Newtown Taxpayers Are

Subsidizing Development

To the Editor:

God bless Daniel Maxwell (“Memorial Day Also For the Newtown That Once Was,” Letter Hive, June 3). A young gentleman comes home to Newtown and goads us who are in danger of getting used to injustice.

Developers and their enablers — the realtors, builders, and property owners who sell to them — are hurting our town by covering open space with oversized houses. They are doing it at our expense, which means that they are living on what outraged conservatives used to call Welfare.

They should be, in the words of the young gentleman, ashamed of themselves. Not only for building ugly, oversized houses. But also for getting rich on money that the rest of us pay in property taxes to educate the children that end up living in the oversized houses they sell. Our tax dollars allow them to charge a ton of money for houses that devour open space, blight our roads, and degrade Newtown because the people who move in can afford that money, knowing their kids will get a nice free education — courtesy of the town’s citizens already here.

We are subsidizing the developers’ profits. They are ripping the town off in the name of free enterprise. The developers trumpeted two arguments in the past. Property rights and jobs. We own it. It’s the “American Way.” No one can tell us how to profit by it.

But can’t we ask them to stop profiting on our taxes? Every time they build a house our taxes go up. Why? Because they are not paying their way. They are building houses that will cost their neighbors more than the new occupants will pay in taxes. I’m a neighbor and I’m tired of the developers ruining the landscape and making me pay for it. Thank you, Daniel Maxwell, for reminding me. How wonderful to have a clear eye from a temporary traveler who’s come home to remind us that Newtown was wonderful — and can still be saved, if citizens and government unite to take action.

As for the sorry old lie about jobs, the only Newtown residents who can afford to stay in town and work at the building crafts are blessed with parents already here. There isn’t a younger carpenter, or electrician or plumber or stonemason working on one of the monstrosities today who could buy a house in this town.

What do we do? We cannot assume that people who build monstrosities are themselves monsters. In some cases they are our neighbors, too. On the other hand, we have to do something to protect our town from them.

Let me make a few modest proposals that could easily implemented by a bold and brave town government. (Which we have, incidentally. If you doubt that take a close look at Fairfield Hills, note the sheer size of the buildings, and realize how bold and how brave Newtown’s government was to seize an opportunity for generations to come.)

Here are my modest proposals:

1. Offer tax rebates to property buyers who preserve an old house.

2. Developers, builders, and realtors will pay the difference between property taxes and the actual cost of sending 2.5 kids to our free schools for 12 years. (Presumably they will charge the buyer.) That money will go directly into the school budget.

3. Conversely, if property owners donate land for open space instead of developing it, they pay no property taxes on their homes for 12 years, in addition to the write-off they already get on their state and federal taxes.

4. Levy a 15 percent property tax surcharge, yearly, on new homes that exceed 5,000 square feet. That money goes to the open space purchase fund. (This last one is kind of fun, in addition to both curbing excess and helping open land. There are people, the sort who park a Hummer in the driveway, who might regard their tax surcharge as a badge of honor. If the 15 percent property tax surcharge becomes a status symbol, the town can raise it until people get rational.)

Incentives are the key to free enterprise. While the “free” enterprise of building huge houses that raise all our taxes is neither free, nor fair.

Justin Scott

Parmalee Hill Road, Newtown                                    June 8, 2005