Some taxpayers say the cap hurts essential services such as education, police and roads
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Dino Mallios, a star basketball player on the basketball team in Winthrop, Ma., would not be able to play if not for the a private foundation that filled in a gap left in 2004. That year, voters rejected a measure that would have raised taxes above the statewide limit of 2.5 percent, but kept sports in place. Students still need to pay fees to play, which has become not uncommon statewide. Gov. Chris Christie is pushing a similar tax cap as part of his plan to get New Jersey's highest-in-the-nation property taxes under control. WINTHROP, Mass. — The Mallios family spent about $1,400 over the last four years for their son Dino to play basketball. It wasn’t for equipment, training or elite private camps. They forked over the cash just so he could play on his high school team.
There would be no school teams at all in this town just northeast of Boston, tucked between a greyhound racetrack and the airport, if not for a private foundation that came to the rescue after voters in 2004 killed public school sports by refusing to raise taxes more than 2.5 percent.
The vote was taken under Massachusetts’ 30-year-old "Proposition 2½" law, which Gov. Chris Christie is using as the model for his plan to tame New Jersey’s sky-high property taxes. The law bans local governments from hiking property tax collections by more than 2.5 percent without getting voter permission, with very few exceptions.
With school sports a favorite target of local voter wrath, charging athletes — a concept cropping up in New Jersey — is the rule rather than the exception in Massachusetts. For parents in Winthrop, it means $425 per sport, up to $2,175 per family.
"It was a high fee to pay, but in order to keep my kids in the community, and I felt they were getting a great education here, I did what I had to do to pay it," said Elaine Mallios, Dino’s mother. Her son, a soft-spoken star guard, won a basketball scholarship to a good college. "All I know is I wanted to keep them in my town, my community and have that small-town atmosphere."
Three decades after Massachusetts enacted its cap, property taxes are, by New Jersey standards, low: $4,250 for the average single dwelling last year. They rank 20th in the nation as a percentage of home value in 2008, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation.
But a trip from the mountainous countryside of the largely rural west to the historic coast shows Massachusetts residents still grumble about property taxes and provides hints of what may happen if New Jersey adopts a similar restriction.
Some taxpayers say the cap — which does not necessarily limit each resident’s increase to 2.5 percent — hurts essential services such as education, police, libraries and roads. They complain that roads are ragged, some structures are tattered and things that were once just part of an education, such as sports, are not "free" anymore. Others say it failed to make politicians any better at spending their money.
Many wondered why Christie uses their state as a model, until told of New Jersey’s average property tax bill — $7,281 in 2009.
"I’d say they’re pretty stupid in New Jersey," Bridgewater resident Tom Da Silva said. "They are. Why do they put up with that?"
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Campaign signs like these dot the residential and business lawns in Bridgewater, a Massachusetts town that will hold a vote June 19 about whether to raise property taxes more than a state-wide limit of 2.5 percent. Gov. Chris Christie is pushing a similar policy as part of what's needed to get New Jersey's highest-in-the-nation property taxes under control. In Massachusetts, capping taxes at 2.5 percent — a level even original backers of the law admit was arbitrary — has challenged, year-after-year, what communities should provide for residents.
Competing analyses say it has either given Massachusetts control of its taxes without harming education or placed straightjackets on towns, which hurts residents. If adopted in New Jersey, it could mean major change to every town and school district.
BREAKING THE CAP
The most visible feature in Massachusetts’ world of 2.5 is the override vote taken when towns want to bust the cap. It’s difficult to track the success rate of votes, because no group or government agency has kept reliable records.
Override proposals can be as specifically defined as a $120,000 vote in Tisbury, a town on Martha’s Vineyard, for a new trash truck. (It failed.) Some towns say money will go to education, police or libraries. Others simply say it’s for general operations.
Each vote exposes fault lines in communities, the most vitriolic between schools — which, unlike New Jersey’s, are wrapped into the municipal budget — and everything else. Many residents say their property taxes are low — and, unthinkable in New Jersey, some say too low.
"We all should pay our fair share of what it costs to run things, and if we’re not really paying what it costs to run and improve or at least maintain our services, we’re cutting ourselves short," said Robert Walker, a contractor in Northampton. "I drive around and I can’t stand to see the shape that the roads are getting in, the maintenance the buildings require that isn’t getting done."
Jeff McLucas stood outside his Bridgewater house on a humid Saturday afternoon and described what was at stake in his town’s override fight. The 47-year-old attorney’s eyes glistened as he remembered a day several years ago when his then-2-year-old daughter began choking after vomiting.
"We were having the 911 call that could be the 911 call from hell," he said. "My daughter’s choking. She’s not breathing. My wife’s trying CPR, and the police and fire came and saved her life. She was dying in front of our eyes on the floor of a bedroom, because she was choking on her own vomit because she had a stomach bug. And the police and fire came in and saved her life. So I’d vote for the override if it was just for the police and (fire)."
That’s exactly what Bridgewater education supporters are hoping for. Teachers and parents took advantage of the open town meeting form of government — in which residents, not elected officials, directly create a budget. They packed a meeting and moved $2 million into the schools’ budget to leave that funding intact but leaving other municpal services short-funded.
The town is threatening something akin to wholesale destruction if voters do not approve the override on June 19: Thirteen of the town’s 27 police officers would be laid off, leaving no overnight shift. The library, senior center, additional fire station and recreation center would close.
The vote is no sure bet in a town where voters have never approved an overture to raise taxes above the 2.5 percent cap.
"Bridgewater has champagne tastes with beer money," Da Silva said. "I look at them as drug addicts. I wouldn’t give a drug addict drugs. I wouldn’t give them any more money. They have to live within their means."
A TURBULENT START
Massachusetts went through major upheaval when it first put the lid on property taxes in 1980. Thousands of teachers and public workers were laid off, Boston’s bond ratings plummeted, and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority ran out of money and shut service for a full day.
The immediate impact was severe thanks in part to a provision of the law not included in New Jersey’s proposal: Towns were required to gradually roll back property taxes.
The problems forced the state to pump billions more in aid to towns and revamp its school funding formula. In New Jersey, critics of Christie’s plan contend it would cause too much pain without more state aid to towns and schools.
But like everywhere, the recession has robbed Massachusetts state coffers, and state aid to towns is being cut. Local property taxes now account for 53 percent of towns’ budgets. "It’s a massive reduction that has pummeled municipal finances," said Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association. "Communities have laid off thousands and thousands of employees, reduced services, but ironically also increased their reliance on the property tax."
Now, some towns are appealing to the voters at a time when they have little appetite for higher taxes. The local votes create divides, sometimes between older residents and those with children. Signs supporting or opposing an override are kept in garages and stuck into front lawns each time a proposal comes up. Residents accuse each other of engaging in scare tactics.
"It’s in the interests of the unions to present these choices so that people have to suffer the worst possible consequences rather than less painful consequences," said David Tuerck, a professor at the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research, who supports the cap law and believes it forces politicians into prudent spending. "They present the choice so that it’s between higher taxes on the one hand and (letting) the children have access to music lessons on the other."
Some say school sports is one of the items often held for ransom. Barry Haley, president of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, said this has forced virtually every school to rely on "a significant amount of fundraising for basic necessities" — and to require athletes to pay if they want to play.
"It’s very difficult to get a kid to come out and try cross country," Haley said. "‘Give this a try. I don’t know if you’ll like it or not, but give me $500 before you even start.’"
THE GROWING DIVIDE
A cap does not spell the inevitable disappearance of services. As Christie repeats when promoting his plan, residents will have control of which services they want to pay for.
In Massachusetts, the affluent residents of Concord voted to raise taxes for six straight years this decade, and Tuesday approved a $1.3 million increase over the cap. Chris Whelan said in the 17 years he’s been town manager, he almost never had to lay off an employee — save for a parking enforcement officer when the town switched to electronic machines. Whelan says the town keeps a close eye on its finances but offers what residents want.
"We clearly enumerate what services they will get for the additional spending, and they feel those services are worthwhile," he said. "They feel they do get a good bang for the buck."
The town of about 17,000 — including CEOs and tech entrepreneurs — has 34 police officers, two libraries and fundraises privately for extras, such as the town’s 375th birthday bash this year. The median tax bill of $10,939 for the average single family home valued at $835,697 is seventh-highest in the state.
The contrast between Concord and Bridgewater, where even the library’s three open days are at risk, prompts critics to say the cap law has produced a growing gap between what it’s like to live in towns that can raise taxes, and those that do not.
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The library in Bridgewater, already operating on a slim schedule, will close unless the town's residents vote June 19 to raise property taxes more than the Massachusetts-wide limit of 2.5 percent a year. "We have a very, very low tax rate — too low, for the size of our community," Bridgewater’s McLucas said. "Who wants to pay taxes? None of us want to pay taxes, but we’re talking about basic necessities. This town has cut everything to the bone already. There’s nowhere to go."
OTHER TAXES
When voters turn down overrides, Massachusetts towns have some other taxes to turn to, but not blanket local sales or income taxes. Last year, Massachusetts boosted the amount it allows towns to tax hotel rooms from 4 percent to 6 percent and created a .75 percent local tax for meals. Christie opposes raising or creating other local taxes in New Jersey, calling them a "shell game" that won’t solve problems.
Beverly, a 16-square-mile city of 40,000, needed the meals tax because its entire 2.5 percent tax increase, $1.9 million, was eaten up by the incremental increase in health care and pension costs. The meals tax is expected to bring in $400,000.
"Your governor should want to be better than Massachusetts, probably, because balancing our budgets is incredibly difficult," Beverly Mayor Bill Scanlon Jr. said.
The only override vote held in Beverly failed miserably. The proposal would have cost the average homeowner about $185 a year. Instead, an elementary school closed and its pupils went to other schools. "I am quite sure that had I been in favor, I wouldn’t be mayor anymore, given the way it went down," Scanlon said.
Leon Martens, who recently moved back to Beverly full time after living in Basking Ridge, N.J., said the city is making it up elsewhere, complaining of "little fees here, little taxes there." Scanlon said the town has won concessions on health care through required negotiations. He believes the 2.5 percent cap is here to stay in Massachusetts.
"It’s obviously an arbitrary number," he said. "But we’ve found a way to live with it for a long time, and I suspect we’ll have to find a way to live with it in the future."