Letter to the Editor: An East Hampton BOF Member Explains Her 'No' Vote on the East Hampton High School Project

I voted no because the project to renovate the High School is too high.

In PART – here are some of the reasons why…..Our tax collection rate has been trending downward – this tells us how “affordable” our taxes are to tax payers. Folks, the numbers show that our community is having trouble paying their taxes.

A couple of years ago we reduced the rate to match the trend, and the bad news is we’re on track to miss it again!Our grand list growth rate has been trending downward  - this is the indicator we look at to determine if we can expect to increase the number of tax payers to our pool of contributors. 

We are not growing our tax base – in fact we are barely maintaining. A .24 growth rate is not a good sign.Our investment income and income from sources other than your property tax dollars is shrinking. This tells us how much we can expect to draw from “other” sources to pay our bills. We used to enjoy hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment income (income that doesn’t come from you but helps pay the bill).

We’ll be lucky to see $13,000 this year – that’s a 90% decrease!  So the well we can draw from is drying up. The ONLY matters I concerned myself with as a member of the Board were the financial implications of going into debt for this project and the ability of our community to be able to pay back the debt.

Folks, I voted no because I believe the facts show our community will have difficulty paying this back.I also believe the project can be done for less and that I owe it to you to ask for a price that gets the job done for less.