To the editor:
I am writing partly in response to a letter by Roxanne McCaffrey, who was recently replaced on the Stockbridge Select Board by Jamie Minacci. The letter lists existing methods our town and the Commonwealth have already put into place to help needful residents pay their taxes. The letter also refers to the residential tax exemption, legally available in Massachusetts, and equally legitimate. The letter seems to indicate that you can’t do both, but you can.
Curiously, the Select Board has already voted on this issue, so why all this after-the-fact fuss?
I have lived in Stockbridge as a full-time resident since 1980. During this time many large, sometimes extravagant, houses have been built or renovated by quite wealthy people for their part-time visits, sometimes lasting just a few days a year. They tell me they do not want to commit to full-time residence here (and thereby get the right to vote here about taxes) because they save more taxes keeping their residences elsewhere. Also during that time, although Stockbridge tax rates are lower than all the more-developed towns in Berkshire County, home valuations have constantly risen, so all the while Stockbridge residents have been paying more taxes because of these expensive homes. Ms. McCaffrey obviously wants to continue to encourage building expensive homes by making our town more user-friendly to people who own them, unfortunately, at the expense of some of the full-time residents who may be too proud to speak up.
Many of the people who can afford to move here have an intrinsic vein of altruism. It shows up in their donations to not-for-profits. It shows up in their efforts to help unfortunate people elsewhere in the world. I hope they will not overlook the as-of-yet unmet needs of deserving residents in their own town because of the distracting rhetoric of some of our local politicians.
Charles Kenny
Stockbridge
