Me in the local news

As my teenage daughter observed, town council hearings where we live tend to be dominated by white guys in their 60s waving printouts and citing statistics about our insupportable tax burden. At the last hearing, I weighed in on the other side, then wrote a follow-up letter to my town council. Here's the story. I was offline for a couple of days, but if the reporter had reached me, I'm not sure I would have been able to say much more than the rest of the text of my letter:

"I could have bought new clothes [with the $183 I was enclosing], but my closet is full. I could have gone out to eat a few more times, but my family prefers home cooking. I could have spent $183 at Dunkin Donuts, as NK student James Wilkinson pointed out at the school committee hearing (61 large lattes, or 122 small coffees!), but I take a thermos of home-brewed coffee to work every morning. $183 wouldn’t have been enough to buy another car, let alone insurance and gas, but fortunately the four drivers in our family are still getting along with two cars, thanks to the yellow school buses and RIPTA buses that our tax dollars underwrite.

"Somehow we Americans seem convinced that if we spend our money however we like, it is well spent, but if our government spends it on our behalf for things we’ve all agreed we want and need according to centuries of democratic process, it is money wasted or even stolen. This attitude is bad for our blood pressure, bad for our community, and bad for our future.

"...I prefer not to earmark this $183 for a particular purpose, but if that is required, I ask you to spend it on the school department, and if you need me to be more specific, then please use it for the elementary school music program. Since my own children are in high school (one about to graduate), no member of my family will benefit directly."

P.S. For statistics about return on investment, check out this study showing that Massachusetts residents who overrode Proposition 2-1/2 retained their property values better than those who stuck to the cap.