[Ed note: My Southborough accepts signed letters to the editor submitted by Southborough residents. Letters may be emailed to mysouthborough@gmail.com.
The following letter is from Al Hamilton, a member of the Select Board.]
To the Editor:
Last night the Select Board received an excellent presentation from the Assessors on the tax rates for 2025. This was an eye-opening experience. The 2025 budget target was to keep the residential tax rate increases in the 4% range. Town meeting passed a budget based on this assumption. However, all the property valuation date required to set the 2025 rates was not yet available. When the dust finally settled and the data was in, residential taxes for 2025 will increase by 6.33%. Given that our residential taxes are already in the top 10% of the Commonwealths communities, this is unsettling. The unexpected increase is the result of 2 factors.
- Rapid rise in residential real estate values, particularly home of average and above values.
- Very little growth in commercial real estate values primarily driven by the high vacancy rates of the office parks in town.
The result is that the tax burden is shifting from the Commercial, Industrial, and Personal (CIP) sectors to the Residential sectors. In the past the town had enjoyed a roughly 80/20 Residential/CIP split. In recent years this split has been steadily increasing the burden on the residential sector to the point where is it now stands at 84.11%/15.89%. This trend is likely to continue in the near future, shifting more burden on to residential tax payers. In dollar terms, about $2,000,000 in annual tax burden has been shifted to residential payers. In order to return to an 80/20, split the town needs about $150,000,000 in CIP development to catch up. This is possible only if we take steps, as follows.
- We need to recognize that we are not going to see a spate of new office parks in the foreseeable future. A CIP strategy needs to focus elsewhere. There are options, a nearby Home Depot is assessed at $10,000,000, a Target at $8,000,000, the Whole Foods Plaza in Shrewsbury at $20,000,000. We all use these types of facilities. Why not locate them in town?
- We need to modernize and relax our zoning ordinances along Rte. 9 to encourage CIP growth.
- We will not be attractive to some forms of CIP development unless we can offer sewer services. Facilities like bio-tech, restaurants, food processors, manufacturers, and grocery stores can view the availability of waste water as positive factors in their location decisions. It is time for us to come up with a definitive plan for waste water services along Rt. 9 and possibly other areas.
- We need to change Southborough’s image as a place to do business. Today, commercial real estate brokers often advise their clients to avoid locating here because of the difficulty of doing business with the Town. The recent Stronger Uprising gym debacle is instructive. After months of dealing with the Town trying to find a path that would allow them to stay in Southborough, Stronger Uprising up and left for Westborough where they were up and running in a matter of a few weeks. This is not a good way to encourage CIP growth. We are in competition for CIP growth with Westborough, Northborough, Framingham, Shrewsbury, Marlborough and others and we need to understand that we are losing, and residential tax payers are paying the price.
- Finally, we need to treat the owners and developers who own and develop Rte. 9 properties as partners and stakeholders, not as pariahs. These partners contribute millions of tax dollars to our coffers and would like to contribute more. We must foster an environment that encourages them to do so.
We need to have a serious discussion about our tax policy and the percentage of the tax burden we want our residents to bear. We have a long list of nice things we want, a new school, sidewalks, community center, more police and fire fighters, library expansion, playing fields, senior services, and more. The question is how and who is going to pay for them. Do we want to look more like Acton (89.89/10.11) and Stow (94.36/5.64) or do we want to look like Westborough (70.46/29.54). These are all nice communities most of us would be happy to live in. We need to decide which path we want to take. Absent an explicit decision, followed by action, the share of the tax burden residents will have to carry will continue to rise.
Al Hamilton
35 Pine Hill Road
In response to sewers and mega stores. In many surveys the residents of this town do not want to be Shrewsbury, Westborough, Framingham or Natick. I think the alternative to big box stores and multi-unit housing might be to promote single family homes, offices and possibly a private for-profit school and other construction that fits in with the residents wishes. Let’s give up on the failed outreach to commercial builders and use the savings to lower taxes. Let’s take a break from multimillion dollar new buildings and lower taxes. Let’s bring in a consulting firm to go thru the towns budget and see what they can recommend to help lower taxes.
The election may bring changes to vouchers for schools nationally. If this goes into place we will have to address the possibility of having excess school space. It is a good time to try a new direction, it is called tighten our belts on spending.
“Politics is the art of the possible” – Bismarck
Jack
I share your desire for increased scrutiny of our budgets and lower taxes but I also recognize the political reality in our town. There is no significant constituency for reduced services/lower taxes in town, quite the opposite. Believe me I have looked.
The reality is that our Town Meeting is sufficiently satisfied with the status quo that they vote our 60+ million in taxes in about 45 min with only modest discussion. That is unlikely to change.
As for hiring a consultant to take a meat axe to the budgets, be careful what you wish for. We just hired such a consultant and they came back with a recommendation for a large increase in our Public Safety departments. The types of consultants that typically review public institutions rarely if ever suggest cuts, quite the opposite.
We could bring in a BCG, Booze Allen, or McKinsey but the costs of those services would dwarf any savings even if they were interested.
I don’t think it is politically possible to shrink our local government. If you accept that then it follows that the only path to controlling the increases in residential property taxes is to make the slice of the pie that is CIP larger. It is pretty much a mathematical fact.
To one of Jack’s points, I think you’d find more support for zoning changes to attract smaller scale retail and commercial projects than for big box stores. That may be too big of a shift for many residents.
I hear people wishing for more restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, small grocery stores, etc. I haven’t heard any desire for big box stores or mega plazas. (Although, if the town identified a specific area/parcel where that could work, it might be less scary than the generic concept.)
I do agree with Al that making cuts is very difficult to get any support for at Town Meeting. It’s much easier in theory than practice. Everyone would like to pay less, but there doesn’t seem to be an overall agreement on where money could be cut from.
In the vein of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, when one resident/official finds any significant in a budget that they believe is pork that could be trimmed, they usually find a constituency that values that dept/service and believes the budget is correct, or even too low.
Even residents who are hurt the most by tax increases likely rely on or highly value a service that costs more each year to provide a level service for.
From my observations, often we find ourselves in situations where capital investments that were put off or departments under resourced have apparently led to worse financial situations in the long run. (The past reticence to invest in a full time EDC Coordinator and zoning and wastewater improvements seem to be case-in-point.)
I don’t see any quick short-term fixes. But I’ve been happy to see a renewed collaborative effort to improve zoning to be more business friendly. (I’ll be blogging about that later today or tomorrow.)
Hi Al. This is an excellent letter. I appreciate how you have explained in plain English what the issues are and what the town needs to do.
What can the average Southborough citizen who is not on a board or committee do to help, besides vote at TM and voice their opinion to elected officials?
I have lived here for 20 years now. I have seen so many attempts by the EDC and others to get more small businesses that people want in our downtown, like cute restaurants, an ice cream shop, etc. But attempts seem to be foiled in part by the sewer issue. How can we fix this?
Getting larger businesses/a plaza on route 9 would be FANTASTIC. It seems near the 495 interchange would be an ideal location. Is the sewer issue the main problem here? I remember once upon a time there was talk of a soccer center opening over there, but that never came to fruition.
I am at the midlife point where my kids are in high school and college. I am very invested in Southborough and love it here, and I would prefer to stay here long-term. I look at the things we want as a town – all the things you mentioned – and I want those things, too! But I also don’t want to price out existing residents out of town. We need more businesses in town and we need to take action to make it happen, ASAP.
I can’t speak for Al here, but I suspect he was quoting the Home Depot and Target and Whole Foods examples as just that – examples. Those values contribute substantially to the tax base. While several would bristle at a megastore in Southborough, the larger point is worth the highlight: any CIP business will shift the tax burden from residents, and these are just a few examples and valuations. (Al, if you meant something else, please correct me as I don’t want to cloud the larger point).
With respect to “We don’t want to be another Framingham” – we simply can’t. Our own infrastructure prevents that. Even if we improve it to be inviting to business, it’d take time to ever even approach that scale. Starting with smaller scale retail and mixed use is more in kind with what our town might like. I for one hate having to spend most of my money (and my time) on weekends in places other than Southborough (groceries, services, …). I share some of Beth’s opinions with respect to seemingly shifting views, as well as where we have put off investments, only to be worse off down the road.
With respect to the Planning Board itself, it consists of five members, elected for five-year staggered terms.The main charges of the board are to review and approve applications for permits as required by the Town’s bylaws, review and approve subdivisions and developments, and conduct site plan reviews. From time to time the Planning Board proposes and amends zoning bylaws for Town Meeting approval. That last part is critical. The zoning bylaws (https://www.southboroughma.gov/858/Zoning-Bylaws) are one of the two key guardrails with respect to what does and does not get built in Southborough. The other key guardrail is the five-person Planning Board itself.
To Jess’s point about getting involved, here’s what I can share. Note that I am no expert – I’m merely sharing part of the path that I’m on or things I have done.
These are the kinds of things I’ve done and am doing to sit up, take notice, and get involved. The bylaws state what can and can’t be done, and the Planning Board is the body that can re-write those bylaws (to then get voted on at Town Meeting). So, attend a meeting, speak up, get familiar with the bylaws, and let’s work together to keep or change what we collectively want to see.
Respectfully, I hope the people in charge can come up with more creative solutions to tackle this issue than bringing in even more supermarkets and big box stores into town. We don’t need additional ones to clutter the landscape since we already have those nearby, in all the neighboring towns you mentioned. They are all bigger towns than ours in area as well, and arguably much better suited to absorb the added congestion and traffic these commercial enterprises generate. Westboro is typical that way. 21.6sq miles vs. 15.4 for Southborough, and Westboro is often a congested mess. Ditto for Marlboro at 22+ sq. miles. Also a cluster…. most times of the day. We also have a lot more open land to enjoy, still protected, which people seem to take for granted.
Southborough is a residential oasis compared to these other towns. It’s a quality of life issue. I realize it will be difficult to maintain it this way, but I hope we can be a lot more creative and innovative in how we go about dealing with these challenges. I’m not close minded about finding ways to mitigate tax burdens and maintain services, but opening the town this way does not strike me as being particularly enlightened in this regard.
Andre
I used Home Depot, Target and Whole Foods as examples of commercial developments. It is the commercial side of the equation that is suffering the most. I do need to correct you in that we have no “Big Box” stores or grocery stores in town. We are not going to fill the “CIP Gap” with boutiques and coffee shops nice as they might be.
An alternative path would be to find an “Industrial Whale” like a Sanofi. Their facilities on New York Ave in Framingham total over $115,000,000 in assessed values. Regretfully these golden geese are few and far between and vigorously competed for.
Wanting Southborough to remain a “residential oasis” is a perfectly reasonable position to take. The price of this decision is that residential tax bills will rise faster than the overall cost of government as the tax burden shifts further from the CIP side to the residential side. It is not crazy to want to be like Acton and Stow, it just comes at a price. This is a decision we should make with our eyes open rather than just letting it happen.
Poor Al, forever demographically challenged. Does he know Westborough residents pay one of the highest residential tax rates in the state.
But a tax rate is less important than the actual tax bill.
Southborough’s average and median tax bills for homeowners is much higher than Westborough’s because our home values have higher assessments. Still, that’s apples to oranges since their housing stock is different than ours. I don’t know what the assessed value comparison is for similar homes. (I’m guessing it is higher in Southborough, but I haven’t seen any analysis.)
OMG, another one… If Southborough had the tax rate of Westborough’s, the tax bill for the average assessment in Southborough would go from $12,427 to $14,659. That would be an 18% increase and would apply across the board for all residential tax payers in the town. Yes tax rates matter, they matter a lot.
Al is promoting a theory he cannot prove.
I think you missed her point.