Community Corner
Letter to the Editor: Garbage Collection is 'One of Our Only Benefits'
Hamilton resident Stephen Newbold writes that he pays more than $7,000 a year in taxes and one of the only benefits he receives is trash collection and does not favor the proposed pay-as-you-throw plan.
To the Editor:
An open letter to the Hamilton Board of Selectmen,
I am writing about the downgrade of services that you are proposing on our garbage collecting.
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I find that often people use abbreviations (SMART) that mean the opposite of what is actually being done (NOT SMART).
It is like using averages to try and justify something without considering all the data. It sounds good but is not reality!
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Our family always fills the one free bin but we have NEVER purchased an extra bag, so we have NEVER had to put out more than the one bin since you changed the rules on the last downgrade. So, some people must be purchasing a lot more bags than we do to get to your average number. (Where does your data come from?)
My question is: "What is the benefit to my family paying over $7,300 a year in real estate tax to the town of Hamilton?"
We have never had any benefit from the schools, since we have no children, and the money paid out for schools just increases our property taxes every year.
Our road is in need of repair again, and has been for some time.
We have to pay for our water.
One of our only benefits is the garbage collection, which you now want us to pay for separately.
This is not much of a percentage of our total tax but is a large percentage of the benefits we are paying for.
Why do the selectmen spend their time trying to make the town of Hamilton worse, rather than doing what the majority residents want?
You seem to be regularly taking away benefits from the residents, without any improvements on our behalf. Why is that? Financial gain? Town's image? Jumping on the "bandwagon" for going green? But yet our taxes remain the same, or increase?
It would be nice to see some positive reasons for our staying in this town!
Why not keep the one free barrel but give us the extra collections so we can fit everything into this one barrel and keep us all happy.
Please start listening to what the residents want and not doing what you WANT them to WANT!
It is not just about saving money but spending the money you raise wisely.
In the extreme case you could save money by getting rid of EVERYTHING the Town does for the residents but would that make sense for you to be re-elected? Of course not!
Regards,
Stephen Newbold
Hamilton
