Portsmouth is loaded with progressives. The mayor and town council are frequently invoked on our pages over the latest left-wing knee-jerk policy or some perceived outrage against humankind or the planet. Portsmouth is powered by Democrat rhetoric. So, are you surprised that property-rich Portsmouth doesn’t want to pay its fair share in statewide taxes?
(Portsmouth Mayor )Blalock reported in the letter that property values and tax rates “do not tell the whole story in any town” and donor towns can be rich in property value, but have modest and low-income populations, “struggling to pay their bills.” Tax rates would be raised or educational services would be cut in communities, like Portsmouth, required to send SWEPT money, above education adequacy amounts, to the state to then disperse to receiver towns.
Blalock wrote every schoolchild deserves an adequate education, but the bill is based on budget policy, not education policy. He urged the Education Committee to find the pending bill inexpedient to legislate, which would kill it.
The Argument is Invalid
Since when is education policy not about budget policy? Every school budget I’ve ever seen demands money even though no amount of money dumped into a public school in New Hampshire has managed to improve the education or the children. Performance stagnates while budgets bloat. The Teachers and administrators (and unions) get richer, without any regard for residents “struggling to pay their bills.”
Democrats couldn’t care less on another level. They are aggressively seeking to raise taxes on job creators in New Hampshire to fatten up the state coffers. Who is that going to harm? The employees of those businesses some of whom may also be struggling to pay their bills.
Blame the rich!
But asking property-rich towns (the rich) to pay more to help fund even lousy education in property-poor towns (the poor) is unfair? Yes! It’s divisive.
Mayor Jack Blalock has also come out in opposition as the author of a letter to Mel Myer, chairman of the House Education Committee.
Blalock’s Jan. 29 letter calls the donor-receiver form of education funding divisive, “pitting ‘donor’ town against ‘receiver’ town, neighbor against neighbor.”
Slaying An Ideological Jabberwock
The problem is HB709, relative to the formula for funding “an adequate education.” Pretentious Democrat towns like Portsmouth oppose this top-down act of fiscal rape, even for the purpose of funding an adequate education.
Or full-day kindergarten. Or, Keno to pay for it, which it isn’t. Or, the damn statewide education property tax itself which we have because of Democrats.
What does any of this mean for their ideological Jabberwock? The mythical income inequality narrative. That unfair free market and evil capitalism. These unethical one-percenters. “The Rich” who accumulate assets at the expense of the poor and deny opportunities to the less fortunate?
How is Portsmouth (the rich) not guilty of the very thing a majority of her citizens and most of its elected officials live and breathe as the socio-economic injustice of our time? Of every time. A problem that can only be alleviated by government intrusion and a deliberate redistribution of “wealth” by force from the haves (Portsmouth) to the Have-nots?
