Letters to the Editor

Letter to the Editor: A Missed Opportunity for Tax Relief

 Letter to the Editor: A Missed Opportunity for Tax Relief

The following is a letter to the editor and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of BNEWS. 

We know that the Debt Exclusion vote for a potential New High School was defeated after the final vote on November 15, 2025. Without MSBA backing and the current high prices of staple items, the cost of borrowing $333 million would be a severe burden on Burlington’s residents. Based on the current distribution of our tax levy, the residents would have been responsible for 123 million, and the commercial sector 210 million of the 333 million.

At the Select Board meeting on November 17, 2025, the Board had the opportunity to provide tax relief to its residents, but, as the year before, they chose the “measured approach”. At the current meeting, the residential tax factor for tax year 2026 was put up for a vote. I will discuss two of the main options presented by town management, with the assistance of town assessors. One component in calculating the residential factor is the “CIP SHIFT”. The maximum shift rate is 1.75. One option A was to leave the same as last year at 1.73. Option E was the maximum shift to 1.75 (for illustrative purposes only, according to town management). This shift effectively shifts a portion of the tax burden from residential to commercial.

In the email I submitted to the Board last year, I stated that, by choosing Option A rather than Option E, approximately $1 million was not shifted from the residential tax levy to the commercial tax levy. This year, with option A being selected again, as approved by the select board, another 1.1 million opportunities to shift from residential to commercial was lost.

Included in last year’s email, I listed out these towns:

Billerica from 2020 to 2024, constantly 1.75

Wilmington from 2020 to 2024, constantly 1.75

Woburn from 2020 to 2024, constantly 1.75

Lexington from 2020 to 2024, constantly 1.75

Waltham from 2020 to 2023, constantly 1.75

Burlington 2020, 1.621; 2021 was 1.602; 2022 was 1.631; 2023 was 1.668 and 2024 was 1.726

The reason for slowly moving towards the 1.75 is the “measured approach” as stated by town management, but it also lost the opportunity to save residents millions of dollars in taxes.

The BHS vote showed that residents are hurting. The Select Board can be part of the solution.

Jame McNiff