The School Tax Rate Plus Election Details

Dateline: Feb. 26, 2021

In March 2020, when schools were being shut down and businesses were being locked down because of the virus pandemic, voters for some odd reason approved the $10,857,796 school budget (almost $11 million) instead of the lower default budget and also approved about $264,000 in raises for school employees.

This year's proposed budget of $11,457,385 seems to be almost $600,000 more than last year's approved budget. Some of that can be attributed to the employee raises. Based on a school board comment from 2020, could that possibly increase the school tax by $408 for a $200,000 property? Let us hope that amount is not quite accurate.

In the school board handouts from the Jan. 16 and Jan. 30 hearings, one would be hard pressed to find any mention of the effect of the 2021-2022 school budget on the school tax rate. If the school board could be so kind as to publish the estimated 2021 school tax rate for all the town to see, that would allow residents to explicitly compare the tax rate due to the new (and higher) school budget with the 20-year tax increase due to the school bond.

The school district recently sent out a very appealing post card about the desirability of building a new school. It would be good to finally have a decent place for children to go to school. On the other hand, that desirability needs to be contrasted with the financial impact the new school will have on all residents, especially our older, retired residents for the next 20 years.

Elon Musk (Paypal, Tesla, Space-X, $79.4 Billion), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, $98 Billion), Michael Bloomberg ("up pops the corn", $54.9 Billion), Jim Walton (son of Sam, $64.2 Billion), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, $183.8 Billion), Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway, $82.3 Billion), Bill Gates (Microsoft, $115 Billion), where are you when we need you???

Warrant Articles and Candidates

At the bottom of the 2021 Election Issues page are links to the warrant articles and candidates. You are encouraged to read the position statements received from some of the Selectman candidates, especially Jeff Venegas who is a write-in candidate.
On the school district ballot, the same people are running uncontested again. How exciting is that?

What You Can Do

Between now and March 9th, become as informed as possible by rummaging through the town and school web sites so that you understand the pros and cons of all the issues.