I was reading some Charlestown citizen comments recently and took pause when a person started ranting and raving about the “enormous taxes” in Charlestown. Certainly there is a stylishness for expressing the attitude that government is taking too much money, but I prefer to have that based on some analysis rather than torches and pitchforks emotion.
I must confess that I moved here only three years ago (but my wife was born in South County Hospital so I’m not all bad!) and I developed a positive feeling about our level of taxes here. People have asked us about our reaction to taxes here, thinking we would make the standard, dare I say politically correct, complaint. Our usual reply is that we were surprised about the property taxes, and then disappoint the listener by saying that we now have a house with three times the valuation of our previous one and we pay just about the same property taxes.
That is a bit of a simplification so I’ll be more specific.
In Charlestown we have two property taxing entities, the town and the fire district. We live in the area served by the Charlestown Fire District (full disclosure – I volunteer for the fire district) and the combined tax rate is about $8 per $1,000 valuation.
Where I lived previously we had 4 property taxation districts: town (including fire), county, school (reported separately from town), and community college district (actually quite good and a pride of the community for post-secondary job training). Our total property tax load was $23.50 per $1,000 valuation. Did you read that correctly? The school tax portion alone was $16.50 per $1,000 valuation.
Ok. So my previous town was spending twice as much on schools (based on valuation) as our total tax bill in Charlestown. Which is spending the right amount? How are you sure of that?
The appropriate level of taxation is not a simple thing, appropriate for knee-jerk opinions. When I hear people saying that "taxes should be lower in Charlestown" I have yet to be impressed with the logic that I hear for why. But I'll be glad to discuss it in the comments.
And I will be developing this further in future postings.
Author: Tom Ferrio
