As everyone knows, a decision to raise taxes beyond the 2 ½ % limit should never be taken lightly.  Nobody likes to pay more taxes, including myself.   But our town is in trouble.  Every single town department is dealing with cuts, inadequate staffing, and is having difficulty providing basic services.   And the same is true for many other Massachusetts communities.  

The benefits of proposition 2 ½ have been undermined by state and federal restrictions on our town government.   Proposition 2 ½ was passed 27 years ago.  It passed years before Education reform laws or the Federal No Child Left Behind Act.  In a 2007 Boston Globe article, Barbara Anderson, whose activist group sponsored proposition 2 ½, stated that, to help communities live within the limit, Prop 2 ½ had originally forbid future unfunded state mandates.

The problem though, is that state and federal unfunded mandates were imposed anyway.  Proposition 2 ½  has been successful in curbing local taxes, but cities and towns such as ours are so saddled with state and federal unfunded mandates, that we can’t adequately fund basic services.  We can’t even keep up with the rate of inflation. 

Our state and federal governments have failed to give suburban communities fair funding.

Our state government won’t even allow us the flexibility to negotiate with our unions individually. 

Instead, they tell us to fix our own problems.

That forces us to rely heavily on property tax revenue to meet state and federal requirements over which we have no control.

I took a look at the tax rates for some of the communities I’ve heard us compared to.  Andover is at 11.25; Reading is at 12.07; Westford is at 13.10; Acton is at 14.62; and Amesbury is at 13.16.  North Andover’s current tax rate of 10.45, even if raised by a $1.65 million dollar override, would still be lower than all of these communities. But what seems like a bargain, actually contributes to the problem of having insufficient funds to run our town.

So… we have a choice:  we can either accept diminishing services, or we can choose to pay more taxes. 

I believe raising $ 1.65 million through an override is enough to address some of our most urgent needs. I recognize that it isn’t nearly enough to restore everything we need for either municipal services or school services, but I believe it’s an affordable tax increase. 

If you truly can not afford a tax increase, or if you are willing to accept diminished service, without complaint, I respect your decision.  But if you vote against an override because of continued anger over a former superintendent, or the past actions of elected officials no longer in office, what does that accomplish?

A selectman recently described our school system as “clearly broken”.  His words were unnecessarily harsh and mostly inaccurate.  Our school department went into overdrive this year to produce a transparent budget.  We know what we are getting. 
We have a newly hired superintendent who is highly qualified, and he should provide the solid leadership we need. 

There were management mistakes over the years on the municipal side as well.  We’ve just fixed a ten year old municipal chapter 90 deficit.  Shall we refuse to fund our public safety needs or our senior center’s needs, because it took ten years for the town manager and board of selectmen to fix that problem? No, that’s crazy.  But so is trying to punish 4,000 students who were innocent of any wrongdoing.  Dr. Harutunian is gone, and the problems he created are gone.

Let’s put our troubles behind us and focus on our future.   We’ve cleaned up our act, and we can start from a position of strength. 

So…what will extra taxes provide?  They will provide policemen; they will preserve critical outreach positions at the senior center and youth center; and they will provide librarians at the public library.  They will provide teachers and curriculum.  They will help us meet our special education mandates.  Meeting mandated services in-house may save our town money in future years, because we may avoid having to pay outsiders for those same services.  They will also provide reasonable class sizes for our children.

On the Massachusetts Department of Education teacher to student ratio report, North Andover ranks 348th out of 351 Massachusetts communities.  We’re very close to the bottom of the barrel.  

And finally, those extra taxes may prevent municipal and school layoffs in fiscal year 2009, by which time our elected officials will be working on negotiating smarter contracts and developing more commercial opportunities.

At last year’s town meeting we demanded leadership, and we got it with the Resolution signed by the Board of Selectmen, the Finance Committee, and the School Committee.  These boards had the courage to put their differences aside, they agreed that a $1.65 million dollar override was reasonable, they sent a strong message that they  would exercise fiscal restraint, they pledged to discuss more affordable health insurance splits when negotiating union contracts, and they demonstrated a sincere intention to move our town forward in a positive, cooperative direction.  This commitment to better government and transparent budgeting moves us forward.

Please join me in voting “yes” for a $1.65 million dollar override.  This year, the leadership has to come from us.

Thank you.