In recent years we’ve bought ourselves a lot of nice items here in Wellfleet. Expensive, but nice. A quantum leap of a DPW facility, $7.68 million worth of state-of-the-art fire station, a beautiful senior center about 10 times as big as the old one, a spiffy remodel of the pier with perimeter promenade for taking in views of the harbor, a complete reconstruction of town icon Uncle Tim’s bridge; just last year world class sidewalk job for Main Street. I’m probably forgetting some.
The population has scarcely grown in the 12 years or so bracketing those purchases, but insofar as quality of life is measured in such things, we 3000 or so citizens certainly have a much higher quality of life now than then.
The warrant for town meeting (Monday, 23 April, 7 pm; be there or be square) proposes several more improvements: more new sidewalks and other beautification efforts ($590,000), composting bathrooms at Mayo Beach ($790,000), a new town office building ($300,000).
All worthy stuff and all we have to do is decide whether we can afford that price. If all three of these articles pass the first year’s boost in taxes for a house of average value will be around $73. Sounds like a bargain.
But in a sense we don’t really know the price. Our finance committee is worried about the 6.5 million in capital items predicted for 2014 to 2018 “placing a heavy burden upon the taxpayer.” It seems like it’s the finance committee’s job to worry about that. But you hear it a lot., the assumption that “we” are suffering from rising taxes, that “we” are living above our means. But the fact is that although my taxes have gone up several- fold, I would not say I am suffering, exactly. In fact nobody I know seems to be suffering from over- taxation in any but a poetic sense. If they are, they’re not letting on. So: who is actually suffering?
In Falmouth, the individual people who are suffering from nearby wind turbines are well known. The only question for that town’s selectmen and citizens is: is it OK for The People, the town, to pay for a desired outcome—saving on electric costs–by sacrificing the health and quality of life of some of its citizens?
Maybe it’s not actually an established principle that its OK to sacrifice a minority for what we like to think of as “the greater good”–a new jetport or superhighway–but we do it.
In Mexico you know some of the people who are suffering because they are crumpled against buildings begging. (Not a good advertisement, it always seems to me, for prevailing social arrangements.)
But in Wellfleet if the ‘we” who can afford all this stuff is an abstraction, so is the “they” who can’t afford it.
The big selling point in the debate over the new fire station was how it was needed to better “serve” the townspeople. But are there some of us who are not being served? That $7.68 million price tag breaks down , according to the fact sheet, to $113 a month for 20 years for a $500,00 (pretty average) house. Is that really inconveniencing anyone? Is there anybody who really needed that $113 per month? Or the $73 for the items we will be voting on this time? Any people who are eating poorly or not getting their teeth fixed or being foreclosed on for lack of it? Whose health and welfare are worse because of the construction of this building dedicated to health and welfare?
It’s a cliché to mention the growing tax burden, but burden on whom, and how will they hurt? If we don’t know who is actually hurt by this spending we don’t really know the price.
Maybe we’d rather not know. Maybe it would feel embarrassing to put names on a list. But we should at least be thinking about it in town meeting when deciding whether “we” can afford this or that amenity, improvement. What is the real cost to actual people? And is the greater good good enough?
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