Those familiar with the springtime ritual dance of town budgetmakers and local interest groups thought they were prepared this year for the traditional pronouncements of “what a difficult year this will be” both as justification for more spending and less. The push and pull of competing complaints of “too few services” and “too many taxes” usually evolves into a pas de deux consisting of two steps forward, one step back, a couple of side steps, culminating in the twirling flourish of a successful referendum vote. The effects of revaluation on the 2002 Grand List, however, has made the dance floor look more like a mosh pit this year.

Revaluation has signaled a tectonic shift in the local tax burden away from commercial and industrial properties to residential properties. Two weeks ago, Board of Finance Chairman John Kortze pointed out these telling statistics: In 2001, homeowners shouldered 79 percent of the local tax burden; in 2002, 83 percent; in 2003 it will be more than 90 percent. Residences are paying a higher percentage of taxes because residential development has far outdistanced other types of development. But that is not the whole story.

Early this year, when property assessments were first mailed out, many homeowners became alarmed at how much the valuation of their property had risen. At that time, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal tried to calm them by saying, “It’s not an increase in taxes, but a reshuffling of the deck.” They were told that if there were no major improvements to homes between revaluations, property taxes should stay about the same, or at least reflect only increases attributed to the budget. That did not turn out to be true. Because the housing market in Newtown has been flooded with high-margin, high-priced luxury homes –– McMansions, their critics call them –– there has been increased competition for the more modestly priced homes that most people are looking for, pushing up their prices at a faster rate than the market as a whole. According to Lesher-Glendinning, the town’s revaluation firm, the greatest rise in assessments came for homes valued in the $150,000 to $270,000 range. These are the homes most likely to be owned by the taxpayers least likely to be able to afford large tax increases –– the elderly and families of modest means.

Eighty percent of property valuations went up; 20 percent stayed the same or decreased. The average increase, according to the town’s assessor, is in the 60 to 80 percent range. If the current proposed budget is passed, those property owners whose assessments rose 60 percent will pay 15.5 percent more in taxes. One-third of Newtown’s homeowners saw their assessments rise 70 percent or higher, which would increase their tax bills by 22.7 percent or more. So while the budget increase may be ten percent or less, the tax increase for most people will be 15 percent, 20 percent, or more.

So the solution is to shift the tax burden back on to commercial and industrial taxpayers by encouraging more of that kind of development, right? Consider this. Applying the proposed tax rate of 24 mills to the current Grand List, one mill reflects assessments totaling $116 million. Newtown’s top ten taxpayers –– Connecticut Light & Power, Sand Hill Plaza, Curtis Packaging Corp., Barnabas Realty Group, Homesteads of Newtown, Kendro Laboratory Products, Harvey Hubbell Inc, Newtown Shopping Village, Taunton Press, and Arbar Properties –– have a combined assessment of $114 million, or less than one mill. Newtown could pave over Fairfield Hills and fill the landscape with office buildings and parking lots and still earn itself less than a mill in revenue. The people flocking to town to populate those new office buildings would undoubtedly want houses nearby, spurring residential growth even more, driving housing prices even higher, and making our next revaluation an even bigger bombshell. Those advocating economic development as Newtown’s salvation should do the math and then look at the landscape to see where we would put the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development that would be needed to make a meaningful difference to taxpayers.

There is a line many towns cross at which they leave the best of themselves behind. Newtown is looking down at that line right now. We have to ask ourselves, “Is Newtown a community or a commodity?” If we want to remain a community, we have to seriously consider how much of ourselves we want to continue to put on the market. For a start, the town should become far more aggressive in preserving open space through land acquisition, land use incentives for developers, and tax incentives for property owners to leave their land open. The $200,000 held in reserve in the proposed budget for the purchase of open space is not nearly enough to yield the kind of savings down the road that this town will need to regain control of its tax rate and its future. We can act now or consign ourselves to being wallflowers as we watch our town dance itself to financial exhaustion.