To the editor:

In “PCC helped put a price on the Transfer Station,” an Oct. 8 letter to the Portsmouth Times, the writer claimed the transfer station would cost nothing if it weren’t for those dastardly PCC (Portsmouth Concerned Citizens) folks.

Does anyone believe any service provided by municipal government is really free? Someone always pays!

I’ll explain this as simply as I can out of compassion for the letter writer. Operating the transfer station takes money. Realistically, there are only two ways for the town to get that money: The cost is added to everyone’s property taxes, or the users pay — like the sticker system we have today. (Some would argue the sticker is much fairer than making people who contract for pickup also pay for the transfer station in their taxes.)

The writer’s claim that using the transfer station was previously free is not true at all. It was paid for through our property taxes. There is no free lunch!

The letter writer goes on at length with a convoluted and largely fanciful account of how the transfer station stopped being “free.”

To set the record straight, in 2006, the PCC, at residents’ urging, legally called for a financial town meeting to try to reduce an enormous town budget increase. The vote taken at the meeting did not reduce the school budget or the town budget, as the letter writer claims.

The town’s residents voted at the meeting to reduce the increase in the town budget from the proposed 9.1% to a much more reasonable 4% — which inspired the state’s cap on municipal tax levies. The council, in complying, eliminated the transfer station from the budget and made it an enterprise fund, which is why it is not paid for through your property taxes today.

The letter also recited a litany of hackneyed, politically inspired deceptions arguing that PCC’s attempt to keep property tax growth at a responsible level is why the transfer station is no longer “free.” In reality, it never was free, and the system in use today is fairer. That financial town meeting happened over a generation ago; it is past time for those defeated at it to move on.

Nevertheless, the writer proves there are still folks who do not understand that there is no free lunch — especially in town government. Clearly, those people should be kept as far away from government office as possible.

Tom Grieb

Portsmouth