To the editor:

This is an answer to a letter to the editor in last week’s paper that questioned the validity of dispensations for some senior taxpayers.  

The average person who will receive this dispensation will receive $200 for the tax year. For people on a fixed income that amount realistically will not cover much of taxed town expenses. As the writer might be retired at a younger age than most, maybe he is not worried about meeting his expenses. However there are people who have saved their money all of their working lives, helped put their children through higher education and saved for their own retirement after working as many years as they could.  

Now every year Barrington taxes go up exponentially. They will keep rising for years to come as a new school is being built; more low income housing is being constructed adding more children to the school population and our schools asking for more and more money for their fiscal budgets.

Many people have paid for our schools for years. But some folks no longer have children in the school system; some never had children in the school system but have paid for it for many years. 

If I am not mistaken there was an article in a recent issue of the Barrington Times about budget surpluses and what those funds were used for? How about using those to pay for the expanding town tax expenses? 

And now there is thought of giving a tax break to the EBCDC — the company building the proposed low income housing. So two hundred dollars that the average senior citizen is given off of their ballooning town taxes seems like a pittance. But it is something.

Barbara Flanders

Barrington