from Becki
I don’t know what the average per head cost would work out to be. What I remember from the town meeting was that the increase in taxes that this project would create would work out to about $30 per $100,000 in assessment(…or $2.50 a month) initially. Then in the second year it would be more – about double or $60. After that when the debt we have now phases out, I think there wouldn’t be increases and at some point I believe the cost would actually go down. The proposed financing has been designed so that the increases in taxes are minimized.
by Dean Audet
I would like to address comments made by Craig Powers and the Citizens for Prudent Spending such that people have the facts when they vote on Tuesday.
Mr. Powers’ letter to the editor advocates eliminating the use of sand resulting in “some increase in the use of salt” as his reasoning to vote against the project. I want to remind voters that a “salt shed” is being proposed and not a “sand shed.” If you buy into Mr. Powers recommendations, we will still need a salt shed as he is advocating completely relying on salt.
The Citizens for Prudent Spending ad made several points that were misleading or just plain wrong.
First, lets be absolutely clear, the people that were responsible for the pollution at the salt shed are long gone. To imply that current officials are responsible is not true.
Second, we cannot use grant money to clean up pollution on the site. To imply that you can is simple disregard or ignorance of the facts. Grants are not available to “polluters” to clean up their “pollution.” In this case, the Town is viewed as a “polluter.” The logic goes like this: Polluter saves money by not properly disposing wastes, they then do not get grant money to clean up what they saved money doing.
The total principal that will be financed is $2.48 million over a 20 year period. The financing plan presented on Tuesday night showed the following:
1)We would begin paying off our loan in FY 2011.
2) This year, 0.7 mills of our taxes will go to pay debt service. Under the proposed financing plan, this would increase to a max of 0.77 mills in the FY 2011-2012 and then decrease to 0.50 mills in 2014-2015 and continue dropping.
3) The increase of 0.07 mills that is proposed for that one year is equivalent to $54,760 for the entire Town. I believe that there are more than 10,000 taxpayers in this town (not voters, but people who are sent tax bills). Using 10,000, this works out to an average of about $5.48 per taxpayer (I will double check this on Monday).
The financing for this project has been thought out to minimize impacts to all of us. Obviously, those with large property values will pay more, and those with less will pay less.
Over the next two days, if you have a question that you need answered to help make a decision, please post them here and I will do my best to answer. Once again, I have been working on this Committee and want to make sure people understand what they are voting for.
