There’s tons of stuff “about” Belmont that is not exactly related to town government, that needs to be recorded or explained somewhere. The way that Prop 2.5 changes taxes when different houses change values at differing rates is very non-intuitive (say, if 2-families become much more popular, their taxes will increase faster than 2.5% per year, where single-family homes could even see a decrease). As another example, to hear people talking about property values (in general) as if that caused their taxes to rise, points to a fundamental misunderstanding — if all our property doubles in value, the taxes DO NOT double — instead the rate comes down, so that the total increase is only 2.5%.

People need to understand both that there are some families in Belmont getting by on very little money, and that the property tax really does bite them; and also, that our RATE is very low, which means that anyone buying in Belmont sees the taxes as pretty much insignificant compared to their mortgage; and that we have very little room for tinkering with that. On the other hand, I recently found out that we already have discounted electric rates for low-income families (using a variety of sensible definitions of low-income), I think amounting to between $500 and $1000 per year, depending on electric use — I didn’t know that.

One thing I’d still like to know is whether commercial landlords must be charged a lower rate when their rentals are vacant (is that a state rule?) or if it could be held constant to give them a greater incentive to fill the space.

So, that’s just taxes. There’s trash and recycling contracts, drainage, traffic, etc.

Paul: Would it, hypothetically, solve the open meetings problem if all email between selectmen and constituents was posted somewhere public? I suppose all the selectmen would have to read all of it, which might be a trial to them, but I feel we ought to press them to do *something* — this no email policy is just lame.

There’s not much difference between web-based work email, and IMAP-accessed email from Eudora, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail, except that IMAP tends to work better.

It occurred to me that a Wiki might work better. People often have the same questions, that way they could get answered once (what the heck are the 40B rules? How does prop 2.5 work? What “great ideas” are we legally prevented from trying? Why can’t we have more stop signs? Whatever happened to that tunnel we were going to put under the train tracks at Alexander Avenue?)

But this is about them communicating to constituents who email about a pressing issue — say Full Day K or the New Wellington. I guess the issue of “illegal quorum” boils down to this: does the State really mean to say that Selectmen should not discuss their positions on public matters with constituents before a consensus has been reached? If not (and I don’t think that was the intent of the open meeting laws) then e-mail shouldn’t be held to a different standard than any other form of communication…and it is! Mr. Firenze suggested in our conversation that he was overwhelmed by the volume of email he was getting. I think its totally reasonable for him to use an auto respond e-mail and say “I get a lot of email and can’t reply to every one, but thanks for writing!” Then respond to the messages that he thinks warrant it, or that he likes, or whatever filter he wants to use.

It’s more problematic to say “because you emailed, the law prevents me from responding. If you want to talk, come see me in person.” That’s just not fair or, I think, honest given what the Open Meeting laws really say and require.

As for the work/home thing…there are many ways to get around this problem. How about a VPN connection into a town computer that would allow them to work from home but keep the two systems separate? Web based work e-mail? I mean, this is a problem (telecommuting) that has been encountered and solved by most companies of even modest size. It sounds like the Selectmen are doing a fair amount of work and communicating via the Internet, it makes sense for the town to furnish them with equipment to do it.

The laptops issue is a tricky one. People I know who use laptops, quickly find themselves doing everything on a single laptop, and a separate laptop for work and a separate laptop for personal use would be inconvenient. However, people generally use separate personal and work email accounts, so that those are not mixed. If the public/private use of the laptop can be ironed out, not spending the money is false economy; everywhere I’ve worked, greater email connectivity speeds interaction, and the automatic recording of correspondence in a form I can review and search is a big help.