It Doesn't Have to Be Like This

That's us (in the boat).

I don't need to tell anyone reading this that we are in a perfect storm.  Between incoming tariff-induced price pain and the corresponding market volatility, the pre-existing condition of still never-addressed inflation, higher municipal burdens that come from a bipartisan collaboration between state and federal actors intent passing the buck, soaring rent/housing/home energy/consumer good costs, a gutted federal government whose ramifications will be felt for generations, and, in North Haven, a confusing and burdensome revaluation on home property values that has flooded the zone with misinformation, we’re in bad shape.  Add to this a systemic structure that readily exploits workers, stagnates or depresses their wages, keeps their healthcare premiums high, and levies them with escalating bill payments as the corporations and executives see higher profit margins and sweeter returns every year.  I’d said we’ve really stepped in it, but the truth is that it’s stepped on us. 

Because of these burdens, the Town of North Haven is asking for around a 7% increase just to maintain the level of services we currently have.  It’d sound like a bananas ask if the context behind it didn’t add up.  That the context is difficult to explain for the uninitiated, and easy to exploit by kamikaze actors discontent with their political parties, makes a budget like this one an especially challenging sell to a public who are exhausted and worn down, constantly thinking about their wallet and how there seems to be less in it every day.

It's a crummy year to be asking everyone for an extra 7% just to break even, but don’t expect help on the horizon any time soon. I’m bearish on a kindly economic forecast for working people in the near future. Hoping that relief will trickle down from above by our benevolent political leaders, who've spent years casting poverty as a moral failing, seems like a waste of our emotional faculties. North Haven's failure to invest in good years has provided us with elementary schools in desperate need of cooling, understaffed emergency services, a recreation center that looks like it’s preserved in amber since the 1970s, and other departments scaling back rather than innovating and growing. The excuse for putting off the big changes we need, particularly on the education side, has always been that people are struggling, which they perennially are. Yet, these same struggling people rely on sidewalks that don't crumble, free and accessible programming offered by our parks and recreation department/libraries, and the public school system, which has filled in so many of the gaps left by the gutting of the social welfare state that it's basically replaced it for K-12 aged children (which also explains why Trump and Musk want to abolish it).

Developers, hip new restauranteurs, and the people who decide where to put Trader Joes stores take note of these pennywise, pound-foolish choices.  So, some of the revenue not being generated that would theoretically lower our mill rate may be directly correlated to the decisions we make to delay or defer future planning for…a different future date.

Coming soon...somewhere else

We shouldn’t have to be in this position every year, asking our town whether we want to have high-quality schools or a functional fire department able to respond to emergencies in a timely manner.  We shouldn’t have to constantly be thinking about what quality-of-life sacrifice we want to put forward on the altar of tax relief every year.  Will this be the year we do without Music Under the Stars or leaf pickup or start a pay-to-play model of sports?  Or do we go the DOGE route and just start letting go hard-working civil servants- our friends and neighbors and teachers and helpers- and hope that somehow by science or magic we make it the 1990s again and pull ourselves out of this spiral of exploitation?

Let’s be the clear; the constant crunch we face year-over-year is the result of our state representatives (not just in North Haven, and not just Republicans, though they certainly shouldn’t escape scrutiny) caring more about easing the tax burden of corporations and millionaires and billionaires and tax cheats than they do about the working people of their own communities.   We deserve to have nice things, to live nice lives.  Our kids shouldn’t have to accept a lower standard than what we got growing up.  There’s no reason a C-Suite Executive from Greenwich or a State Senator from North Haven should ever be able to purchase a third or fourth property while we struggle to keep up with the taxes on our first. But sadly that’s not how it works.  While they’re buying new luxury cars, we’re scaling back public transportation.  While they’re adding a new swimming pool to one of their homes, we’re trying to figure out if we can keep the public pool open.

Sadly, this is not getting better.  It’s escalating. We have a federal government actively declaring war on public service, attempting to punish the most vulnerable and people who’ve made it their life’s work to help others.  They’re abolishing departments that cure disease and provide special education grants to low-income school districts.  They’re attempting to tell us what we can and can’t say in our workplaces, our libraries, our universities, and our classrooms.  But in a Democracy, we don’t live by edict or decree.  We get to have a say in the world we want. And while we’ve still got that chance, it’s important that we speak loudly.

It’s by the grace of good fortune that the people serving our town on the North Haven Board of Finance and Board of Education are not ideologues. They all want what’s best for this town and have tried their best to create a responsible budget that shifts nearly every dollar they can to ease whatever burden they can.  They’re not just thinking about their own wallets or what services are personally relevant to them and dumping the rest. They’re thinking about how all the moving pieces that make up a town and a school system work together to create the kind of place we’ve all chosen to call home.  They’re asking us to consider whether we’re willing to lose any of that.   And they’re doing so with two hands tied behind their back, thanks to a long list of obligations and mandates, as well as that perfect economic storm of troublesome circumstances I spoke to at the top of this piece.

It’s for that reason that I’m supporting this budget on May 20th and I hope you will too.  But I’m not just supporting this budget, hoping it passes, and going back to sleep.  I’m going to keep pushing to make sure that the burden of this economic pain and strain finally get pushed to those who have the capacity make due with a little less; people like Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, and Vince and Linda MacMahon. Not to working people in North Haven struggling to get by.  I’m committing to fight for them not just so they can have temporary tax relief, but so they can experience continued economic and political empowerment.   And maybe if we all step up and accept this challenge, we can stop getting stepped on and start taking back the lives and destinies we deserve.