To the editor:
As the new year dawns, I would like to address what strikes me as a wrong-headed approach to assessments for the proposed new Eight-Town Regional School District.
On the two occasions that I was able to address the Eight-Town RSD Planning Board’s Finance sub-committee, it was hard to miss the barely-disguised hostility to my proposal for a 10-year “glide path” to a single district tax rate (see spreadsheet here) and the considerable irritation that I would waste even 10 minutes of the sub-committee’s time in such an obviously futile way.
Given that all K-12 public education in the U.S. outside of New England is provided through single-rate school districts, and that, even in Massachusetts, 84 percent of all registered voters live in school districts that have a single tax rate, the sub-committee members need to be able to articulate strong arguments for not using a single rate—or at least entertain a full debate of the issue—before continuing further down the path that they are on.
Not to do so, in my opinion, would be political malpractice. I strongly support the formation of the Eight-Town RSD, but I believe that the new regional operating agreement has no chance of meeting town approval in Great Barrington or Sheffield if it enshrines the principle of different rates for taxpayers depending on where they live within the district.
I have attached two documents to support my contention: (1) a letter from Peter Dillon describing the results of a special election on November 5, 2013 in which the proposal to renovate MMRHS was defeated in Great Barrington on a 39 percent to 61 percent vote (largely attributed to “tax fatigue”), and (2) the warrant of the Great Barrington special town meeting of January 26, 2017 in which Article 2 (my RSD tax reform proposal) was passed virtually unanimously (only a single dissenting vote).
One could argue that the taxpayers of the five towns who currently enjoy lower rates than the proforma single rate would never approve a district agreement that deprived them of their historic advantage, and that may be true. However, it would be more politically realistic to secure town meeting approvals from at least the three towns that would benefit, and try to bring the other towns on board through a patient process of education. Great Barrington, Sheffield, and West Stockbridge taxpayers currently pay 74 percent of the total assessments for the eight towns with 49 percent of the assessed taxable property value, and constitute 63.5 percent of the registered voters.
This approach would also have the great advantage of reframing the political debate away from the current “us versus them” of Berkshire Hills Regional School District v. Southern Berkshire Regional School District.
Let’s have the debate that counts!
Chip Elitzer
Great Barrington
