Quote:
Originally Posted by sgthoskins
Most liberal towns are like that.
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Maybe, but I'd say that's an over-generalization.
Keene has a higher stated tax rate, but they also seem to have lower assessments from the comps I've looked in other college towns. Not to mention the city has a fair chunk of land that's removed from the tax base (Parks/college/medical).
That loss of tax-base is certainly a problem other towns in the country have, but there's no local income/sales tax like other munis have, and for a college town the housing base/assessments falls relatively low as well. So it's not like say, Cambridge, where you can coast on the fact that the base cost of housing is high.
You've either got to raise the rate, find alternative sources of tax revenue (not sure how you do that in NH), or reduce services. But that potentially makes your college town less appealing. There's a real math problem there, not just simple party politics.
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