The Haverhill City Council voted Tuesday evening to pass the Local Options Meals Tax.  I appreciate the Council taking the time to listen to everyone who came out to speak and who contacted them during the week.  During the debate before the vote there were a lot of good points made on both sides and I did a bit of reading today that I wanted to pass along to you.

Haverhill has a debt from the Hale Hospital that cripples our community.  While we’re never going to tax our way to prosperity we certainly need to come together as a community to do something about the Hale Debt.  The public has so far refused a debt exclusion and an override.  This is the least of the three evils to bring needed funds into the city.

Are there cuts that can be made to the city budget?  Absolutely!  No one has said that this meals tax will be the city wide solution to everything.  No one has said the budget line items shouldn’t be examined further.  I hope all of the items that Councilor Young mentioned bear fruit but not even those lucrative cuts will solve all of Haverhill’s problems.

Union concessions need to be made.  If the City of Haverhill were a private company it would have gone bankrupt and closed its doors long ago because of the strain placed on the city by the ever increasing cost of personnel.  The unions need to understand something has to give in regard to health insurance costs or we will discover exactly what happens when a city dies.

One of the Councilors asked what kind of a message we are sending to Beacon Hill and warned that more local option taxes are coming.  I hear him and wanted to mention the movement to roll back the sales tax to 3%.  Lets send the message to Beacon Hill that our days of tossing our tax money to the state and hoping local aid will return to our towns are over.  Again I reiterate my dream of paying all of my taxes locally and letting the state beg the towns for aid to fund state projects!

Lastly I want to show a New Hampshire point of view.  As New Hampshire ponders giving its communities permission to adopt their own local option meals taxes residents fear more of their border residents will take their dollars and spend them in restaurants in Massachusetts towns.  From the linked article:

But if lawmakers adopt the proposal and communities choose to tax restaurant revenues, the impact would be felt especially hard in Southern New Hampshire’s border towns, Andreoli said.

Restaurants would be forced to charge more for meals to make up the difference, prompting some customers to decide it might be less costly to dine in Massachusetts, Andreoli said.

Do I like taxes? No.  So I want to pay them where they will do the most good.  I want to pay them where they will not be gobbled up by the umbrella governments and used to fuel the ever growing bureaucracy.  I want to pay less state taxes and use that money to support my local businesses and fund the needs of my community using local taxes.

I’d like to examine the cuts made on the recommendation of School Committee President Shaun Toohey to keep the Crowell School open but first I’d like to point out the expenses that were added back to the budget and a few items that were missed that need to be added.

In keeping the school open there were $150,000 in personnel expenses added to the budget.  There were no lines to account for the additional utility and maintenance fees.  There were also no additions for a stipend for a Principal or an Assistant Principal.  There is no addition for a library/technical ESP to account for the two days of prep periods for the teachers that the children don’t have Art, Music and Physical Education.  Currently the library at the Crowell School is staffed and maintained entirely by parent volunteers.

To accommodate the above additions and bridge the rest of the budget gap the following cuts were proposed:

Eight Elementary SPED ESPs are to be eliminated – this is a risk because if the IEPs of our students don’t allow for these cuts or if new children are placed who need these services then the positions must be restored or our district faces serious litigation fees.

A $10,000 further reduction of the utilities section.  I don’t understand how we can add a school back to the system and reduce our budget for lighting and heating and providing phones and internet.

A $50,000 further reduction in maintenance.  Again how do we add a school and reduce the budget for maintaining the schools equipment?

A $150,000 increase in medicaid money.  This is a thorny issue because with medicaid reimbursement dropping and the chance that the money could be kept by the city always looming over our heads I am uncomfortable relying on this unknown.  Also this money is generally kept for an offset of unpredictable SPED expenses and tapping it for general education purposes is risky.

A $100,000 request in a reduction of City Charges for unemployment.  This is the one cut I am in agreement with.  The number assessed this year is significantly higher than previous years and the Auditor should look into this.

Then the proposal further discusses the pending Meals Tax vote and how that money could be used to add back five elementary teachers and a half day kindergarten teacher should it pass.  This is yet another unknown that should be looked at after Tuesday’s vote not before.

Ultimately I don’t believe the changes listed above help create an accurate and balanced budget based on the needs of our students.  I believe these changes are on paper only to justify an emotional decision made by the school committee to keep open a school we no longer need.

I did a little reading about the meals tax issue this weekend and am going to put some of my findings here for you:

To date the State of Massachusetts reports that 78 of the 351 localities in MA have adopted the meals tax option generating 8.5 million dollars in revenue over the past three months.

Now the last thing I really want to do is pay yet another tax on anything.  But since taxes are a necessity based on the governmental structure we live under I pay them.  I pay them to maintain the infrastructure I use daily.  I pay them for public safety and education.  I pay them for parks and recreation.

The taxes I resent the most are the ones that take my money the furthest away from the community I live in.  I understand Washington needs to fund our military and our interstates and oversight departments like the FDA and the EPA but I resent when my money goes to bail out the banks and the auto industry.  On the state level I understand we need to maintain the roads and our state parks and other state services but I don’t see why we need to pay the state money so they can send it back by local aid.  I wish all our taxes were local and paid up the pipeline by the cities and towns we live in – not tossed up to the umbrella government in the hopes that the money makes its way back to us without getting lost or stolen along the way.  Despite spending a billion dollars a day (and more money this year than last) – the state has cut local aid and education funding immensely.  Where is our money going?  Not to our communities!

This is the main reason why I don’t resent the local option meals tax.  The money stays here.  I don’t see people fleeing their favorite dining establishments over an extra .75% tax on meals.  We didn’t all stop eating at restaurants when the state went and added 1.25% to everything sold in the state and we won’t when Haverhill adopts the local options meals tax either.

Everyone’s complaining they will head to NH for meals if this tax gets added.  NH assesses a 9% tax on meals and has for years.  The last time I did math 7% (MA sales plus local option tax) is less than 9% and therefore heading to NH is not a bargain.

Then there are all of the patrons who are promising to go to Amesbury for their dinners should this tax pass.  I looked at a map for the mileage from my house to The Barking Dog in Amesbury.  I picked this restaurant because I have eaten there with friends in the past.  To drive there and back would be approximately 24 miles.  This is the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline for my car.  The tax to go to The Barking Dog for dinner would then be 42 cents for gasoline and 6.25% to the state – most of which will never come back to benefit the town I live in.  That 42 cents is the equivalent of the .75% meals tax on a bill of $56.  This also assumes that the current list of communities who have adopted this tax option doesn’t change.

I’m not going to flee Haverhill simply to avoid the meals tax.  In the end I doubt anyone is going to change their habits so profoundly on principle.  Certainly people will yell, loudly, but I’ve discovered that complaining is all most people are willing to do.  I’m not going to punish Kreuger’s or The Grill Next Door or even Friendly’s because the town I live in needs my help and has chosen this path to get it.

We want a lot of things as people.  We want our schools to have top rate MCAS scores.  We want all our fire stations open and fully staffed.  We want our police to be fully staffed.  We want our roads to be pot hole free.  We want city hall open at our convenience.  We want our local parks and trails and ponds clean and well maintained.  We want our trash and recyclables collected regularly from our driveways.  We want clean water delivered to our homes and the dirty water taken away.  And we want all of this without having to pay the bill at the end of the day.  We insist that we pay “too much” for these services and yet there’s never enough money to fully fund anything.