The following comments are the last three paragraphs of a three-page letter I sent to the county commissioners and administrator after the administrator’s property tax presentation at the Hovland town hall. The presentation, in my view, was a largely unconvincing rationalization for an already decided course of action.
What to do? Start with the one thing not presented as an option. Question our program assumptions in detail. Justify every expenditure on real economic and financial grounds, not ideological grounds. Are mandates really mandates or inflated ideological responses to issues that have multiple real solutions? What are we doing to expand the tax base, including PILT, rather than expanding the tax rate?
To the extent mandates are truly a problem, what are we doing to change the mandates? Remember article one, section one of the state constitution. What are we doing to make the county attractive to good paying businesses? That means looking at all local, state and federal obstacles to development. That means all attitudes, ordinances, statutes and rules – all of them including the ones we hide our ideologies behind.
This will not happen in time to set and approve a levy for next year. So, increase the levy to meet real and immediate problems until the soul searching can be done, but don’t do anything that permanently increases the base of the budget. Resist permanent staffing increases. Get the best deal, the fairest deal with our county employees – fair to the employees and fair to the taxpayer. Work like the dickens to clean out the county program inventory, scope and extent. Subsequent year levy reductions are not prohibited.
John Barton
Hovland
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