We did it! The Proposition 2 1/2 override to fund a new Wellington Elementary passed by a wide margin on Monday, with yes votes outweighing no’s by 2:1. Supporters won in every precinct except 4. The vote count is as follows:
Precinct 1: YES: 701 NO: 282
Precinct 2: YES: 458 NO:229
Precinct 3: YES: 443 NO:236
Precinct 4: YES: 202 NO: 238
Precinct 5: YES: 487 NO: 248
Precinct 6: YES: 726 NO: 239
Precinct 7: YES: 378 NO: 182
Precinct 8: YES: 448 NO: 368
Thank you! Thank you! to everyone who supported us and came out to vote today! YES WELLINGTON!!!
Paul
Hallelujah! I'm a little embarrassed for the Fightin' Fourth. But now you see why we're always Fightin'.
Link to Precinct map: http://www.town.belmont.ma.us/Public_Documents/…
YEAH!
Fabulous! My hat goes off to all of the hard working Together for Wellington folks! Just think, we are going to be looking at a beautiful, new, energy efficient center for learning right in the middle of Belmont soon!
Congratulations for a masterful campaign. At a time when most overrides would go down to certain defeat under current economic conditions, this victory is especially good news for the future of Belmont education. And congrats to your blog getting the news out first, besting the Citizen Herald and the town's own Web site.
I am much ticked off at the whole “current economic conditions” reasoning for not spending money that needs to be spent. By the time we borrow the money and by the time the override hits our taxes, there's a good chance that the recession will be over or well on the mend. Meanwhile, it is individual, “rational” decisions to cut back sharply on spending, all over the country, at the personal, local, and state level, that makes the recession worse.
I am mighty glad this passed.
David,
Sadly, I suspect that the Wellington will be the last thing we agree on for the foreseeable future. Fiscal Conservatives could support the Wellington but an operating override would be met with vocal and organized opposition as would your affinity for higher taxes. I do look forward to the debate in the coming months over ending “middle class subsidies”, regionalization, and Commercial growth and Zoning among other things.
New revenue idea…. Sell the naming rights for the new Wellington. There must be some trust fund readers of BB that would like to leave their mark in Town for the next 50yrs. Starting bid is $500k which is less than $40 a day for the life of the building.
PJ
Well…I could just lay off taxes and social policy and start blogging about, say, the Red Sox a lot more. Then we'd have a better chance of agreeing, right?
Naming rights…interesting idea. I've been puzzled that someone with, say, Mitt Romney's wealth didn't leave a bigger stamp on the town when he left — with a big donation towards the library, schools, what have you. That's esp. true given the outsize role wealthy philanthropists have played in Belmont's history. It may not be too late, of course.
PJ, my “affinity for higher taxes” is actually an “affinity for government services”. There's things that governments are supposed to do, they cost money, and governments get money from taxes. People have been flogging “waste and inefficiency” for years, it is always something to keep an eye on, but if it were easy to eliminate, I think it would be long gone by now. Furthermore, much of the “waste” is in fact symbolic — highly irritating, often evidence of minor corruption, but the dollar value is a fraction of the budget gaps. (For example, the separate IT departments of school and town — there should only be one, but how much savings are we talking about overall? I think it's $150,000 — it's definitely not millions. Yes, we should merge them, but should we fail to plug a multimillion dollar gap with new taxes, because the IT departments are still separate? Maybe merging IT departments is harder than we think it is.)
I favor the income tax because it is least likely to be unfair, but for bizarre reasons, the allegedly liberal citizens of Massachusetts and their allegedly liberal elected officials, have chosen a flat-rate income tax, and they have reduced it in recent decades. That taxes, overall, have become less fair since then (more burdensome on people less able to pay them) is an unsurprising and depressing outcome.
I honestly do not understand the position of “fiscal conservatives”. We've got school spending metrics, in the large. They say our spending is below average, below neighboring and comparable towns. If I look at the schools in the small, I see libraries staffed, at best, with library aides (not actual librarians). At the high school, we have a 3 minute passing time between classes (to save money) and no lunch hour (students eat lunch in classes, to save money). The school nurse is asking parents to contribute ginger ale, the PTA is paying for books. We're running things really, really lean. And we know that we're going to have to cut more next year, if we don't raise taxes. This is over half the town's budget, and it's clearly got little waste in it. Why would you not support providing the money needed to run this system? Where else would you get the money, if not from new taxes?
David,
I'll help you understand Fiscal Conservatives in a later post and how the Town could follow the lead … but for now a quick question.
Does it trouble you that the property taxes are so high in Town that most families who move here have no interest in staying once their children have finished School and that many potential second generation Belmontians want to move back here but can't because the taxes are so high? It's kinda a trick question…
PJ
PJ, can you provide some evidence that either of your assertions is true? If we ever leave Belmont, it won't because of the taxes, it will be because of the weather, which is not substantially better anywhere else in Massachusetts.
Furthermore, if you consider the difference in property values between Belmont and neighboring towns (it's historically been large, never less than 27% for the median single-family home, compared to Arlington and Watertown), property taxes are chump change. Sell in Belmont, move to Watertown, hand 6% of your home's value to the real estate agent, spend another 1% on moving (get friends to help, it's not far), pocket 20%. The difference in property taxes is a much smaller number, somewhere closer to 0.5% of the value of your home.
You claim about people wanting to move back, but being thwarted by high property taxes, does not make arithmetic sense. Mortgage payments on a new house are far larger than property taxes. Even on our old house (with a refinance for an addition) mortgage payments are still about three times as large as property taxes. I've heard this claim before, and doesn't make sense. If you can pay the mortgage, especially a new mortgage, then you can pay the taxes.
This is pretty much central to my not understanding what it means to be a “fiscal conservative”. There must be some other arithmetic that I am missing, and I need you to point it out to me.
David,
Years of conversations with current and former residents is evidence enough for me but to help you reach the same conclusion I would refer you to remarks made by the former Principal of Butler Elementary School several months ago in the BCH in which he says he first started 17 yrs ago at Butler and it was a large group of 3rd and 4th generation students. He goes on to say that the School is now changed dramatically to one with over 30+ nationalities represented. In other words the Butler is no longer a school of familiar family names.
As for the numbers they speak for themselves… You would save an average $3,500 in taxes/ins if you owned an average SFH in Arlington, $4,500 in Watertown, and $5,500 in Waltham. All of a sudden that small 0.5% seems like 3.5 to 5.5% of the average Belmont Household's income and your statement of if you can afford a mortgage payment you can afford the taxes makes no sense. Do you really think Banks ignore your ability to pay the property taxes when you apply for a mortgage? They don't… they take principal, interest, taxes and insurance and look at your ability to pay which should be about 36% of less of your gross income.
You could also look at it this way… A young family buys a $600,000 home in Belmont. They put down $200,000 or 33% of the properties value so they can get a conforming loan and favorable rate. Let's say that rate is 5.5%. Their monthly payment on the Mortgage is $2,275 and their monthly taxes are about $575. So that 0.5% is now closer to 20% of their monthly payment. Chump change or enough to keep you away from Belmont? You seperate mortgage payments from taxes which is illogical
So if you don't want to answer the last question how about this one… Is a Public Library a Government Service
PJ, my point is that people pay more than just property taxes to live here, and the property taxes are far from the largest cost. Because of the way property prices have increased, someone making the median* Belmont income, probably cannot buy a home in Belmont at all, even if the property taxes were zero. The median single-family sale price has been over $600,000 since 2002 (it was $680k last year). 20% down ($120,000 !) leaves $480,000. The 30 year, 5.5% fixed rate yearly payments come to $32705. That alone, fed to the 36% formula, gives you a required income of $90,800, never mind taxes, never mind insurance. 15 year/5% is $45,550 per year.
(*) Belmont's average income is higher than the median, because a few people may quite a lot of money. The median is the midpoint number, whether discussing housing prices or people's incomes.
Moving someplace where prices are lower by 25% (i.e., neighboring towns) saves you $8000 per year on mortgage interest, assuming you scaled the down payment down by 25% as well. That's bigger than the property tax.
The other thing to consider is the cause of the differences in property tax rates. Waltham's single-family rates are much lower, because Waltham has a much larger non-residential tax base (all those office buildings out near 128). We could not possibly lower our residential taxes to their level; school spending is already at a minimum (near foundation level, barely enough high school classes to meet graduation requirements, fees for everything). If this is the result of “fiscal conservatism” in Waltham, and a lack of it in Belmont, all these decisions happened decades ago, when we reserved most of the town for homes, not businesses. In particular, this was not the decision of any crazy liberals like me who've moved to town in the last 20 years; this choice was made by the very same long-time families who (you say) can no longer afford to live here.
(Proposed) development since then (McLean, Uplands, Cushing Square, Waverley Square) is another matter, and I cannot tell if we are looking at NIMBYist obstructionism, or sensible suspicion of developers. Consider, if you will, the following (abbreviated) exchange of views on the Uplands — O'Neill never intended anything but a deal with Harvard; but Watertown is happy with their PILOT; what happens after 25 years when that expires; they'll negotiate another one; with what leverage? Or, equivalently, you can ask whether you think the developer is dealing honestly with us, given that he did not deal honestly (at least, in terms of expectations generated, versus results delivered) to Watertown; but you expect them to spin their story; so how much is spin, and how much is not?
PJ, my point is that people pay more than just property taxes to live here, and the property taxes are far from the largest cost. Because of the way property prices have increased, someone making the median* Belmont income, probably cannot buy a home in Belmont at all, even if the property taxes were zero. The median single-family sale price has been over $600,000 since 2002 (it was $680k last year). 20% down ($120,000 !) leaves $480,000. The 30 year, 5.5% fixed rate yearly payments come to $32705. That alone, fed to the 36% formula, gives you a required income of $90,800, never mind taxes, never mind insurance. 15 year/5% is $45,550 per year.
(*) Belmont's average income is higher than the median, because a few people may quite a lot of money. The median is the midpoint number, whether discussing housing prices or people's incomes.
Moving someplace where prices are lower by 25% (i.e., neighboring towns) saves you $8000 per year on mortgage interest, assuming you scaled the down payment down by 25% as well. That's bigger than the property tax.
The other thing to consider is the cause of the differences in property tax rates. Waltham's single-family rates are much lower, because Waltham has a much larger non-residential tax base (all those office buildings out near 128). We could not possibly lower our residential taxes to their level; school spending is already at a minimum (near foundation level, barely enough high school classes to meet graduation requirements, fees for everything). If this is the result of “fiscal conservatism” in Waltham, and a lack of it in Belmont, all these decisions happened decades ago, when we reserved most of the town for homes, not businesses. In particular, this was not the decision of any crazy liberals like me who've moved to town in the last 20 years; this choice was made by the very same long-time families who (you say) can no longer afford to live here.
(Proposed) development since then (McLean, Uplands, Cushing Square, Waverley Square) is another matter, and I cannot tell if we are looking at NIMBYist obstructionism, or sensible suspicion of developers. Consider, if you will, the following (abbreviated) exchange of views on the Uplands — O'Neill never intended anything but a deal with Harvard; but Watertown is happy with their PILOT; what happens after 25 years when that expires; they'll negotiate another one; with what leverage? Or, equivalently, you can ask whether you think the developer is dealing honestly with us, given that he did not deal honestly (at least, in terms of expectations generated, versus results delivered) to Watertown; but you expect them to spin their story; so how much is spin, and how much is not?