Washburn: Get a Good Grip on the Paint Brush, the City Council is About to Move the Ladder

The beleaguered Concord property taxpayers are not “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” yet but it’s getting close.

The school board is contemplating a quarter-billion-dollar middle school. Not to be outdone, the council approved a Beaver Meadow Club House, purchased a 1950s insurance building which can’t be brought up to code to become a police station, is working on a redux and expansion of Memorial Field, and wait, how about a new fire station?

With all this going on our most senior members of the council have never requested the administration consider more cost-efficient means of delivering essential and non-essential city services. Nor have they ever promoted tax base expansion which would provide hi tech jobs. Instead, they spot zoned light industry zoned property for housing units.

I am running for council to provide much needed fiscal sanity to the budget process. I can disagree with policies without being disagreeable. At times when I watch council meetings it appears more like a cat-fight than a deliberative body.

My opponents have voted for $300,000 from the Economic Development Reserve Fund. Not one dollar will or has been spent on legitimate economic development, not one square foot of new taxable property, or creating one new well-paid job. Ask them what it was spent on.

The effects of the new property assessments and profligate spending will force many seniors to sell their homes and preclude many young families from moving in. Common sense is not a common virtue of the current council.

My opponents are the longest-serving members of the city council. They are the problem for overburdened property taxpayers…not the solution.

I can’t promise I can single-handedly stop the property tax rate increases, but I will be a loud and proud voice supporting Concord property taxpayers’ best interests.