To the editor:

I wrote in a letter last month that moving forward as a community means being able to discuss differences of opinion in the way that a community should.  At its bottom, that means we must treat the challenges that we face as problems to be solved, not as knots in a rope that we’re using for political tug of war.

We see a good example when the municipal government’s budget reserves tangle up with Tiverton’s credit rating.  As part of a recent refinancing arrangement, Tiverton hired Moody’s Investor Services to rate the town’s bonds, and the result came back as A1, which is the fifth-best rating possible (out of 16).  To hear town officials and their political allies tell it, the rating will cost the town big money and was mostly a consequence of voters’ approving elector-petition budgets at the last two financial town referendums (FTRs).

Their claims are simple politics. Investigating the matter with the intention of determining the true reasons for and effects of the bond rating — you know, as if we were a community trying to help each other make up our minds about what we should do as a town — would lead to very different conclusions.

After hearing of the rating, I read through Moody’s methodology and confirmed with the agency that the basis of its rating was the town’s latest audit, which was for fiscal year 2014.  The two elector petitions — the first calling for a 0.0% increase in the town’s tax levy and the second calling for 0.9% — applied to the 2015 budget and the 2016 budget.  For 2014, there was no elector petition, so the level of reserves was entirely the result of policies guided by elected officials supported by the Tiverton Democratic Town Committee and the Tiverton 1st political action committee.

Even if Moody’s had considered the level of reserves after the petitions, the rating would not have changed.  Moody’s was not impressed with the town’s management or its debt and pension loads, and without improvement in those two areas, the town would have to add about 6% of its revenue to reserves to have a chance at a higher rating. Nobody in town has even considered doing that.  In the other direction, as long as Tiverton follows the Home Rule Charter's requirements, the level of reserves will not lower the town’s rating.

Some perspective is also needed.  According to Town Treasurer Denise Saurette, a higher rating from Moody’s could have saved Tiverton $100,000 over the next 10 years, or an average of $10,000 per year.  By contrast, the 0.0% and 0.9% petitions are saving Tiverton residents a total of $1.3 million every year.

Those who live here can and should decide for themselves whether the budgets proposed by the town government were better, overall, for Tiverton than the two for which large majorities wound up voting.  But supporters of the government proposals have tried to make bond ratings seem much more significant than they are.

In the United States, governments are legitimate because they are representative; differences aside, we must be able to trust that it is doing what we, as a group, want it to do.  Voters can’t have such trust if the people involved in the debate don’t treat facts as our common ground.

Justin Katz

Tiverton