Read What Mark Zaccaria Wants to Promote as the Way Forward for Property Tax Reform
Steps Toward a Needed Change
With the enactment of the FY’06 municipal budget for North Kingstown we see an old familiar pattern followed again for yet another season. The Town Council and the School Committee have worked hard to give the citizens a more or less seamless continuation of town services, a balanced budget, and only a very moderate rise in overall spending.
The process has been made more and more difficult in each of the recent years by the fact that municipal expenses have risen excessively, especially those expenses not at the discretion of elected officials and the town’s staff. To hold down the overall growth of town spending we have had to force deeper and more threatening cuts on personnel, maintenance, and capital provisions for a Rainy Day.
For the last two years the Town Council has enforced a cap on overall spending as a means of holding down tax increases. The Patterson Doctrine, as it’s come to be called after its author John Patterson, has defined a maximum dollar number for all town expenditures by holding them to increases only for inflation and NK population growth. The town’s professional staff has taken this direction and made the deep cuts necessary to satisfy Council requirements. To their great credit the School Committee has also labored mightily to conform to the mandate.
The citizens of North Kingstown have reason to be pleased with the work that has been done to get this equation to work out one more time, despite the double-digit increases in Pension Contributions, Healthcare, and Unfunded Mandates.
The fact remains, however, that our expenses are on the rise. The Governor’s efforts and those of the General Treasurer to reform the state controlled pension system may well result in a decrease in those annual levies. The changes that have already been made in the state’s health care contract also promise more rational payments in the future. None of these positive changes will have the needed impact on North Kingstown’s costs within the next few years, though, and during that time we will have to face additional school, public safety, and infrastructure expenditures.
We have to do something, ourselves, about the income side of our ledger and we have to do it right away.
For just that reason the Town Council has supported a plan for radical reform in the way we figure our property tax bills. The proposed change, when enacted, will allow residential property taxpayers to forecast their liabilities with much more accuracy. Citizens will be able to anticipate their own costs for town taxes at exactly the increase or decrease they see in our annual budget deliberations. Best of all, over time we will see an increase in the town’s income when we institute this new plan.
All this could come at the same time that the Quonset Davisville Industrial Park finally starts living up to its promise of generating more industry based income for North Kingstown.
As usual, there’s work to be done to get us from here to there. Also as usual, town government will need the active involvement of the voters in order to get it done. So let me ask each of you to take a simple first step toward deciding if you support this initiative. On Monday, May 16th, the Town Council will sponsor a public forum on the new proposals we are pushing on your behalf. The meeting is open to all. It will be held at the Davisville Middle School, starting at 7:30 pm.
Please be there to find out what all the ruckus is about.
- Mark Zaccaria
It’s Time to Get Serious About Property Tax Reform
For years Rhode Island homeowners have been caught in a financial vice. During times of rapidly escalating costs for Personnel, Insurances, and Energy our cities and towns have had to rely on real estate property taxes to fund the lion’s share of those annual budget increases. Taxpayers expect that and largely support the process. The pinch has come from the vagaries of the real estate market, which drives up the values of some types of properties disproportionately to those of others.
In other words, every time there’s a state mandated revaluation of a municipality’s property tax base the percentage of the public budget supported by one taxpayer or another can vary, sometimes dramatically.
That’s where the horror stories of 200% and 500% increases in individual property tax bills come from. When the sale value of your house increases at twice the rate that mine does, your tax bill is going to increase big time while mine might actually go down a little. The tough part is that there’s no good way to predict what next year’s property values will look like. That all depends on what the people looking for homes in Rhode Island next year will want to buy or not buy. There’s nothing an individual homeowner can do under the traditional system but wait and see what happens to their personal budget when the town property tax bill comes in.
Up until now there has been precious little that municipal leaders could do to help their constituents soften that blow. State law has always required us to use the Ad Valorem system of basing taxes on the potential sale price of real property. It has also mandated revaluations of what those sale prices might be on a short three-year cycle.
All that began to change in the year 2000, though. In that year Dr. Harvey Waxman, himself a victim of a triple digit increase in his property tax bill, launched a campaign to change the way we do business in this critical area. Over time his vision of a fairer way of equally sharing municipal expenses has been aired in public, been refined in its detail, and has attracted more and more adherents.
In a nutshell the new plan would set a base tax bill, in dollars, for each real property in any city or town adopting this process. After that the increase or decrease in a property’s annual tax bill would be directly linked to the same change in the municipal budget it supports. If the town’s budget increases by 3%, so does your real estate property tax bill. And that percentage increase would be exactly the same for every taxpayer. Your tax bill would be predictable in a way that next year’s sale price can never be, and you’ve got more control over your town’s next budget than you do over what someone else might agree to pay for your home. Learn More at www.righttax.org
- Mark Zaccaria
The Battle for Property Tax Reform
For years Dr. Harvey Waxman has been pitching his RightTax plan for property tax reform to anyone who would listen. Since the last election the North Kingstown Town Council has been officially behind the plan. The Council has been urging our legislators to pass the enabling legislation and working with the Town Solicitor to try and identify any potential Constitutional questions.
As of now we are closer than we have ever been to seeing this needed reform become a reality, but we are certainly not there yet.
Many will recall that a bill was written for this session of the state legislature that would have cleared the way for cities and towns in Rhode Island to implement this reform if they chose to. The bill was to be sponsored by Representative John Laughlin, R-District 9,Tiverton. Now, however, Rep. Laughlin has listened to the council of senior legislators and opted instead to seek the appointment of a Legislative Commission to study the issue before filing his bill.
Longtime watchers of the state’s General Assembly will roll their eyes, thinking that this move means the bill’s death knell. In this case that might not be true. Supporters of the legislation take heart from the fact that Laughlin’s filing for a Commission was co-sponsored by our own Representative Larry Ehrhardt, R-District 32, North Kingstown. In addition, Senator Mike Lenihan, D-Dist 35, NK, Exeter, East Greenwich, has asked that a joint Commission be formed and that he be included on the investigative team. While neither of these local legislators approaches the Waxman Plan for Property Tax Reform as a foregone conclusion, neither do they think it unpassable under any circumstances.
The voters should expect to see a good faith effort on the part of the state legislature to investigate the details of the bill already written. We should then assume that our representatives on Smith Hill will address the Constitutional issues that have been suggested as possible stumbling blocks. The ultimate result should be a fully thought through piece of Legislation that has a number of supporters in both the House and Senate, despite the fact that it represents a dramatic departure from the five hundred year old tradition of Ad Valorum property tax assessment.
The Bad News is that all this will probably not happen in this session.
So the Battle for Property Tax Reform continues. I have been pleased to be joined in my support for this plan by my colleagues on the North Kingstown Town Council. Hopefully that formal endorsement has helped to get our Legislators to look seriously at this plan. I now look forward to seeing Rep. Laughlin get even more support for his work on this matter in the General Assembly. There is still one critically important constituency we have to recruit, though, and that’s You.
What has to happen next is that voters express themselves to their elected representatives, both locally and at the state level. I urge you to tell them that you recognize the need for a more equitable and predictable method of computing the tax bills every property owner will always have to pay. Using your voice this way will convince us you realize that the burdens on property tax payers will only increase as non-discretionary costs drive up all public budgets, and that you want to be protected by a more rational method of figuring up how much of that you will have to pay.
In the old days you used to have to Drop-A-Dime or write a first class letter. Today all it takes is an E-Mail to your legislator and the addresses can be found at www.ri.gov. Please express yourself. It is still the best input your elected officials can possibly receive.
- Mark Zaccaria
Mark Confers with Dr. Harvey Waxman,
The Author and Main Proponent of RIGHTtax
Learn More at www.righttax.org