To the Editor:

This letter is directed at the nearly 5,000 Newtown seniors whose financial contribution of millions of tax dollars has never motivated the town leadership to reciprocate with building a new senior center to replace a building that accommodates only 110 seniors. This promise was made on many occasions during the first selectman's visits to the senior center.

Instead, the leadership has devoted more than $7 million to demolish buildings in Fairfield Hills. When the plans for a new community center were presented, seniors were asked to financially support the building in an additional request for $5 million expenditure. They were expected to assimilate into the community center. The town talk was more focused on the design with... an Olympic pool for the Torpedoes, a skating rink, and an aquatic center.

Now the initial plans have been changed. They are allotting large space in the center to the Parks and Recreation Department. But they are holding out the bait for us to bite and swallow... in their plans for a $3 million senior center in the Capital Improvement Plans in 2018. If any of you believe this, remember they are also asking you to participate in an additional $3 million debt to build it.

The reality is that the town leadership has spent over $3 million to demolish the building and now is asking for an additional $5 million and $3 million. Additional funds will be needed to clear out the subterranean toxic remnants. Then add tax increases of 1.8 percent in the town and school budget and the probability that Newtown may have to make a 30 percent contribution to the State's Teacher Retirement Program, which may add an additional 6 percent to the 1.8 percent already approved.

How can any senior resident expect to survive living here with these additional tax burdens? In 2012 the town's reassessed many senior communities and increased real estate taxes as high as 30 percent. My taxes at the Regency went from $8,500 to nearly $12,000. The town is currently reassessing all homes and I would be surprised if my taxes were reduced because Newtown has one of, if not the highest mill rate in Fairfield County.

Town leadership is unwilling to deal with its "out of control spending" and the fact that it puts an incredible burden on seniors living on a fixed incomes. Many seniors will be forced to sell their homes at a loss in the next few years. They will never have the opportunity that other seniors have to network and socialize as they do in other communities in Monroe, Southbury, other places. All they have to offer is a lot of talk and future promises while we pay more taxes. If you feel as I do, I ask you to attend a meeting at the Senior Center, April 5, at 3:30 pm, to discuss and plan how we will refuse the bait they are dangling for us to bite.

Dr Rudy Magnan

60 Watkins Drive, Sandy Hook          March 22, 2017