytheon pays the town about $650,000 annually in property taxes. This means that Raytheon’s taxes pay for about 1.1 percent of the town’s budget. Assuming all else equal, if the town budget increases 2.4 percent next year like it did this year, we would need to attract new industry which was the equivalent of over two Raytheon campuses in order to keep residential property taxes stable next year.

Continuing this logic, to stabilize taxes for just the next five years would take attracting the equivalent of over 10 Raytheon campuses throughout Portsmouth. That would completely change the rural character of our town. But attracting any less business would not meet the stabilization goal.

Even assuming such a business development effort could be successful, after five years the areas to locate the commercial campuses within town would be at capacity and the residential tax increases would just start all over again. It is at best a short-term fix.

I strongly believe in attracting businesses that support and enhance the character of our town, but an unfocused effort to just attract business as a way to stabilize taxes will not work. If minimizing property tax increases is an important goal (and I believe it should be) it is far better to keep the town budget increases at or below inflation by limiting the growth of the size of town government and its spending. 

For Portsmouth this is quite reasonable because both our state and town planning departments are projecting minimal population growth and a declining school enrollment in Portsmouth over the next 25 years. Therefore, both town government size and expenses, if properly managed by the council, can be grown at a rate less than inflation without the sacrifice of any town services. Add to this the productivity gains that the town should be realizing from technology, and keeping the town budget increases below inflation is a very viable target — if we elect the Town Council candidates with that mindset.

This is the reason to vote for the fiscally responsible candidates that understand controlling town government size and limiting its spending are the only ways to truly stabilize our property taxes for the long run — making Portsmouth the attractive place to live and work it should be.

Thomas Grieb

110 Thayer Drive 

Portsmouth

letters, opinion

2024 by East Bay Media Group

Barrington · Bristol · East Providence · Little Compton · Portsmouth · Tiverton · Warren · Westport
Meet our staff
Jim McGaw

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.