Don Howell's Blog

This is Democracy?

People are losing their jobs, increasing numbers of (now closed) restaurants feature "for sale" signs and many face home foreclosures. So what are the Town Fathers of Harwich doing about all this? Well, they've decided to hold a special Town Meeting at a time when we have never held one (on a Thursday night in the first week of February) to induce the Townspeople to "request" a local option meals tax and and to spread the room's tax to people who rent their own homes in the summer. Let's take a closer look.

Harwich already derives about $427,000 in local options taxes for these items. We just want more. Of course, the town leaders will tell you that this is only to get the legislation passed. We will be asked again in the future to adopt the taxes if they pass the legislature. Yeah, right. Someone will inevitably say at that next meeting "we already approved this at the last meeting, so let's get on with it!" Moreover, the same legislation has languished in the Legislature for nearly two years and has no date for a vote during the next two year session. That's why our State Rep wants the vote; so that she can say that her constituents really want these taxes.

If that's the case, why are we spending $6000 for a special Town Meeting in the dead of winter when we can guarantee the lowest turnout possible? As there is no date for a legislative vote, why didn't we wait until May when the people affected would actually be here to participate? There are no absentee ballots for a Town Meeting!

Perhaps the best reason to wait for any vote (aside from the good old taxation without representation argument above) rests with the answers to a few questions. First, who would this affect? How many houses and/or restaurants are involved in the adoption of the taxes? How much money are we talking about raising? And who would enforce the collection of the room's tax from the home owners?

Interestingly, no one is in the position of answering any of these questions with anything other than opinion. Consider that the homeowners already pay property taxes. So the load on town services is no greater than if the owner himself were there. They also pay State and Federal Income Taxes covering the rent. Moreover, some of the new money would have to be set aside for new Town employees to monitor just who is renting their own house (which is why they couldn't answer the questions above when I posed them to Town Hall officials recently - no one knows). All this puts a different slant on a comment made by one current Harwich Selectman in his last race for reelection. When defending why the last override had nothing to do with him (even though he was the chair of the override committee while he was a Selectman), he said he was just employing a "pay as you go" strategy for the Town. Pay as you go, indeed! So what if the tourists pass us by and don't go in this rotten economic environment? What if they don't pay because they don't go.

Again, I ask, what' the rush? Tell the Selectmen you want them to do some actual research. Demand that they tell us who this affects and what we as a Town stand to gain (after expenses). Ask them why they didn't wait for greater participation in one of the purest forms of democracy; the Town Meeting. And while you're at it, ask the Town's elected officials - as they rush in the dark of winter to do this - how they know that any other Town will follow us, so that we are not hung out to dry.