The selectmen set the warrant articles for the budget, most voters respect the judgment of the selectmen when they go into the polling booth. Most votes see the warrant article has been approved by the selectmen most people will vote yes. Trusting the judgment of the selectmen. The past few years we have followed our leadership over a cliff. We trusting their judgment. Our tax rate for town government is steadily increasing. We were number one in the county in the year 2000 at $9.09. It steadily declined to $4.73 in 2004 about the time John Stetser took control, now it has steadily increased till we are now number 6th highest in the county at $7.01. This year in March we must use our good judgment in excepting what the selectmen approved.
The school budget shows the same trend. We went from 7th highest in the county in 2000 to the highest in 2007 at a tax rate of $17.13 and in 2008 we are the second highest behind Monadnock School at $16.22. Yes! We can not blame the leaders at the town hall for the school, but we can blame our budget committee for both budgets. Replace the people up for election this year with people with people that have an interest in saving our town from being the highest taxed community in the state.
The Winchester Residents deserve better from our elected leadership for what we are getting for our tax dollars.
The town doesn't look like it did one year ago. We have two tools here in place now. One: the winchesterinformer.com keeps asking hard important questions, where is the accountability for our tax dollars. Two: The people should keep posting their concerns on the winchesterinformer. It is having an affect on our town government toward being more accountable.
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I attended last night's town budget hearing and I was really disappointed with the turn out. There was a crowd there, but they were ALL (but a handful) town employees. Making sure that they still have jobs. Where are the concerned citizens? I guess everyone doesn't care how much they are paying in taxes.... If all of the warrant articles pass, we will be paying an extra $2.00 more! Calculate that and see just how quickly that adds up on your tax bill!!!
They want $15,000 to attract new businesses to our town. But the Engineer said that even with the new sewer plant we will not have the capacity to add new customers. That would def. include industry!
PLEASE EVERYONE - attend the meetings. Tonight is the new sewer plant issue. Which alone is going to add 90 cents to our tax base.
How much more in taxes can you handle?
Ain't never going to happen, everyone wants someone else to do the dirty work, and O buy the way they might get mad. But these people will show up to vote, so thanks for going to the meetings and reporting the facts, it will make a big impact in the end.
The Selectmen are banking on paying for 2009-2010 budget increase spending, with their anticipated 3% property re-evaluation increase. This is what we believe the selectmen are expecting next year. Everyone might think that their property taxes will go down under the new 2009-20010 re-evaluation because of the economy; but it won't. Chesterfield's re-evaluation went up 4%. So the tax rate per thousand will be less; but your over all tax bill will increase. Just wait and see.
So, if you're not mad enough yet, wait till they add the sewage plant repairs the state will mandate. The state will not let us, the town,continue to dump untreated gray water in the river forever.
This year, we have a good chance to take back "our town" at the deliberative session. The deliberative session is the most important time to stop any and all increases and make changes to the warrant articles, not at the voting booth. You can bet the town employees and their families will be there to protect their interests and to vote to spend and line their pockets.
The only people at the budget committee public hearing Tuesday was...town employees. Why? Let me make this clear, This is our best chance to make an impact, to make changes, to show we won't stand for these outrageous increases, year after year. Don't hope the other guy will do it for you, it's time we all took responsibility for how out town is run.
Whats with the 3/4 page notice for filing period in Winchester that's in the Keene Sentinel? There has to be a logical reason, but i can't understand what could justify this kind of expense. Maybe because we have all this money to waste, next year get a full page notice, and another one in braille.Can't Wait to here the justification for this expense in a town that has a tax rate like ours.
And the large print, i guess they think we are blind as well as dumb.
Talk about going overboard and wasting tax payer dollars, what simpleton was responsible for that fiasco? I guess they are trying to show up all the surrounding towns by placing the largest ad possible and once again showing they have no concerns when it comes down to wastefully spending other people's money.
If Jim did that on his own he should be terminated, if by direction of the selectmen, well you know how to vote.
$1,720.34 the for a 2 day 3/4 page add in the Keene Sentinel is a little much. Can anyone imagine wasting that much of someone else's money. We can not terminate Jim but we can vote him out of office.
re: the Town of Winchester ads in the Jan 15th and 16th of the Keene Sentinel which were 4 col X 18", the AD dept. of the Sentinel said it cost $970.14 PER DAY. That's a total of $1,970.28....??? Frightful!
Sorry, typo on the above. That should be $1,940.28.
Just another example of the irresponsibility of our dept. heads when it comes to taxpayer dollars. There was no need to put a notice that large in the paper, as evidenced by the smaller notice this past weekend. This is clear evidence of why the Town Clerk budget was more than $13,000.00 in the red last year, it's just more of the same again with no regards for us taxpayers.
On the news tonight, they said that even president obama, liberal of all liberals, has had the horse sense to freeze the salaries in the white house staff. What's the problem with the pile of calculators wasting away at the town hall. Guess the selectmen only use the one with big numbers on it.
Well the 5 selectmen clique and their jobs are safe for another year. Wednesday we learned our warrant article petition to go back to 3 selectmen was disqualified by the town's attorney Bart Mayor. We needed 2% of the registered voters signatures instead of the usual 25 signatures. It seems the selectmen know the laws when it benefits them.
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