Here is a pretty simply fact for you: In order for commercial/industrial development to increase your tax base and lower your taxes you need a lot of it. A really lot. And there is a simple reason for this: Running a municipality the way Hopkinton does (poorly) is expensive. Each developmental unit only pays a small amount into the tax revenues of the Town and therefore it takes lots of developmental units to make a significant difference. It easier to grasp this concept when dealing with homeowners. Consider that there are 20 houses on your street. Each house pays $4000 in taxes each year. That amounts to $80,000 a year. The Hopkinton Budget is $23,000,000. Those 20 houses pay for 0.3% of the operating budget. This means that if all these houses burned down or disappeared, it would not impact that Town budget AT ALL. Now consider how much any one business (American Kuhne, Renova Lighting or this idiotic Cedar Hollow development) pays per year in taxes. Right now they aren’t paying much of anything but were the Town to ever collect taxes, how much would they collect? $10,000? $20,000? Maybe $50,000?
In order to even account for 1% of the budget, you would have to collect $230,000 in taxes. And if you are paying $4000 a year in taxes, that 1% amounts to $40.00 less for you.
Don’t believe me? Here are some examples (minus other business taxes that will raise the total value): URE outfitters pays $13,000 a year in property taxes. Ashaway Twine pays $11,000 a year in property taxes. The company that owns the Main Street Pizza building pays $18,000 a year in property taxes (I can’t imagine the rent on that place…). Tim Hortons pays $7,000 a year in property taxes.
My point here is that we will NEVER EVER-EVER-EVER see a drop in our taxes because of development. What we will see is the god-awful mess of industrial blight, polluted aquifers and permanently disfigured landscapes. And the Town will be no better off for it.
If you really want to see what development is all about, drive by American Kuhne at 10 pm any night. You’ll be blinded by the assinine lighting spilling out onto beautiful Route 3. If you are lucky, you won’t be so blinded that you careen off the road. Do the people at American Kuhne realize that no one wants to see their building at night? Do they realize that the burglars will be going in the back door? The lighting is not going to stop any burglar with the balls to go in the front door in the first place.
In the long run, we will gain no benefit from developing Exit 1. Unless we literally turn Route 3 into the nightmarish twin of Warwick’s Route 2, all Vincenzo Crodone’s rhetoric will have been just that, hollow words from a sad little man bent on becoming the King of Hopkinton. Good job Vinnie. It took an outsider 5 years to accomplish what the residents had held the tide against for the last 50. Will the next Town Council be any smarter? In the end, all we will have done is lost more open space, scenery and the quite that this town has enjoyed for 250 years. We do our children a disservice for empty promises.
In a recent Sun article about an unrelated topic, the follow quote was made, “I didn’t come to Hopkinton to have a 1-acre lot that I could get in Cranston.” Just wait another 10 years and Hopkinton will look just like Cranston, strip malls and all.
Now that’s progress I can vote for! Dumbasses.
September 10, 2008 at 8:56 am
I drive at night all the time and the waste I see with lights is disgusting. I’m not just talking about commercial property either.
Don’t you just love empty buildings collecting dust causing eye sores for years and years. Look at exit 3 in Richmond where Cycle Bro’s has been empty as well as the old Bickfords. But it is nice to know there will soon be 3 brandy new pharmacy’s, for the sheeple of the area to get their mind altering drugs from.
Hey, just curious am I the only one who got a new ugly ass oven hot pad? BTW, emails I sent to this Rep. regarding my concerns were never returned or addressed. Looks like the people representing us might not care much about their constituents issues.
I question, what does Hopkinton have as resources that can be used in a positive way? How can we as citizens produce something needed that will bring sustainability to town? We need to think for ourselves and help each other.
The people like Vinnie can take their passion for economic development and have a diet soda.
September 18, 2008 at 12:46 am
When Hi-Tech, Pro-Systems, Renova and American Kuhne are on line after their five year tax stabilization the estimated total tax per year would be $158,104. There are other businesses still arriving at the Exit One location.
Certainly Iamishmael (?) is right that it takes a lot of businesses to assist with the tax load, but beginning with these strong companies and with their good employee salaries and benefits without miles of asphalt for parking, and landscaping to mask the facilities – the light spill issue is being addressed – this is the right start. Development will assist with the tax load – even if not immediately. No one has said it will do all the work.
Keeping Hopkinton rural means that a large percentage of our acreage is either permanently off the tax rolls (Arcadia) or temporarily off (Farm, Forest and Open Space) at a very reduced rate. The rest of the community carries the tax burden for all this rural land. It’s good to have farms and forest – it also means we pay for it even when we don’t own it.
September 18, 2008 at 12:15 pm
According to the Sun (and that preface always needs to be made because of their inability to correctly record facts and figures) the total tax recovered after 5 years will only be $90,000 per year from those companies. But the difference between $158K and $90K is a drop in the bucket. $158K will save you $20.00 on a $4000 tax bill. That is a drinkable bottle of wine. The Town budget is $23 million. We could cut $158,000 from the Town budget in about 5 seconds. At least I can. The Town Council has a harder time making simple decisions. Either way, it won’t help the tax payers a bit. At the current rate, you would need 4 more similarly sized businesses to reduce the taxpayer burden by 1%. Which amounts to $40.00 on a $4000 tax bill.
So unless we actually plan on turning Hopkinton into something like Warwick, development will have no impact on our taxes. And you can take that to the failing banks.
Is that your plan, Ms. Capalbo? Have you drank the Cordone Kool-Aid? Lets assume we will genuinley benefit if our taxes are reduced by 10%. In order to take 10% of the taxpayer’s backs, you need 50 new businesses about the size of those at Exit 1. Does that sound pretty?
Like I said, the only way development will work is if we decide we like the way Warwick looks. And none of us want that, do we?
Your talk of preserving farms and rural space is a crock. The Town won’t stop housing developments, will it? No matter what happens, we are doomed to turn into suburban/industrial sprawl and this Town Council does not have the foresight or the will to stop it. They only reason things have slowed for the time being is the financial meltdown the country is currently in. Viva la recession!
September 18, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Hello Ishmael,
I agree we need to keep the town budget as tight as we can. The whole council has worked on this. I know you would prefer we cut further but under 2% with the school budget included (pensions, health care, salaries) is pretty good. We aren’t miracle workers, we work and pay taxes like the rest of the community.
The 158,104 included Hi-Tech, the article in the Sun was for the other three. 23 million is almost 18 million for the schools alone and 5 million for the town.
Nationally there are demands that the Feds and the states have to help fund education instead of it all falling on all citizens who own property. If less was spent on war maybe there would be more for the elderly, veterans and for the kids. We certainly do not get a fair percentage of the state taxes – most of it goes to the cities – we subsidize Prov, Central Falls, Pawtucket, etc. when our students need the funds as badly as they do.
Development does make a difference for the town budget. It certainly can’t even begin to make a dent in the school portion.
Kids, however, are good and necessary for civilization and we should encourage them, instead of blaming them.
If anyone knows how to prevent homes from being built, kids from being born, development from coming to Hopkinton – and lower taxes at the same time – I am with you. If community service (for nothing) included doing the work of the police, fire, ambulance corps, from all public infrastructure work and service, from clerks, planners, recreational directors, teachers and all useful public facilities – Great – no taxes.
We thought the Savings and Loan fiasco was a mess – it’s much worse now. I hear you. I don’t have answers either – I wish I did.
September 19, 2008 at 1:39 pm
When this country was started, community service did include running the town. The constable, the town clerk, the highway department- all were run by volunteers. If you drive to northern Vermont you will find that towns are still run this way out of necessity, they have no money and none to pay for things they don’t need. I’m not sure this is a viable way for Hopkinton to run itself, but it does exist as a means of governance only a few hours away. The only real vestige left of community participation in Town operations in Rhode Island are the volunteer fire departments.
How do you stop development? Zoning changes. No citizen has the right to have his or her property zoned as he or she sees fit. If this were the case, I’d be building and pouring portable concrete structures in my backyard for sale on construction sites. But I am not. Zoning decisions are made for the benefit of the community. It is as simple as that. But then you need to decide what the benefit of the community is. If you prevent the changes from being made or change them appropriately, you slow and/or stop development. It was zoning changes that allowed Exit 1 to be developed in the first place.
You can fight Chariho all you want. Good luck. But you can’t ignore the 18 million we pay into it by saying, “oh, but the Town budget is only $5 million and development does help that out”. It makes no difference how much goes to Chariho if we cannot keep our own house in order. If I could chose not to pay my Chariho bill your argument might hold some water. But I have to pay all the bills that Town sends me.
The simple fact is that development will have such a negligible impact on the Hopkinton budget that it was never worth doing in the first place. We won’t get enough jobs or tax money to justify the effort and the end result is industrial blight. The only people who benefit are the business owners
The real hypocrisy is how everyone cries about the Chariho budget being inflated, yet allows the Town Manger to propose building a new Town Hall. We do not live within our means as a Town, as a School district, as a country or as a culture. And that is the only reason for the mess on Wall Street (plus a little greed sprinkled in). To be upset at the faults of Chariho and the State of Rhode Island while ignoring the capricious nature in which the Town spends money is hypocritical.
September 30, 2008 at 4:12 am
Hey isn’t Canaan , VT ! Ahh yes thats where that guy who has runs In’s with many at town hall meetings etc. is building his house.
Hm I guess he’s saying goodbye to Hopkinton & Richmond cheaper taxes! Or is it the other house he’s going to ahh still won’t have to pay taxes !