Property Taxes

Taxes are not a bad word.  Our property taxes pay for our important town services and staff.  Taxes keep our town strong.  Taxes pay for good staff to stay here. My question is: if you feel you are paying too much in property taxes,  where do you want to start cutting? Trash pick up? snow plowing?  Schools?  Parks and Recreation? Libraries?  DPW?  Police?  Fire Dept.?

The answer is not to call for across the board tax reduction.  There are 4350 households in town making over $150, 000 who can well afford their property taxes.

If you look at the numbers from the Dept. of Revenue you would see that living in an average house in Framingham, your taxes over the period 2000 to 2014  have increased an average of $194 per year to $5922.    

In comparison, if you lived in an average house in Natick, your taxes over the same period have increased an average of $228 per year to $6458.                                                                                   

And compared to other towns such as: Ashland, Walpole, Medway, Holliston, Westboro, Southboro, Hopkinton, Needham, Sudbury, Wayland, Medfield,  Framingham has the lowest average property tax.  

The conclusion is that Framingham is well managed and our very reasonable taxes are the price that we pay to live here. It is a fair price to pay in order to keep our town safe and help it thrive.  If you want to start cutting and slashing,  it will create a vicious downward cycle.  Folks, we are all in this together. This is the social contract: we’ve all agreed  to protect one another from harm, and to help one another in time of need.   Lets keep our town moving forward not backward. Good services and solid infrastructure in our town will result in higher property values than in other communities who are busy reducing services. Paying property taxes is money well spent.

Herb Chasan, Town Meeting Member, Pct. 4