To the editor:

The value of all taxable property in Tiverton increased by almost nothing, last year: 0.46%.  How, then, can the town government reasonably come to the people who live here and ask for a 3.5% increase in total property taxes?  How can the municipal government — everything but the schools — ask to increase its spending by 4.4%?

There is no good answer to these questions, so I’ve put in another reduced budget that voters can choose on May 21 at the High School for the Financial Town Referendum (FTR).  Once again, the Budget #2 option on the ballot will be a 0.9% increase in taxes.  That works out to a municipal spending increase of 0.44%, right in line with the growth of the town.  (The school department remains untouched because the committee requested no increase in local funds.)

For two years, now, FTR voters have chosen elector petitions calling for increases less than 1%, and for two years, the people who always want more and more tax dollars have complained that the budgets returned surpluses to taxpayers rather than keeping them as a slush fund for the government.  But now they want to do something much worse.

If the town’s 3.5% budget wins, the new spending will eat up the entire increase in the wealth of the town in fewer than seven years.  In other words, they don’t want us to keep unneeded tax dollars in our own bank accounts, but when the value of our property increases, they’re happy to take every penny (and then some) to pay for things that they want.

One difference with the 0.9% Budget #2, this year, is that it doesn’t set line items.  After last year’s FTR, the Town Council continued to show that its priorities are different from those of the voters — funding new positions, maintaining unnecessary memberships, and giving raises that weren’t in the budget. Therefore, this year, the 0.9% elector petition sets baseline spending and taxes and leaves it to the Budget Committee and Town Council to make the budget fit our ability to pay.

That’s what they should have done in the first place.  That the town government would dare ask for such a big increase — almost at the state tax cap — shows that officials decided what they wanted to spend and just expect us to pay.  The 0.9% Budget #2 puts things in the right order, putting residents first.

Justin Katz

Tiverton