Tim Gaudreau | Oppose HB1648

This bill takes the tragedy of our school funding to make it egregiously worse. Home owners with higher valued homes already pay disproportionately more in property tax to fund schools. Increasing their taxes to lower the taxes for others is the text book definition of making school funding unfair. People with lower value homes still have students in school and they. should contribute to the funding just the same.Just because someone lives in an area of the state with higher home prices, doesn't mean they are, in fact, more able to support a higher tax burden, nor are they likely to have more children in the school system. I also own rental property -- this bill will most definitely have an impact on me. I have a very small margin on my properties, yet increase in taxes will disproportionately affect my business. None of my properties have had a student in the school system and yet I would be asked to pay more? I also own a second home that I am currently rehabbing in order to move to. Then I will rehab my current home to sell. I do not have the resources for an increased tax burden on these homes over the years that this process will take. A fundamental shift in how property is taxed by shifting the burden on to a few is a deep injustice. We save as best we can on order to make investments that appreciate over time. An unpredictable tax increase will make it beyond or means. Trying to shift tax burden onto out of state owners, is misguided. Those valuable vacation homes already pay a disproportionate share of taxes. Think about it: a vacation home on Winnepesauke that is a second home, pays the same tax burden as all of the other homes in the town, Yet that property requires significantly more services. That home owner is already subsidizing the schools system without out any voting representation. Squeezing that owner for more is a mistake. I think this bill is extraordinarily short sighted and does not account for the nuance of home ownership in our state.