Editor:
    The Town of Kennebunkport faces a decision that has great consequences for the future character of the community. Whereas in the past “red button” issues dominated the political landscape (such as allowing buses to park in downtown or building a new town hall) the revaluation topic will spark several new issues.
    One new issue will be the inter-generational conflict between those who use the primary amount of the property tax, namely the schools, and those who use the least of property tax monies, the older and other non-school using citizens, such as single parents, etc. Most residents in the community have no children in school and receive no “10 thousand per child school stipend” and yet they stand to lose more of their property tax money to school monies than the younger families who generally live in less expensive homes because their primary costs of family raising are higher.
    Consequently we have an inter-generational battle between younger parents who have children and older, childless residents who do not utilize the schools. This latter group, due to a substantial hike in taxes, will face the primary issue of losing their homes while the younger group, because of lower assessments, will stand to gain more. Hence an inter-generational struggle will occur between the two groups as one effect of a vote to revaluation.
    Another factor to consider is the precarious mortgage market along with the national decline in home sales, which will tend to lower values of homes in the future, thereby making revaluation rather nebulous at the present time. Therefore another negative result will be a reshaping of the town values by further discriminating against older families, many of whom will have to move out because of higher property taxes (in essence, higher school taxes) and thereby change the essential character of the town.
    In addition to the inter-generational inequity of a revaluation plan, now is the notion of a shaky base upon which decisions may be made. To illustrate this point, a recent article in The Wall Street Journal stated that a possible out come of the current sub-prime mortgage crisis is that it is entirely possible that house prices may fall by 10 percent over the next two years. If this is proves true and Kennebunkport brings home prices up to 100 percent, the net result would be a phony base upon which property values would be based. Then it would be too late to undo the raise in taxes suffered by older residents of the community who live in more expensive homes and they are forced to pay more taxes.
    The school tax portion of the property tax is a problem that needs to be solved in Maine in particular because Maine is the highest taxed state in the nation.  Locally, the towns of Kennebunkport and Kennebunk pay about 75 percent of the property taxes to the schools. New Hampshire has less taxes than Maine, yet they pay only 48 percent of their property taxes to the schools. Consequently in addition to the higher taxes in the overall state (i.e. income, sales and bottle taxes) a revaluation will raise the taxes of many older established residents who have benefited from inheriting lands from their parents and lower the property taxes of newcomers to the many of whom have huge families that stand to benefit from expensive schools.
    In addition to the sub-prime mortgage market is the notion that a recession might be in the cards according to Alan Greenspan in his new book, “The Age of Turbulence.” This forecast adds to factors contributing to a negative vote the present time on revaluation for the town of Kennebunkport.
    John Cassidy reviews the book in “Conde Nast Portfolio” and contributes much of the economic problem of the precarious mortgage market to the former fed chairman by stating that his is policy of keeping interest rates too low for too long a time allowed hucksters to peddle dubious loans, which contributed greatly to the economic predicament, which adds another negative reason for voting against revaluation by the long time residents of Kennebunkport.
John Vinagro
Kennebunkport