Donna Perry: Why The Warwick Tax Revolt Matters
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Close to 200 Rhode Island homeowners are beginning the unsettling, drawn out process of losing their home to foreclosure every month since the start of this year. That statistic, contained in a HousingWorks RI report out this week, revealed that not only have there been 188 deed filings for foreclosure for single family homes each month,but that the rates are up from a year ago.
The report also shows the community topping the list with the most single family foreclosures also happens to be at the center of an expanding car tax fight: Warwick.It probably should come as little surprise then that a defiant City Council and an increasingly defensive Mayor Scott Avedisian seemed less than anxious to hear from the 200-plus citizens who turned out to discuss the new car tax bills at the weekly Council meeting this past Monday. They forced the crowd to wait two hours before opening up the meeting to the issue. City residents formed a grassroots tax protest group after receiving new car tax bills this past summerwhich reflect the city’s decision to reduce the car tax exemption from $6,000 to $500 and utilize a controversial value assessment which the protesters say is unfair.
Though Warwick’s Mayor and Council do not set the standards for the valuations, (it’s a state function) , it seems clear they are the target for th elocal tax movement’s anger.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWhat is also becoming clear is that the Warwick citizens’tax revolt is about much more than cars. It wasn’t that many years ago that the city of Warwick, muck like Cranston, East Providence, Pawtucket, and even vast neighborhoods of Providence itself, functioned as well-run, affordable, thriving communities which offered a solid anchor to the families of the Rhode Island middle class.
In recent years, these bedrock Rhode Island communities started facing the same dilemma on a smaller scale as the state now faces with the soaring price tag of the public government workforce, juxtaposed against the loss of revenue from the vanishing business sector.
It should probably come as no surprise then, that they are the very communities leading the foreclosure rates right behind Warwick according to this week’s Report.
Unemployment and the newer but no less troubling problem of underemployment are said to be the leading causes for homeowners getting into trouble with their ability to meet their mortgage payment and fall into foreclosure.
Tax Movement Not Going Away
Is it also any surprise that the once thriving avenues and commercial thoroughfares of these central Rhode Island communities are more and more often littered with shuttered businesses and rows of “For Sale” and “For Lease” signs?
Warwick’s elected leaders would be wise to grasp that the Warwick tax movement, propped up against the bleak backdrop of high taxes, loss of businesses and jobs, and now loss of homes, is a revolt that will not go away and by all indications is not going to quiet down.
Furthermore, it seems inevitable that Warwick is just the start of what will likely be community by community revolts if there is an attempt to weigh down on a deteriorating Rhode Island middle class an increased tax burden of any considerable measure. Speaker Fox and Senate President Paiva-Weed should carry that message to their members when the Legislature convenes for the special pension reform session next month.
If the attempt to make substantial changes to the state’s pension system fails this fall, there will be nowhere left for communities to run to in order to make the soaring new pension payments, except to the taxpayer--- the very same taxpayer in cities like Warwick, Cranston, Providence and Pawtucket who now make up a good percentage of the jobless, foreclosed upon, and already steeply taxed.
Though it’s thepublic sector unions who have branded their strategy this fall as the “fight back” campaign, the state’s elected lawmakers will also need to be mindful of the potential wrath of people who havenothing left to lose.
Donna Perry is a Communications Consultant to RISC, RI Statewide Coalitionwww.statewidecoalition.com
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