Stuart Bronson, Hopkinton, NH

Not only should taxpayers/voters understand the cost of each warrant article as it pertains to their tax bill, they should have a firm grasp of all proposed budgetary items and their associated impact. I need to be able to judge how each item (whether it is some sort of mandated increase or not) is going to impact me on a percentage increase basis. I want to know the percentage increase in the collective town’s tax bill – I don’t care to get into a discussion about whether tax rates went up or down, or complain about house valuations or view taxes because that misses the point – if we as a town vote to increase spending by, say, 8%, then I have a pretty good idea of what tax pain I have caused myself. (As an aside, as long as all properties in town are being fairly valued as they relate to each other, then it doesn’t matter what the dollar assessment is because the town is going to get the actual dollars voted for in the budget and you are going to pay your pro rata share of that burden. Unfair, out of place valuations are another story).

I need to know what we spent last year and what we are voting on this year so I can vote for those things that I feel are priorities. If the total budget package is set to rise 8%, this is clearly not a sustainable increase year on year and I want to vote to pare it down to something more manageable. The only way to do that responsibly is to be able to judge the relative merits of each item up for vote. I feel that getting caught up in the minutia of petty bickering helps prevent us from seeing the larger picture.

Why not have a budget proposal system that will not allow for an increase greater than the average of the last three years CPI? It is not sustainable to continue to tax ourselves at a rate that far outpaces inflation. If mandated increases become so onerous as to continually outstrip inflation, then I’d say that is a pretty good sign to us that we need to reduce the size of the workforce which is causing those uncontrollable increases! Calling them “uncontrollable increases” is not the end of the story. . .