It's Time for a Tax Cut (Part 1)
- Jean Nam
- Apr 5
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 12
The Town Manager and Select Board have been putting out financial projections in which they claim that we need a Tax Increase for FY27. Sigh. If there’s one thing that I think many people can agree on, it’s that we pay a lot of taxes here in Sudbury, as a result, we have many “buckets of money” sitting around. And yet, when it comes to town services, one sometimes wonders what is happening to all those buckets of money?
Well, I took a deep dive into one area. Community Preservation Act monies. This is a 3% surcharge on top of your regular taxes. If you look at your tax bill, you’ll see it listed as “Community Preservation Act” right on top of “Residential Tax.” This 3% surcharge was approved by Town Meeting in 2001. The funds collected are reserved for only qualifying projects in the areas of Housing, Historic Preservation, and Open Space and Recreation. We have completed some wonderful projects with the use of these funds.
However, if you look at our performance since 2021, we are lacking in oversight and accountability. Aside from administrative and debt service payments, since 2021 we have approved some 29 projects at a cost of about $6.8 Million dollars. However, some $4.5 Million of that is sitting around unused/unspent.
In particular, if you look at the projects for Parks and Recreation, only about 15% of the money has been used. In fact, there are almost $1 Million ($999,688 to be exact) allocated to Parks and Rec for projects that seem to not have even started!
And yet, as the CPC (Community Preservation Committee) concluded their project reviews for this year, they are pushing forward a project for $500,000 for Parks and Recreation and the Fairbank Community Center.
What are we doing? We just keep allocating money for projects that don’t ever happen. And then we hear from the Town Manager and Select Board that we’re going to need a tax increase? It’s like our hard earned tax dollars just go into a pit (in this case, the CPC lockbox) and never turn into the promised projects.
How can this happen? There are so many elected, appointed, and hired people who should have our backs and be responsible for making sure that our tax dollars are used appropriately and that there is a commitment to completing promised projects. Let’s take the Park and Recreation Projects as an example. Here are the layers/checkpoints that should be working to ensure our tax dollars are allocated appropriately:
Checkpoints for a proposed project
The Parks and Recreation and Facilities staff, with oversight from their boss, the Town Manager, should be scoping projects and matching the work to their capacity. A project shouldn’t be proposed if there is no capacity to do the work.
The Parks and Recreation Commission (an elected body) has oversight over the Parks and Recreation department proposals and should raise a flag if there is an issue.
The Community Preservation Committee (appointed body) has oversight over projects that are requesting CPA funds. If they see prior projects that are unfinished or not started, they should be raising a flag and asking why. They shouldn’t be blindly approving even more projects if there is a history of unfinished work.
The Select Board (an elected body) gives a recommendation to Town Meeting for the projects proposed by the CPC. Again, this is another layer that should be flagging if work is not being accomplished in a timely manner.
Unfortunately, these 4 layers of checks and balances don’t seem to be working. We shouldn’t have a $4.5 Million backlog in projects. We shouldn’t be approving some $500,000 for new Park and Recreation projects when almost $1 Million in previous projects haven’t even been started.
So what can we do? Well, if the backend checks (Town Manager, Parks and Rec Commission, CPC, and Select Board) aren’t going to do the work of holding staff and committees accountable for projects promised to the community, then we, the tax payers, need to step in. And one way to do this is to cut off the supply. We have been very generous with our 3% surcharge which results in about $3 Million in CPA funds every year. We can reduce that. I’m proposing that we reduce the surcharge to 1.5%. And, as my son recently said to a friend, “If you prove yourself, then we can talk about restoring your privileges on our video game server.”
This reduction of CPA will be a Tax Cut! Look at that line on your tax bill, it will go to ½ of what it shows now. As the data shows, big projects aren’t happening anyway, and we have a big backlog of projects that are already funded, so a reduction in the CPA surcharge at this point would not mean fewer services. Hopefully (!) it will send a message to all 4 of those “checkpoints” that they need to step it up and start being accountable to the tax payers and treating the tax revenue with respect.
I’m starting a citizen’s petition to ask for this reduction in CPA surcharge. Please PM me if you are interested in signing it.
Updated April 2025: I have submitted a citizen's petition for the upcoming May 5-6 Town Meeting. Citizen's petitions are typically at the end of Town Meeting, so if you would like an email reminder of when to come to Town Meeting to vote, please subscribe to this mailing list and I will do my best to update you on the exact timing.
