Seven Villages, Janet Joakim

RECALL PETITION - THE SPLIT TAX

This past summer the group behind the recall circulated three different affidavits and two different petitions before finally getting the signatures they needed in the time allotted.

The final petition gave two reasons for a recall.

The first reason for a recall stated on the petition states that I voted against the split tax three times after it was on a ballot as a non-binding question –

This is not true.

After the tax classification issues were on the ballot as non-binding questions in 2005 and passed I voted on the issue when it came before the council as my constituents had voted:

– In 2005 I voted FOR the split tax – the council majority voted to shift the tax to businesses by 1.15.

– I also voted FOR the residential exemption — something never mentioned in any of the stories or letters about this issue – this saves the people in my precinct between $450 and $650 each year, varying only  by the value of the home.

Here in Barnstable our commercial and business properties make up less than 10% of the tax base, so the split tax shift of 1.15, was saving the people in my precinct between $24-$36 a year while costing businesses an average of approximately $500 a year.

In 2006, the town council and the town staff had been working with the Cape Cod Commission to create a growth incentive zone in downtown Hyannis designed to encourage new businesses. We were and are still are mindful of the need to create new jobs to our town and I believed that the small savings we received was not worth the cost. I believe that the need for new jobs is more important than the $24-36 savings to the residents in our precinct.

The proponents of the split tax believe that we need to “punish” businesses like the mall and grocery stores, but those businesses don’t feel the costs of that split the way small, locally owned businesses do. I heard from many small local business owners and employees in my own precinct, after the first year and those converstations along with the actual numbers provided by the state and our own finance department convinced me that the costs of the split tax were not worth the benefit.

I did, however, see the significant financial savings the residential exemption brought my consituents and I did, and have since then, voted to support the residential exemption.

When a fellow councilor first insisted that the split tax be put on a ballot, I agreed only if the ballot questions included the residential exemption.

While lobbying state legislators and the state administration for a more fair funding formula for our schools I was told on more than one ocassion that the residential exemption was designed to give communities like ours the tools to provide tax relief to our year-round residents.

In a similar vein, the split tax is designed to provide the same type of relief for cities and towns with a larger percentage of commercial and business property.

The council is mandated to take this vote each year because these circumstances can change. Each year we are given updated numbers. Each year we are expected to consider the current circumstances and to vote with that in mind.

Unfortunately, the local bloggers will continue to use exaggerated numbers based on a full shift, or “split tax” of 1.5 to argue their case for punishing local businesses. Those numbers are not realistic.

The leadership on those blogs don’t rely on jobs with local businesses, but many in my own precinct do.  I believe that voting for a tax shift to somehow punish malls and grocery stores will only hurt the smaller buisnesses and is bad for our town overall. And, supporting the residential exemption is what benefits the majority in precinct 6 so I will continue to support it.

This post is in response to letters etc published in our local paper,  this post addresses one of the issues related to the recall petition. Posts following this will address the second reason on the recall petition and further will address the a recent editorial and its disappointing portrayal of this blog -a blog that finds its genesis directly in that same newspaper’s reporting.