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‘Progressive’ City Council abuses vulnerable persons—and free speech
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The property tax bomb—-again
The property tax is a perennial political issue. But this year it is a bigger issue than usual—particularly in Cambridge. No one has pushed this issue harder than city council candidate Jesse Gordon. He calls this year’s tax bills “the property tax bomb.” All the politicians are talking about the issue. Councilor David Mahar was perhaps the first to voice constituent tax complaints.
But few Cambridge politicians want to talk about the city’s swollen budget. “Tax bomb” Gordon himself proposes some pricey new items for that budget.
In April, the city council almost casually voted to pay $29,500,000 for a site in East Cambridge for a new police station. The council’s unanimous vote means that another $40 million or so will be spent to replace the existing Central Square police headquarters.
Property tax increases are setting off alarms all over the State.
Massachusetts’s property taxes were 53 percent of local revenues last year, compared with 48 percent in 1990.
A report by the Municipal Finance Task Force shows that a middle-income Bay Stater today has one of the lowest overall tax burdens in the U.S. But she has one of the country’s higher property tax burdens.
Since 1980, local property tax rates are limited to 2 1/2 percent of market value. Thus most cities and towns cannot raise tax rates very much, if at all.
They now seek new tax revenues mainly by increasing the market value of their property tax bases. They do this through gentrification, overdevelopment, and sprawl.
Cambridge has really raked in the dough. The city manager has encouraged an enormous amount of development. Moreover, Cambridge imposes a higher tax rate on business than on residential taxpayers.
This should mean that the city’s tax rates should be under control. And City Hall says they really are under control. They are mailing out lavish brochures for every resident to prove it.
Yet the mail also brings property tax bills that are literally terrorizing moderate-income residents. The reason is brutally simple. The market value of their modest homes has increased dramatically.
If your home’s market value doubles, you will pay twice as much tax even though your tax rate hasn’t gone up at all.
What causes the market value of your home to go up? The same gentrifying, no-rent-control development policy that is used to increase the tax base. The new gentry is willing and able to pay big money to acquire your property.
In another country this might be called “ethnic cleansing.”
In 2003, Green-Rainbow city council candidate Aimée Smith suggested, “scrapping the property tax as the base for municipal finance. A city income tax would get around the problem of tax-exempt institutions, tap folks who don't live here but use our infrastructure to earn good incomes, and would be much cheaper to administer.”
Smith warned against short-term solutions like “shifting property taxes from residences to commercial property. We must keep in mind the needs of the small businesses we desperately need for job diversity and community stability.”
From this perspective, the property tax itself is fundamentally flawed. The radical tenant organizations of the 1970s called for its abolition. They said it was the most regressive major tax in the U.S.
This view was echoed in January by the Cambridge city manager. Bob Healy told the Boston Globe — "The property tax is the most regressive form of taxation that exists."