(More) Long term debt — yeah, that's the ticket!
/The boring old nag, Peter Berg, is out with a letter claiming that our inferior school system is damaging our property values compared to, say, Darien and New Canaan, and the solution he proposes is — surprise! — lots of new debt to be piled onto Greenwich taxpayers.
Realtors tell me that home buyers are increasingly by-passing Greenwich.
One of my walking buddies says he and his wife bought their house in Greenwich in 1985 after shopping in numerous towns in Westchester and Fairfield Counties. With young children, they gave great weight to US News & World Report’s ranking of best schools.
Today, Greenwich High School ranks 14th in Connecticut and #548 nationally. Darien ranks #1 in CT and #150 nationally. Weston, Ridgefield, New Canaan, Westport Staples, and Wilton also rank above Greenwich.
Nationally, Rye (#139), Byram Hills – Armonk (#144), Blind Brook – Rye Brook, Horace Greeley – Chappaqua, and 9 more Westchester schools rank above Greenwich.
Over decades, Greenwich has deferred maintenance to keep taxes low, but homeowners are paying the price with lower home values.
Greenwich voters need to know that investments in schools, athletic facilities and other infrastructure will protect and raise property values. Longer term debt used to update our infrastructure will lower property taxes. Politicians who say otherwise are either mathematically challenged or they are intentionally deceiving us.
There are a number of flaws in Berg’s reasoning, leaving aside that he, like all his Democratic friends, has always pushed for increasing the town’s debt, for decades, and “failed school infrastructure” is just the latest peg to hang that hat on. Next week it will be global warming, or recovery centers for those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. But, to address his points:
Has Berg checked with his realtor friends about how property values are doing in Darien and New Canaan? They plummeted in 2008 and have never recovered. If anything, the performance of those towns’ (and Wilton’s and the rest of our Golden Triangle towns) housing markets provides a strong argument that US News school rankings provide a reverse index for real estate performance.
Has Berg noticed that the towns he so admires have far fewer students to educate, and virtually no students who live below the poverty line? According to the US News rankings, Darien and Greenwich are two completely different worlds:
Darien: 1,354 students 9-12, 2% “economically disadvantaged”Greenwich: 2,625 students 9-12, 15% “economically disadvantaged”
Will new playing fields and school buildings actually raise the test scores of our least-advantaged kids and lift us all up to Darien’s level of accomplishment? We have the perfect test case in the New Lebanon School: let’s give that institution five years, say, to work its miracles, and then, depending on results, we can give Berg’s party’s tax hike scheme a hearing.
(Added thoughts): Have you ever noticed that politicians, of both parties, rarely speak of spending, and use “investing” instead? Whether it’s schools, bridges, stop-smoking programs, defective-gene detection, high school music halls; whatever, we’re always promised that spending now will produce savings later. Yet later never comes; instead, we get new opportuities for new investments, and the ROI on that first batch of money remains negative.
Funny that.
