Reader to Reader

To the Editor:

Select Board Chair Patrick White's request that the Assessors treat his home as a second home (his siblings, effective co-owners, aren't residents) suggests a way both to support the RTE, and, as we both wish, to avoid community division. Can we find a way to enlist other residents who can readily afford to pay their full assessments (whatever they may be under the reduced rate we are about to see) to support the town they live in year-round at the same level as their second home neighbors?

Unfortunately, as it is written, the RTE is not limited to residents who have trouble affording their tax bills. Giving residents who don't need it a subsidy that excuses them from a just element of community support makes no sense at all to me, and is destructive of our community. As it is, I suppose, second homeowners with fancy houses or Bowl frontage will dominate the top half of the assessment table, and thus pay higher than average taxes. If residents who can readily afford to pay the regular tax would pledge not to apply for the RTE, as I would and Select Board Chair White effectively has, then adopting the RTE would be a no-brainer. Without that, it is unjust and divisive — as the petition to the Select Board from about 300 second homeowners makes clear.

You can publish this as a letter to the editor, but given your consistent, praiseworthy efforts to preserve our community's values, I hope you will give this idea editorial support and help me in making this happen. It will not be hard to identify residents whose assessments exceed the town average (the most likely candidates for this effort); other residents, too, might be willing to join in a campaign whose results would be that they pay no more tax than their similarly assessed second home neighbor, and that the rate adjustment caused by the RTE would be lower.

Peter Strauss

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your letter. You ask SU to publish it and that is our pleasure. You also ask that SU to support a call for those who can afford it "not to apply for RTE", and that SU respectfully declines.

First, no one applies for RTE. If it is made law, it is a calculation that results in our tax bills. We each must pay the calculated amount. Stockbridge is a village of generous people — always has been. Those who can always give willingly, and that is their decision, not ours.

As we have discussed, SU has an obligation to correct factual errors. I am sure you come from a good place and mean to make your point without misinforming, however, there were not 300 signatures on a petition opposing RTE. There were zero — 0 — signatures on the petition. That is why Town Offices could not accept it. It was unsigned with a typed list of 200+ names appended. It may be that each of those named was opposed to RTE, but that is an unknown since it was unsigned, and therefore, not a legal petition.

Carole

Photo: Lionel Delevingne