For some reason, after the Monday Town Council meeting at which the majority voted to eschew expectations that the town treasurer and the chairman of the Budget Committee would be involved in the process of procuring a tax-cap waiver by empowering the town administrator to send a “letter of inquiry” to Providence, a meeting of those three officials was scheduled for Friday.
According to the Newport Daily News, however, it didn’t serve much purpose:
Tiverton Budget Committee Chairman Jeff Caron on Friday asked Town Administrator James Goncalo not to send a request to the state that asks how much over the 4.5 percent cap on property tax increases the town legally can go, even though the Town Council earlier this week voted 5-2 to have Goncalo send the inquiry to the state Division of Property Valuation and Municipal Finance. Voters will have the final say on a budget for fiscal 2011 at the financial town meeting that is slated for May 8 at 9 a.m. at Tiverton High School. A request to the General Assembly to postpone the meeting appears to be floundering.
A meeting between Goncalo, Caron and Town Treasurer Philip DiMattia that was supposed to be informal and held in Goncalo’s office Friday afternoon ended up being held in the council chambers at Town Hall and recorded by Budget Committee Secretary Cynthia Nebergall. Motions were made by Caron and seconded by DiMattia to undo what the council has voted to do, but Goncalo refused to go along with it.
“I don’t think you have the authority to go against what the council says,” Goncalo told Caron.
As with repeated municipal assertions that unambiguous legal language is ambiguous and with the disclosure of millions of dollars in “restricted” school funds that the district is now trying to make up with local taxes, government in Tiverton increasingly appears to be a question of what officials can get away with. Since there’s no such thing in the law as a “letter of inquiry” related to exceeding the tax cap, there’s no authoritative process for requesting one. In other words, it’s all government-for-show designed to inch around to higher taxes in the face of an organized opposition group.
Hopefully, voters will change that dynamic come November.
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