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Dear Santa Deval Patrick: Where’s my property tax cut?
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, December 24, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

All I want for Christmas from Gov. Deval Patrick is my property tax cut.

At the risk of sounding like a petulant child, Deval, let me just say this:

You promised! You PROMISED me!!

All of your constituents have been waiting for our tax relief for two years now. Perhaps you’ve conveniently forgotten your pledge, but we haven’t. During the 2006 campaign, you repeatedly told everyone who would listen that you would give us a reduction in our ever-escalating property taxes. You didn’t come out and say it, but you intimated that you would handle these local, greed-crazed hackeramas and their ever-escalating demands for higher salaries, more health-care bennies, fake disability claims and new holidays, not to mention fatter pensions.

So far we get . . . nothing.

As a matter of fact, it’s worse than nothing. Most homeowners in the state are watching their property taxes skyrocket. It doesn’t matter if we vote down a Proposition 2 override, the payroll Charlies at Town Hall still figure out a way to jack up the bills.

Maybe you missed the news yesterday, but real-estate prices tanked again last month in Massachusetts. The medium home price here was $275,000 in November, compared to $330,000 a year ago. In September, prices fell 15.3 percent year-to-year, in October 13.9 percent.

Yet still the property taxes go up, even as the values plummet. It’s funny how the bloated local pols complain about their municipalities’ fixed costs. Funny how in the Dreaded Private Sector, there’s no such thing as fixed costs. There’s just another round of layoffs, and another and another.

Granted, I live in a town whose trust-funded population recently decided to build its own Taj Mahal high school - the rich kids decided they had to keep up with the Joneses, or in our case, the Cohens, as in Mayor David Cohen of Newton.

So Deval, more than ever, we need you to keep your campaign promise.

Unless you work for Massport, the economy’s in a tailspin, Deval. Casinos aren’t going to save your sorry rear-end, either.

You should have gone to Washington, Deval. But since you’re still here, it’s time you did the right thing. I don’t care how many worthless programs you have to get rid of or how many layabouts you have to fire by Bunker Hill Day. I want my property tax cut now.

You promised.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1140997