The Financial Impact Analysis Team (FIAT) has been very busy in the last year. The team was appointed by the selectmen, and has done its job: to find out why Harvard has needed so many overrides (19 in 18 years) to balance its budget. Only 16 of 351 towns in Massachusetts have passed more overrides.
With more than ample data to prove its point, the team’s report show that it’s not the schools, the Department of Public Works, irresponsible spending, or wastefulness that causes the town’s structural deficit. Rather, it finds that the average single-family residence in the state consumes $1.71 in municipal services for each dollar it generates in taxes, whereas commercial and industrial properties consume only 28 cents in services for each dollar they contribute in taxes to local communities.
FIAT’s report finds that of the 72 percent of the town’s budget funded by property taxes (the rest is from state aid, local receipts, fees, etc.), residences contribute 96 percent of the total, whereas businesses contribute only 3.4 percent. Compare that statistic with businesses paying an average of 14 percent in Massachusetts. That’s four times the amount Harvard receives in revenue from businesses.
I encourage every thoughtful citizen in Harvard to go to the town’s website (www.harvard.ma.us/) and download the report, to read it, and go to Town Meeting.
Article 22 on the warrant proposes that the selectmen appoint an economic development analysis team to develop a strategy for enlarging Harvard’s commercial and industrial district. My wife and I have been coming to Harvard since 1939. Harvard was then a bucolic, small, country town. We have seen it grow and still love it here, but it is getting close to unaffordable for those of us who retired here in the 1980s. FIAT has found that Harvard hasn’t changed enough. We are for the change FIAT recommends, and will vote for Article 22. We urge all voters to do the same.
Paul von Loesecke
Warren Ave.
