{news} Property Tax: Poor Way To Fund Schools

[Charlie Pillsbury]

  good article by Tom Sevigny in today's Hartford Courant.  Tom Sevigny of Canton is a board member of Canton Advocates for Responsible Expansion, a member of the Citizens Network "Financing Local Education" study committee and a member of the Green Party. 


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   http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/commentary/hc-plcsevigny0619.artjun19,0,7591060.story?coll=hc-headlines-commentary 
  Property Tax: Poor Way To Fund Schools
  By TOM SEVIGNY

  June 19 2005

  Another spring has arrived in Connecticut, and with it the obligatory haggling over town budgets. As usual, you have one side that stubbornly demands no increase in what it rightly perceives as already too high property taxes, and another side that decries what it views as draconian cuts to the education budget. Neither side ends up winning.

  A modest increase in the mill rate is usually finally approved after lengthy hearings, but never enough to fully fund all the wished-for education programs. Both sides leave the process dissatisfied, angry, and all too quick to blame their local elected officials. The most tragic aspect of this yearly ritual, however, is the fact that both sides do a lot of talking and shouting, but they never really take a step back and listen to each other. If they did, they would discover that we are all players in a game in which the rules are stacked against us. 

  In Connecticut we have connected our highest priority and fastest-growing expense in local budgets - public education - to the slowest-growing source of revenue - local property taxes. Connecticut's local public education system is more reliant on the local property tax than all other states in the union because the percentage of education funding coming from state revenues - 37 percent - is near the bottom (45th) among the states. As a result, the property tax burden in Connecticut is the third-highest in the nation per capita and ranks as the 11th-highest in the nation when it comes to the percentage of personal income going to property taxes. These "rules" are a prescription for strife, whether evident in failed local budget referendums, constrained educational investment, or intergenerational struggles over priorities. 

  Furthermore, Connecticut's property tax structure has created a competition among the 169 towns for property tax funds and has put pressure on local officials to build the grand list by commercially developing available land - the so-called fiscalization of land use - to offset the high cost of residential development they can do little to control. The result is urban sprawl, the loss of farmland and open space, increased traffic congestion, and a decline in the quality of life in far too many of our communities.

  With the rules as they are, local officials are pretty much constrained as to what they can do about these budgetary and land-use problems. Local officials are almost forced to produce the results that citizens, frustrated by high taxes, improperly funded education programs and bad land-use decisions, find so aggravating. 

  I am in no way attempting to absolve local officials from blame. In my hometown of Canton, for example, buying open space could have been made a priority years ago as a way to mitigate the impact of residential development. Instead, we get an open space commission with almost no money to purchase property. In addition, far too many of our local elected officials continue to believe that we can grow our way out of our financial problems.

  For example, the Shoppes at Farmington Valley were hailed as the economic savior of Canton, yet here we are still unable to fully fund an education budget despite a 9 percent increase in our grand list. What is going to happen next year without such an increase? The fact is that we would have to build almost the equivalent of the Shoppes every year to offset just a 3 percent yearly increase in Canton's overall budget. If we are unable to control residential development, no amount of commercial development will be able to offset its impact on our budget.

  Residential development attracts more commercial development which, in turn, attracts more residential development - it is just a vicious cycle. Property taxes, already some of the highest in the country, will simply continue to rise.

  So what do we do? First, we need to acknowledge that the rules of the game are stacked against us. Whether you are for increased education budgets, lower property taxes, or the preservation of open space, we are all going to lose. Second, we need to pressure our elected state officials to change the rules. How the state funds local education needs to be completely overhauled. Simply put, the state needs to pay its fair share of local education expenditures.

  It is imperative to increase the state's share to rectify the imbalance between state and local contributions to support local education. We should employ a diverse range of taxes with a broad base, with balance among income, sales, and property taxes. This means we should specifically avoid a heavy reliance on the local property tax, which hurts families and businesses, grows revenues slowly, and contributes to urban sprawl.

  Someone once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If we don't change the rules of the game, we will continue to see the same fruitless results every spring. It's time we embrace the spirit of spring and begin to sow the seeds of change.

  Tom Sevigny of Canton is a board member of Canton Advocates for Responsible Expansion, a member of the Citizens Network "Financing Local Education" study committee and a member of the Green Party. 
  Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant 
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