Leafletting is tiring
May. 30th, 2003 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasI just spent two hours walking around Melrose dropping off leaflets. I did like four or six streets. I need to go out again and do more.
I finally found the data I was looking for: the Bureau of Labor Statistics does, in fact, have regional historical consumer price index info!
Here's how Prop 2 1/2 works: every town in Massachusetts can only increase the amount of money they get from property taxes by 2 1/2 percent a year. Yes, this does mean that, if property values increase, towns have to reduce the tax rate. Also, property taxes may NEVER exceed $25 per $1000 of value, per year. A town may increase by more than 2.5% in a given year by passing an override. But the "levy ceiling" -- the $25 per $1000 -- may never be gotten rid of.
So, can someone sanity check my math here?
Okay. So 2 1/2 % increase per year, since 1993, which is when we had the last override. So, since then, our levy limit has gone up by (1.025^10), because it's been ten years. So we can now take in, in property taxes, about 128% of what we took in in 1993.
However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Massachusetts CPI for 1993 was 152.9, and for this year is 202.8. That means that the cost of living in Massachusetts has increased to about 133% of what it was in 1993.
That means that, absent any other factors, if Melrose is doing the same things now as the last time it passed an override, it's trying to do 133% the work with 128% the resources. That gap there is what the override is trying to plug.
I finally found the data I was looking for: the Bureau of Labor Statistics does, in fact, have regional historical consumer price index info!
Here's how Prop 2 1/2 works: every town in Massachusetts can only increase the amount of money they get from property taxes by 2 1/2 percent a year. Yes, this does mean that, if property values increase, towns have to reduce the tax rate. Also, property taxes may NEVER exceed $25 per $1000 of value, per year. A town may increase by more than 2.5% in a given year by passing an override. But the "levy ceiling" -- the $25 per $1000 -- may never be gotten rid of.
So, can someone sanity check my math here?
Okay. So 2 1/2 % increase per year, since 1993, which is when we had the last override. So, since then, our levy limit has gone up by (1.025^10), because it's been ten years. So we can now take in, in property taxes, about 128% of what we took in in 1993.
However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Massachusetts CPI for 1993 was 152.9, and for this year is 202.8. That means that the cost of living in Massachusetts has increased to about 133% of what it was in 1993.
That means that, absent any other factors, if Melrose is doing the same things now as the last time it passed an override, it's trying to do 133% the work with 128% the resources. That gap there is what the override is trying to plug.