By the way, kudos to JK for posting the results before I could get home! ? (Truth be told I gave JK a head start because I had to go put gas in my Jeep.)

Well, I felt kind of stupid sitting in the meeting tonight. Had I had the information made available at the meeting I would have stayed at home and tended to other pressing family matters. (I know waah, waah, waah!) Enough of the whining!

The meeting was well attended – at least 90 seated and 20 out in the hall. The three Selectmen made at least two trips into the storage room across the hall for stacks of additional chairs. It was an interesting mix of people. Some faces were completely unfamiliar, others were better to well-known and then there were the diehard never-say-I-didn’t-let-you-know-how-I-feel set. Obviously, this was a matter of great interest to many.

Dawn Adiletta was nominated and approved by the body at hand to moderate the evening’s agenda. The ground rules were verbalized and we got down to the business for which we’d assembled.

The first two items were the adoption of two subdivision roads. The first was fairly well aired with several concerns and questions being raised about maintenance. Doug Porter responded as the developer of the Alpin Road development and five others in Woodstock. While the concerns voiced were certainly important, from my perspective it seemed like reasonable measures had been taken and were in place to address those issues.

One light moment of the evening came when Ms. Adiletta called for those in favor of adopting Alpin Rd. as a town road to vote ‘Aye’. An elongated pause followed her request for our votes and then, in unison (for the most part) the vote was cast and rather handily at that. The pause gave Ms. Adiletta a start, as I’m sure she momentarily thought us all deaf! After the look on her face was quickly replaced with what could only be described as relief, we all were able to enjoy the humor. If there were any ‘Nay’ votes I can’t recall.

Since all the ‘road’ questions had already been addressed, the second road, Tayler Trail was accepted without notice.

Then on to the meat of the night’s meal – the Farm Building Tax Exemption…

As you have all read my previous article, I don’t need to restate that it appeared to me to be a pretty open-ended financial drain on the revenue stream and the grand list. I had done my homework. I read the actual statutes and found no solace there. There were just a whole bunch of things I didn’t know about.

First I wasn’t really aware of this whole tax break committee (not sure on the actual title – no offense intended). The committee members were Diane Miller, Doug Young, Fred Chmura, Amy Vinyl, Reva Seybolt and Woodstock Assessor Rick Kryzak (Thank you Lisa Rapose for asking the members be named again. I didn’t get them all the first time.) Apparently, this committee has been meeting for some time.

The second thing I didn’t know ahead of time was that there are about $3.8 million in assessments of farm buildings in Woodstock. That figure includes around $2 million in the buildings of the dairy and orchard farms, who already the Dairy and Orchard Abatement. Something else I didn’t know.

So, the long and short of it is that there are probably only 35 +/- farms in Woodstock that would qualify for this tax exemption. The exemption would apply for buildings and would be UP to $100,000 per building. We were assured that not many buildings are assessed anywhere near that threshold. The only limit would be that the buildings would each have to be exclusively used for farming endeavors and couldn’t be applied to the farmer’s residence.

The assessments of the buildings would remain, so the Grand List would not be reduced. What would increase is the total dollar figure of exemptions. (NOTE – Need to check THAT number in the budget!)

The bottom line in the money column is that by bet estimates based on the current mil rate and based on there being 4,400 individual taxpayer accounts, the average increased taxes would be between $4 and $5.

I think the person who best expressed what I was sitting there thinking was Jim Kaeding, who brought several things to light. His emphasis was on having an open government. He noted that the minutes of the ‘tax break committee’ were not available on the website. He also noted that the minutes of the Selectmen’s meetings didn’t reflect the discussion with any detail about this issue either. He closed with the observation that the Selectmen had mailed out a letter to the farmers in town encouraging them to attend tonight’s meeting, but that letter did not go out to non-farmers.

Another ‘shout out’ to Lisa Rapose for questioning why the committee hadn’t made an information packet available for the meeting attendees. That certainly would have been helpful, not to mention if the information had been available AHEAD of time on the website!

There were other queries and the unfailing grousing. Then the question was called and seconded for a paper vote. That vote failed. Then we voted on the main question which then passed overwhelmingly. So, we now have a tax exemption for farm buildings and, by all accounts, it shouldn’t be that big of a financial hurdle as it may have seemed going into the building tonight.

PS – Please excuse any typos. I’m posting this and going to bed… I’ll fix stuff in the morning. – Becki