Middle-class homeowners deserve a break
By
Will ColletteSince the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) took control of Charlestown town government in 2008, we have had six straight property tax hikes, despite healthy surpluses. If the CCA Party is returned to power in November, expect tax increases #7 and #8 over the next two years.
However,
the one time the CCA Party’s constituents raised a ruckus about taxes was in December
2011 when they grabbed
their pitchforks and torches to support the town’s beachfront absentee property
owners in opposing a Homestead Tax Credit proposal by town Democrats.
 |
| From the Charlestown Tax Assessor website |
The
Homestead Credit would have lowered
taxes for most town residents, especially middle-class permanent residents,
at the cost of a slight increase on million dollar properties owned largely by
non-residents[*].
But
not
a Peep® out of them as the CCA Party took the town’s tax rate from $7.16
per $1000 of home value to $9.46. That’s a rate
increase of 32%!
And
contrary
to what the CCA Party says, Charlestown DOES NOT have one of the state’s
lowest tax rates (despite offering almost zero municipal services, as they even
admit in their latest campaign mailing) – GoLocalProv’s
research ranked Charlestown as #20 out of RI’s 39 cities and towns.
The
reasons for the tax hikes – despite regular surpluses far in excess of what are
needed to protect our credit rating – is the CCA Party choice to spend down the
surpluses by (a) paying cash for capital projects that could have been financed
with long-term, low-interest bonds; (b) paying off some bonds before they were
due and (c) buying property, such as the $2.1
million expenditure for the land where developer Larry LeBlanc had proposed
to build a wind turbine project or affordable housing.
 |
| Screenshot from GoLocal. Note the footnote that levies for local fire districts are not included. If they were, our ranking would be much worse. Bottom line: the CCA claim about low taxes is false. |
So why no
ruckus?
I think the reason CCA Party supporters went nuts over the Democrats’ middle-class tax relief plan and NOT the CCA Party’s actual six years’ worth of major tax hikes is because they’ve figured out other ways to game the system.
When
I did the initial research in 2011 to support the push for the Homestead
Credit, I discovered that Charlestown already has an array of tax-savings
programs that include tax credits for low-income seniors, the disabled and
blind plus several different types for veterans. There are exemptions for
religious institutions (churches and parsonages), non-profits and state and
federal property.
Since
then, Progressive Charlestown has been regularly publicizing the existence of these exemptions because the town doesn’t. Because Cathy is permanently
disabled and has been for a decade, we qualified but never knew about it until years later when I stumbled onto it while doing my research.
But
it seems like there’s a CCA Party grapevine that spreads the word since so many
of the CCA leaders and followers have signed up for these town tax-credit
programs. I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who is qualified getting the tax
relief. I do wish these tax breaks were at least known by everyone, not just the CCA crowd or for that matter Progressive
Charlestown readers.
But wait,
there’s more!
Most
of these tax credits only amount to a few hundred dollars, though. The way to really cut your taxes by huge amounts is
to slash the taxable value of your property by having it designated under the
FFOS (Farm, Forest and Open Space) program. Under this program, your property
becomes valued as little as one-quarter of what it’s worth as residential
property, meaning three-quarters of your tax burden magically disappears.
 |
| FFOS is a great program when everyone has a fair crack at it |
Here is
the DEM guidebook to FFOS.
If
you have five acres that could pass for a farm or ten acres that could pass as
forest or open space, you could dramatically reduce your property tax
assessment.
Then, who cares if the CCA Party bumps up the tax rate by a couple of dimes every year?
Then, who cares if the CCA Party bumps up the tax rate by a couple of dimes every year?
The
great thing about these exemptions is that you can continue to use the property
as you see fit and, after 15 years, you can drop out of the program with no
penalty.
If
you use the town Tax Assessor database to check out properties in and around
Arnolda, for example, you’ll run into a lot of wild variations in assessments.
Amid very high-end properties, you’ll find other lands and properties with
amazingly low assessments zoned as “OS” for open space, “other vacant land,”
“vacant not developed” and so on, where the bottom line for property tax
assessments are a lot lower than those of equivalent properties.
 |
| The Van Slyke property from the Charlestown Tax Assessor database. The 2006 sale price was $500,000 but with a 30% open space designation, the assessment drops to $16,700. Nice deal! |
Anyway,
the one acre property with the 30% open space designation is assessed at
$16,700 even though it has a dock and a deck, while their adjacent 1.65-acre
vacant lot zoned R3A is assessed at $267,300. That shows you the dramatic
difference an open-space designation can make, in this instance, at least a 90%
difference in assessment for adjacent properties. It's an assessment drop of 97% from the 2006 sales price of $500,000.
Their
house on South Arnolda, sitting on almost 11 acres, is assessed at $908,400.
 |
| Entrance to George Tremblay's 57 acreas with trailer. Google Earth screenshot |
Barbara
Heavers, who is running for Planning Commission on the CCA Party ticket, has
161 acres with not one, but two houses on it – the second house gets rented out
– but past use as farmland cuts the assessment for the whole property to just
$354,800.
Ms.
Heavers did not declare the rental property on her financial disclosure report to the RI Ethics Commission.
Sometimes the
tax savings come wholesale
Two
of the CCA Party’s strongest bastions also have the town’s most peculiar tax
break. The Shady Harbor and Quonochontaug Central neighborhoods each have their
own special Fire Districts that have nothing to do with fighting fires. No
trucks, no fire-fighters, not even a fire extinguisher. They do have tennis courts,
boating facilities, snow plowing, trash pick-up, public water, etc., that are
provided as part of Fire District membership.
The taxable property owned by the Fire District is incredibly undervalued with tax assessments that border on the insane (see photo to the right).
The
members pay a Fire District property tax that includes all these swell
amenities, as well as actual fire protection purchased from the Dunn’s Corner
Fire District. The kicker is that all those amenities – water, tennis, plowing,
trash removal – are folded into the District tax and are thus tax-deductible on
residents’ state and federal income taxes.
Suckers
like the rest of us have to deal with the costs of our own water, trash,
plowing, maintenance, etc., without being able to deduct any of it from our
taxes.
Get
all the details about these phony fire districts by clicking here.
Parlay your tax
savings like Ruth
There
are very few people in Charlestown who could pull off a tax trifecta like
Planning Commissar Ruth Platner and her husband and Zoning Board member Cliff
Vanover did.
Between a conservation easement for much of the land, farming a piece of it, and doing a major expansion to their house that is never completed, Ruth and Cliff have reduced their tax assessment to a fraction of what other properties of similar size and location are assessed.
Between a conservation easement for much of the land, farming a piece of it, and doing a major expansion to their house that is never completed, Ruth and Cliff have reduced their tax assessment to a fraction of what other properties of similar size and location are assessed.
They’ve gotten the assessment of their 13.5 acres and
ever-expanding house down to just $199,700.
If everybody got a deal, no one would get a deal
Maybe
the real reason why the CCA Party is so set against granting broad property tax
relief is that this might cut into their constituents’ ability to make special
deals.
That
may also be why there is no effort by the town to make information about
various tax deals easily and broadly accessible – maybe by sending out a
special issue of the Poopline.
Again,
if everybody knows all the angles, they aren’t worth as much to those in the
know.
To
distract people’s attention from the inequities in the way Charlestown’s tax
load is distributed, the CCA Party has instead resorted to scapegoating.
Chariho and the Charlestown families who send their children to Chariho have
been used as a convenient distraction, even to the point where the CCA Party
created a boogey monster – the fictitious “single
taxing district.”
That’s
what we get instead of middle-class tax relief. Boogey monsters, tax hikes for
all but big tax deals for the few. Remember this on Tuesday, November 4.
FOOTNOTE
[*] An
interesting sidenote is that the Rhode Island town that offers the highest Homestead
Tax Exemption is Lincoln, the actual home of the unofficial CCA Party candidate
for House District 36, Blake Filippi. They offer a 35%
valuation reduction
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A Interlude with nothing to do with Charlestown taxes
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