For Many Residents,

The Borough Is Indeed Broken

To the Editor:

With all due respect to Jim Gaston (Letter Hive, May 30, “The Borough — Maintaining ‘A Pristine Early American Elegance’”), I believe that he missed the point of my May 21 letter [printed May 23] about the borough. I am not taking issue with 184 years of notable history, legions of dedicated Newtowners past and present, or even the aesthetics of Main Street. My point is simple fairness…value received for tax burden paid. In fact, if you accept Mr Gaston’s premise of the great value to Newtown of the borough’s appearance, then it would follow that all of Newtown is the beneficiary and, therefore, all of Newtown should share in paying the requisite cost.

That is not the case today. Residents outside the arbitrary boundary of the borough pay nothing for this goodness, and borough residents who do not live in the rectangle formed by Main, Church Hill, Queen, and Glover pay the borough levy, but receive little to nothing more in terms of services than nonborough residents. How is this fair?

And what are the services that Mr Gaston touts? First and foremost is strict zoning. But, zoning laws are zoning laws, and the town has an established an effective zoning agency which would ensure that the laws are enforced and the “pristine early American elegance” of Main Street is maintained. Why does Newtown need a duplicate structure to perform this function? It would actually appear from a budget analysis that the greatest “service” the borough performs is the pass-through payment for fire hydrant water to the water company. Is it really necessary to maintain a borough organization to pay a water bill?

Monument maintenance, health district participation, the iconic flagpole…? Each of these “services” is a $10 line item in the borough budget. Not sure how much “service” is rendered by the borough for these items — but, not surprisingly, any government organization that spends a third of its budget just to maintain itself is unlikely to have sufficient resources to provide fairly and equally to all of its tax-paying constituents.

Quoting a family aphorism, Mr Gaston claims that “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” Well, if you own a home on Main Street and receive an annual $3,000 stipend from the borough as he does, I can certainly appreciate how you might feel it “isn’t broken.” But, if you live away from the center of town, and are paying additional taxes without commensurate benefits, you may very well feel that it is indeed “broken” and should be fixed.

I can close with a bit of my own family lore. My Dad was fond of saying that there is nothing more worthless than a good idea whose time has passed. The Newtown Borough is such an idea. The borough leadership should resolve to either provide equivalent services to all borough residents or, failing that, to disincorporate itself. The current situation, where all residents pay the same tax mill rate, but full benefits are provided only to a select residential subset, is patently unfair and needs to be redressed.

George Schmidt

12 Old Castle Drive, Newtown                                          June 3, 2008