Message with possible fraud attempt: Re: {news} Property Tax: Poor Way To Fund Schools

Mon Jun 20 20:13:02 EDT 2005

Kelly and Joel were very active members of the Hamden Green Party. They will
be greatly missed.

Cheers,

Aaron Gustafson 
Co-chair, Green Party of Connecticut
webmaster at ctgreens.org

  _____  

From: ctgp-news-bounces at ml.greens.org
[mailto:ctgp-news-bounces at ml.greens.org] On Behalf Of Tom Sevigny
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 4:03 PM
To: ctgp-news at ml.greens.org
Subject: Message with possible fraud attempt: Re: {news} Property Tax: Poor
Way To Fund Schools

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------
Panda Titanium Antivirus 2005 has detected that this email could be spoofed

Take maximum precautions, as spoofed emails could be the sign of a fraud
attempt.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------

There was also an excellent article in the Northeast Magazine section of the
Courant about a couple from Hamden who where moving to Canada because of the
political environment in the U.S.  The article described there Green Party
activity in Texas and CT and even quoted Charlie Pillsbury.  A double whammy
for the Greens!

Tom

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Charlie  <mailto:chapillsbury at igc.org> Pillsbury 
To: ctgp-news at ml.greens.org 
Cc: nhgreensannouncements at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 2:14 PM
Subject: {news} Property Tax: Poor Way To Fund Schools

Connecticut Green Party - Part of the GPUS
http://www.ctgreens.org/ - http://www.greenpartyus.org/

to unsubscribe click here
mailto://ctgp-news-unsubscribe@ml.greens.org 

  _____  

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. 

  _____  

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 <http://www.courant.com/>  

  _____  

To be removed please mailto://ctgp-news-unsubscribe@ml.greens.org
_______________________________________________
CTGP-news mailing list
CTGP-news at ml.greens.org
http://ml.greens.org/mailman/listinfo/ctgp-news

ATTENTION!
The information in this transmission is privileged and confidential and
intended only for the recipient listed above.  If you have received this
transmission in error, please notify us immediately by email and delete the
original message.  The text of this email is similar to ordinary or
face-to-face conversations and does not reflect the level of factual or
legal inquiry or analysis which would be applied in the case of a formal
legal opinion and does not constitute a representation of the opinions of
the CT Green Party. The responsibility for any messages posted herein is
solely that of the person who sent the message, and the CT Green Party
hereby leaves this responsibility in the hands of it's members.

NOTE: This is an inherently insecure forum, please do not post confidential
messages and always realize that your address can be faked, and although a
message may appear to be from a certain individual, it is always possible
that it is fakemail. This is mail sent by a third party under an illegally
assumed identity for purposes of coercion, misdirection, or general
mischief.

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: If you have received this e-mail in error, please
immediately notify the sender by e-mail at the address shown.  This e-mail
transmission may contain confidential information.  This information is
intended only for the use of the individual(s) or entity to whom it is
intended even if addressed incorrectly.  Please delete it from your files if
you are not the intended recipient.  Thank you for your compliance.

To be removed please mailto://ctgp-news-unsubscribe@ml.greens.org

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------
Panda Titanium Antivirus 2005 has detected that this email could be spoofed

Take maximum precautions, as spoofed emails could be the sign of a fraud
attempt.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/private/ctgp-news/attachments/20050620/b456dd45/attachment.html>