To the Editor:Mr. Kearney and Ms. Jacob are confusing to the taxpayer.

Two letters in this week's Newtown Bee, written by

Mr Kearney suggests that because Newtown's mill rate is higher than other towns that "This essentially makes us one of the highest taxed towns in the nation." Mr Kearney ignores that the mill rate is only part of how taxes are established. The assessed value is the other part of the equation. So the lower the aggregate assessed value is the higher the mill rate needs to be to raise the right amount of revenue to cover the town's budget. Greenwich has very high home values so logically their mill rate will be low. That mill rate thus does not indicate whether taxpayers are paying taxes higher or lower than other communities.

Ms Jacob would like us to believe that the bond payment was unexpected and was used to lower our taxes.  A bond premium is confusing, but in essence interest rates have decreased and instead of having our interest rate decreased we take a cash refund and keep paying the higher interest rate. Think of it like refinancing your mortgage, but instead of a lower interest rate you get a cash rebate and keep paying your old rate. The "rebate" is then spent and used to cover spending increases. In Newtown's case the rebate was used to make it look like the municipal operating expenses in the budget are lower than they really are.

The use of the capital budget has been used to hide increases in the municipal operating expenses. Budget money has been moved from the yearly budget to the capital budget, and financed over 15 or 20 years and with interest. This increases our costs not decreases them.   It's like taking a Home Equity Loan to pay for your monthly expenses. Yes your monthly costs look lower, but in fact your expenses have now increased because you have to pay back the loan plus interest. In addition as the capital borrowing is paid back we then spend the savings and say the budget remains flat. It is like when you fi-nally pay off your mortgage and you no longer have that monthly payment.  Then you go and spend the savings on something else but say your monthly expenses have not increased.

Our budgets should be more transparent so taxpayers really understand what the cost implications are of these tricky budget tactics. These tactics make one year's tax increase look lower but significantly increase our costs over the long run.

The final result is this year's budgeted municipal operating expenses will go up 3.86 percent rather than the published budget which suggest an increase of only .09 percent. The increase in the municipal operating budget is almost 33 percent higher than the Board of Education increase. The moral of the story is that we need to pay as much attention to changes in what we are spending as we do in how we are financing them.

Bruce Walczak

12 Glover Avenue, Newtown         April 20, 2016