Letters to the Editor - The Lakeville Journal - 3-24-22

‘Everybody pays the same’ doesn’t give the full story of Region One

The article in the March 17 issue titled “Why North Canaan’s Assessment is so High” only provided a superficial view of the problem. It is true that each town in Region One pays the same amount per student, and that North Canaan sends more students to HVRHS. That seems fair, on the surface. But the quote “everybody pays the same” at the end of the article hides the deeper inequity in the funding system: the wealthier towns in the district are unintentionally taking advantage of North Canaan’s taxpayers.

North Canaan is the most affordable town in Region One. It is the easiest place in the area for families with school aged children to find a home. It makes sense that North Canaan accounts for the greatest share of HVRHS students. At the same time, North Canaan’s median income is the lowest in Region One. It seems decidedly unfair, then, that North Canaan residents must pay the highest property taxes in the district, not least because of their high school assessment.

This is not North Canaan, or its residents’ fault. The situation is largely driven by policy choices made by the other towns in the region; policy choices that severely and artificially limit their housing stock. This ensures that, in general, primarily more affluent families, or those who have been in town for generations, can afford to live there. Thus, the rest of the region skews older and wealthier. Older residents are less likely to have school-age children, and wealthier residents are more likely to send them to private schools.

I don’t want to blame anyone for the current state of affairs. As a homeowner, I understand the individual desire to keep property taxes low. However, this prioritization of low mill rates contributes to a vicious cycle, which pushes younger, working families to towns like North Canaan, which pushes up the school assessment, which pushes up property taxes in North Canaan, which helps makes other towns more attractive to those with more wealth.

It is easy to say “everybody pays the same,” but that is just not the whole story. These problems won’t be solved in an editorial. However, I would like to encourage residents of all Region One towns to advocate for more permissive housing policies so that younger families can make homes in your communities. Towns should adopt zoning reforms to allow smaller lot sizes, shorter setbacks, and multi-unit homes without special permits or hearings. I also encourage everyone to be more accommodating to deed-restricted affordable housing. Our excellent local non-profits are working on this, but they often face staunch opposition.

Our Northwest Corner towns are inextricably tied together, geographically and politically. Our municipal officials, then, should consider the regional effects of local policies. A vibrant Region One benefits all residents, no matter the town, and enacting welcoming policies that might (among other beneficial effects) ease the undue burden on North Canaan taxpayers would be a step in the right direction.

Steve Alquesta

Salisbury

Sharon Hospital, focusing on the community’s greatest needs

In 2013, New Milford Hospital had the same challenges Sharon Hospital is currently facing–with declining delivery volumes, New Milford Hospital was struggling to bear the financial and staffing challenges associated with maintaining the maternity unit. These challenges prevented our nonprofit hospital from making needed investments to maintain and expand services most needed in our community. As an emergency physician who has served the greater New Milford community for over two decades and the Hospital’s executive director and chief of staff, I was deeply involved in this process.  I understand both the challenges currently facing Sharon Hospital and the difficulty with which my colleagues decided to discontinue Labor & Delivery services.

My personal experiences leave me with no doubt that this is the best possible decision to ensure a strong future for Sharon Hospital while serving the most pressing needs of the Sharon community.  Nine years after closing our maternity unit, New Milford Hospital is a thriving community hospital. We have expanded primary care with a new primary care office, attracted multiple specialists to a new multispecialty office, and created a coordinated network of exceptional physicians. Our emergency department stands ready to manage any OB emergency, but thanks to extensive planning among our physicians, EMS providers, and community, we have not had a single birth in the Emergency Department. This success can be replicated in Sharon if the hospital is allowed to make the necessary transformation.

As a physician, I know that no doctor, nurse, or administrator enters healthcare intending to cut services, but in making the difficult decision to reallocate resources to provide access to other important healthcare services, Sharon Hospital is acting in the best interest of its community.

Dr. Thomas Koobatian

New Milford

Collusion, fake news and more from the left

The title of Dick Ahles’ March 17 column, “Extremist fringes damaging both parties,” is certainly correct.

But he’s profoundly wrong when he says “nothing the left has done has come close to the Jan. 6, 2021, Trump-led insurrection aimed at illegally overthrowing the election of a president.”

Actually, many things the left has done are as bad or worse than Jan. 6. From the time Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016 right through the 2020 election, the left has tried to overthrow him with lies, misinformation and collusion among government, media and big tech.

First was the Russia collusion hoax. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, with help from the FBI, CIA, Obama administration and countless journalists, peddled anonymously-sourced misinformation for years, trying first to cause Trump to lose the 2016 election, then later to drive him from office or to cause his loss in 2020.

Later, Democrats impeached Trump for wanting to trade aid to Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden. Yet Biden as vice president threatened to withhold a billion dollars from Ukraine (ostensibly to “fight corruption”) but really to get rid of an official who was investigating a company that was paying Hunter Biden millions.

In October 2020, just before the election, the Hunter Biden laptop came to light filled with evidence of Biden family corruption. The mainstream press purposely discredited it, and 51 former intelligence officials (nearly all Biden supporters or anti-Trumpers) claimed without evidence that it looked like more Russian interference. It wasn’t.

The New York Post reported on the laptop and was banned from Twitter. The mainstream press purposely kept the story from the American people to protect Biden’s electoral chances. Later, 7% of voters said it would have changed their vote had they known about it.

Only now, with Biden safely in office, has the New York Times admitted the laptop and emails are real. But years of leftist lies, media manipulation and collusion going back to 2016 had done their work. That’s what stole the 2020 election, not vote-counting fraud.

The left calls Jan. 6 an insurrection, but that’s more fakery. If the clueless morons who rioted on Jan. 6, then milled around, took selfies and went home were an “insurrection,” the country has never been safer.

Many Black Lives Matter riots caused more death and destruction than Jan. 6, and many BLM protesters were just as bent on overthrowing government. And don’t forget the thousands of unionists who stormed the Wisconsin state Capitol in 2011. They too halted the democratic process, chased legislators from the building, and made death threats.

But the left is fine with those onslaughts because they are for left-wing causes. Nancy Pelosi even called Wisconsin “an impressive show of democracy in action.”

Continually harping on Trump today is another liberal ploy. It deflects attention from the left’s crimes and from Biden’s colossal blunders on the border, inflation, energy, Afghanistan and the rest.

Mark Godburn

Norfolk

As I see it

Putin needs to be put in the ground

We don’t need him around

He is today a Hitler clone

From a great height he should be thrown

His body in an unmarked grave

A headstone we will waive

His pal the Trump

We should also dump

Remove from all the history books

And give these two no more looks!

Michael Kahler

Lakeville