It has come to my attention that the Grand Poohbah of the Greenwich Time, Hearst Executive Lincoln Milstein thinks that the Greenwich Democrats are “toothless” among other things. Its not terribly easy to explain what the right thing is in Greenwich, so I am throwing out the gauntlet to Lincoln hisself – I’ll tell you what is in my opinion good for Greenwich from the Democratic perspective, and you’ll write back why I’m insane. Or totally right, that’s your choice to make. Anyway, here goes – lets talk taxes.
I own a house in Greenwich. Its a nice house, a 140 year old house, it is an important part of our history and our heritage in Greenwich. As a good resident of Town, I avoid the temptation to put a cell tower in my back yard and take the capitalized $4 million like some people in North Mianus, and I definitely don’t take the path of my neighbors 4 doors north and tear my house down to put in a Chase bank. No, I love my house and I keep it up to my best ability. So with that, I wasn’t the slightest bit sad when the Assessor lowered my taxes this year. Saves me about $75 bucks a month.
I love my children. I have two kids, twins, a boy and a girl, at Cos Cob School. Like something out of the 1930′s, I get to walk my children the 200 feet up the street every morning that school is in session to the front door of that school. Carmine the Town crossing guard gives me tomatoes that I plant in my garden, its something out of a novel. What’s missing from that novel is that the school has more deferred maintenance than any reasonable school should have,and teachers leave all the time. My kids don’t have the best education that they should have, and quantified facts say that they are no better than some of the Towns in Connecticut that don’t have our benefits.
As a Democrat, as a person who values my community, and as a selfish fool, I think its beyond foolish to say that my $75 bucks is more important than my kids school, and by extension the most important value we have as a community – to give our children, our next generation, all the benefits we can. So forget about the union canards, or all these silly stupid, stupid attacks on the people who make $60k that I entrust the most important people in my life, my kids.
Raise the damn taxes, get it right. Stop whining about the $75, start thinking about the fact that together we rise, together we fall. While we complain about these low taxes, Old Greenwich floods, parks fall down, schools waste away and Greenwich diminishes. And my children accept mediocrity because that’s all they know, even though their travels take them to places in Connecticut that proves it doesn’t have to be so. I(‘m first to throw in my money, and if you don’t, its because you care about yourself alone and not community as a whole. And let me stay proud of my home, my children and my community – because there is little else.
