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Intelligent cuts to local aid
By adamg on Tue, 12/09/2008 - 8:51am
On Blue Mass. Group, NoPolitician argues that if the state has to cut aid to cities and towns by 10%, it spare some communities and increase the cuts for others. The basic argument: A 10% cut to a city like Lowell, which relies on state aid for 68% of its budget, would hurt a lot more than a 10% cut to a town like Bolton, which mostly relies on property taxes. Plus: Cities like Lowell simply need the money more:
... [P]overty is expensive to a community. It requires more policing. It requires more educational spending. It requires more code enforcement on absentee landlords. It requires more fire department responses due to people trying to eke a few extra degrees out of a space heater.
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Comments
I agree, a 10 percent cut in
I agree, a 10 percent cut in a poor community means less police on the streets, a 10 percent cut in a more wealthy community means they lose money for police on the streets but they move funds from the library department, recreation department or some other great but not essential to survival fund. Sure it would suck that a nicer community would have to raid its recreation department funds to pay for the loss of state aid, but the poor communities dont have that luxury and a cut would result in a direct loss of essential services.
A good concept, but...
When sorting out
which of their cronies live in which townswhich towns get which percentage, they've got to be very careful to make this completely fair (translation: there's no way they will make this fair).Somewhere between the "rich" towns that don't need state aid and the poor towns that really really *do* need it, are quite a few towns in the middle--who have middle class hard working folks, and who manage their finances (relatively) responsibly. These towns might not "depend' on the state aid because of smart management, not because of plain old poverty. And as a result, these towns are poised to get punished for being fiscally responsible.
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who and the what now?
Penalize the snob zone towns
The reason cities like Lowell and Lawrence have such impoverished populations is because the surrounding towns use zoning and ridiculous land use requirements to prevent any and all housing proposals other than 3500 square foot McMansions on multi-acre lots from being built. They also insist on what little affordable housing there is being targeted for singles and couples. This very intentionally forces people into these cities, (not to mention forcing people with kids into other communities because they *gasp* need schools!) which turn into poverty dumps as a result.
The state passed legislation requiring a minimum of affordable housing, and many communities have been ignoring, resisting, and outright defying these laws. I think it's time to completely cut them off.
I think a fair way of
I think a fair way of figuring it out is based off of how many people in the community live below the poverty line, or looking at the mean and median incomes in a community. You draw a line, those below it are safe from any cuts, those above it will have some sort of cut in funding. Then you draw another line, those below the line will get a small percentage cut. Another line with a larger percentage and so on and so forth. If a community has alot of poor people in it, there is a good chance that the city itself is poor. Granted that would really mess up places like Boston and Cambridge that have a ying yang thing going with ultra poor areas and ultra rich areas, but they could be put off for a seperate study. Most cities and towns in MA are small enough that you could very easily get a pretty good assesment of who lives there based off of the annual incomes of the residents...
That also wouldnt punish a city for having smart management (BTW some poor communities have smart management as well, but are still poor because it doesnt matter how well you invest your cash if you dont have any!) It also wouldnt reward cities like Saugus who have kept their real estate taxes low, and have mismanaged money in a grand way as they would be treated based off of the average income assesment.
Since suburban tax payers
Since suburban tax payers will spend the coming centuries paying for our precious "Gateway Cities" it would behoove people like NoPolitician to realize that putting the hurt on said tax payers isn't a good thing for the Lawrences of the state. A 10% cut is nothing compared to the consequences of towns like Waltham, Natick, Stoneham, Quincy and Braintree joining the line of beggars.
Don't Blame Me, I Voted Yes on 1
Six weeks ago we were bombarded by ads warning us that if we voted to repeal the state income tax that tolls would increase and local aid would decrease resulting in less teaches, less cops, less firemen, and less social services. The people of this state voted OVERWHELMINGLY to give 5.3% of their money to Beacon Hill in order to prevent this from happening.
Fast forward to today and we have a governor threatening $7 tolls in and out of East Boston, a hike in the gas tax, and a 10% across the board cut to local aid. Looks like the joke's on us, Massachusetts.
NoPolitician argues that we should take the Robin Hood approach to state aid by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. While in theory that sounds noble, it's never, ever going to happen. There is no way that a politician from Wellesley, Dover, or Longmeadow would ever get re-elected if their towns received significantly less state aid on their watch. Well-off towns in this state already receive less from the state than they pay into the coffers. Rewarding their success by asking them to contribute more and receive even less...how Massachusetts is that???
Well just think of how much
Well just think of how much more we would be asked to give if we didnt still have the 5.3 percent tax on our shoulders. We would be looking at 12 dollar tolls and 25 percent decreases in local aid.
Maybe per capita?
Maybe the richer towns aren't getting that much assistance from the state in the first place, relative to a city like Lowell. (Funny how Lowell always gets mentioned when the subject of "hurtin' cities" comes up.) Maybe a 10% cut for say, Bolton, is just as painful as it is to Lowell because Lowell gets more per capita to begin with. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but my point is that there are other factors to look at before throwing money at Lowell.
Lowell just happens to be a
Lowell just happens to be a large poor city that people have actually been to (Ive been past Spingfield like twice to get to Agawam, thats about it.) Feel free to insert any other poor city instead of Lowell, but its all the same. These other communities should be happy places like Lowell exist, because if places like Lowell implode into themselves they are going to eject refuges (poor residents) to all of the surrounding well off communities like Andover...
Lowell
In particular, Lowell is the only one of these poor cities that contains lots of tourist attractions: a minor-league baseball team, a minor-league hockey team, a major regional theatre company, a civic auditorium and an outdoor amphitheatre that both host large concerts, a national historical park, an arts district, several museums, and a huge annual folk festival.
There aren't nearly as many reasons for most people around here to go to Lawrence or Lynn or Brockton.
UMass
Not to mention one of the state's largest universities - UMass-Lowell. Which begs the question, with so many diverse sources of revenue, why is Lowell so dependant on state aid? Obviously a city like Lowell (or Brockton, or Springfield, etc) has issues on a larger and more complex scale than a smaller, wealthier town. However, as a taxpayer I'd appreciate it if Lowell asked a company like the Red Sox-affiliated Lowell Spinners to cough up their fair share before they start demanding money earmarked for towns like Andover.
Mostly not taxpaying, though
I believe the city of Lowell owns both the baseball stadium and Tsongas Arena (not to mention Lowell Municipal Auditorium). The museums are non-profit, and the National Park Service doesn't pay local taxes either. I also doubt that state-owned UMass-Lowell pays property taxes.
There's a lot to like about Lowell, but not a lot of tax revenue from all those likable things.
Per Capita Income of Lowell
Per Capita Income of Lowell (with a population hoovering around 100,000) is $17,557
Per Capita Income of Lynn (with a slightly smaller population then Lowell) is $17,492
Per Capita Income of Cambridge (with a population hoovering around 100,000) is $31,156
Per Capita Income of Andover (which is right next to Lowell) is $41,153
Per Capita Income of Chelsea (about the same size as Andover population wise) is $14,628
Its no suprise that we consider Cambridge and Andover to be more fiscally prudent then Lowell, Lynn, and Chelsea its because they have more money per person. Of course these numbers do not include money from businesses, or colleges ect but its a good assesment of seeing who lives in that community and Im sure the amount of money taken from real estate taxes will be higher in Cambridge then Lowell. So while Lowell has diverse income streams it is still home to many poor people.
Wealthy Towns Export Problems
Concord has a state prison - but only because it has been there for a couple of centuries. That's about it.
Wealthy communities export their town workforces (and the cost of educating those children)to more affordable cities and towns. They export poverty by exclusionary zoning and even their middle class, and were the reason why group homes trump local zoning (wealthy communities tried to exclude them despite the need for such housing everywhere). They rarely see anything "undesirable" like a sewage treatment plant or a trash incinerator even though their residents pee, shit, generate garbage, become mentally ill, bear children who are retarded, drink water, and consume just like the rest of us. Meanwhile, these facilities become concentrated in other communities just because "there's nasty stuff already here" and where the residents don't get to say much about it.
Unless Weston agrees to take a huge dump soon (er, trash facility) or boosts its affordable housing percentages, or Andover agrees to take on a new prison, wealthy communities should be taxed for all the necessary services that they don't have to or refuse to deal with within their borders.
Concord actually has two prisons
One's the big mean-ol' looking place with the guard towers and the barbed wire where incoming prisoners are sent to be sorted out for shipment someplace else in the state.
The other's the pleasant looking minimum-security prison farm, which is a completely separate facility that grows all that corn or whatever along Rte. 2 and has horsies and everything.
Also worth noting is that both facilities are in West Concord, which is as close to the wrong side of the tracks as you can get in Concord. People along the Milldam wouldn't be caught dead over there.
Anyway, carry on.
That about sums it up! Then
That about sums it up!
Then those local groups are considered NIMBY if they dare protest the erection of YET another gross/disgusting/smelly/harmful facility. I realize it has to be in someones back yard, but shouldnt everyone at least have some burden?