To the editor:
The opinion expressed by this newspaper against a bill exempting the elderly with limited incomes from overrides was matched by many in Hamilton — to wit, it would be a dreadful thing!
If I lived in a town with more fiscal controls and concerns, I might favor such as measure. But I live in Hamilton where there is a regional school and no controls on spending.
In Hamilton, the cost for the schools is higher for taxpayers than in most Massachusetts towns and cities. School overrides pass every year because we have a regional system. The Hamilton-Wenham Regional School Committee is allowed to present a budget that is based only on an override. We have no opportunity to pass a budget without an override.
If the override-based budget is defeated in one town, we have to vote again until it is passed in both towns. The theory is that the school does not have a budget in place unless the override passes, and must have a budget in place by the end of summer according to state law. This effectively takes away our right to approve a budget.
Our selectmen could refuse to accept a budget that includes the override, but they do not do this. They could refuse to hold second override votes, but they have never stood up to the school board.
Under-funded mandates make school budgets difficult, but every school system has these. What makes it more difficult here are the multiple and unpublished uses of our educational budget. No one at SOS, on the School Committee or on our boards of selectmen, asks why our money goes so frequently to unplanned and sometimes undisclosed uses that have nothing to do with education. It is much easier to take from the poor than it is to be in opposition to their buddies on the school board and their rich friends.
In order to look caring and sympathetic, a wealthy citizen and a selectman are trying to convince our state representative and our citizens that they have a better plan. Poorer, older taxpayers will be responsible for overrides and general tax increases until their property taxes equal 15 percent of their gross income. Some plan: Make sure the poor get poorer. Try it yourself as you do your taxes; it will keep you from wanting to move to Hamilton.
Actually, the selectman said, referring to younger but poor families who do not have even the promise of stopping at 15 percent, "let them get another job if they cannot afford it here." They also forgot to tell folks this could be rescinded in a year or whenever they decide to do so.
Given that our dear Lord wants only a tithing of 10 percent of our income, I think our town officials could limit themselves to the same. What if they made the property tax a flat tax based on income and asked for 10 percent of the gross income of every homeowner? Can you hear the wealthy screaming?
ELIZABETH DUNBAR
South Hamilton
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