The economy is slowing down, and the state government talks about tightening the budget they haven't even passed yet, let alone the one for the next year. Clearly, we're heading into another round of tough years for local aid and local services (in addition to state services). I vividly remember how unpleasant the discussions and decisions were a decade ago when I happened to be on the Select Board. There was a significant recession, local aid was cut very suddenly, and the various boards fought among each other, and at Town Meeting, for how to cope. As a community we are still picking up some of the pieces; for example, the Select Board and Finance Committee felt obliged to recommend turning off some street lights to save money, so I read with interest about the recent vote by Town Meeting to buy street lights because it is now less expensive to own them than to pay the electric company to take care of them.
Even before the terrorist attacks it was clear the boom years were over. That got me to thinking again about something that's bugged me for years: tax exempt apartments. Most services paid for locally are services for people. Our biggest source of funds is the property tax. In my opinion, every housing unit should contribute its fair share as determined by its assessed value, since that's our system.
Most of the tax exempt apartments are University family housing, principally North Village on North Pleasant Street. According to the Family Housing Office, North Village has 244 apartments, breaking down as 108 2-bedroom and 120 1-bedroom units (of which many have been modified for handicapped accessibility).
What would be these apartments' share if they were contributing? We don't know exactly, since they aren't actually assessed, but for comparison I got the numbers for Rolling Green from the Assessor's Office. Rolling Green has 204 apartments: six 4-bedroom apartments, 31 3-bedrooms, 103 2-bedrooms, and 64 1-bedroom units. Some of these apartments are subsidized and their tenants are low income. Last year Rolling Green paid $74,564 in real estate taxes.
Then I figured the taxes per bedroom (that's not how assessors do it, but at least it's comparing apples to apples). Rolling Green has 387 bedrooms, so the taxes per are $193 per year. Since North Village has 336 bedrooms, I think we can estimate that North Village apartments should be paying almost $65,000 per year.
The residents get basically the same town services the rest of us who live in apartments or condominiums get (in apartment or condominium developments, generally the snow plowing and street lighting, for example, are paid for directly by the residents, not through property taxes). Although I'm sure many of the student families living in North Village have low incomes, I doubt they have lower incomes than some of the people living nearby in private apartments who do pay property taxes (indirectly, through their rent).
The biggest single service to town residents is public education. Last year, according to the Finance Committee book, the budget for elementary education was $30,655,24. The town's share (as appropriated by Town Meeting) was $15,590,512. We had 1,545 students in the elementary schools. That's a cost of $19,861 per student for the overall budget, or $10,091 per student from the town's share.
At the regional schools, there were 2,163 students. The overall budget (again, from the Finance Committee book) was $42,484,332; the town's assessment was $7,820,306 (there are four towns and many complicated sources of funds for the regional schools). That divides out to an overall cost of $19,641 per student. If about 80% of the students live in Amherst (1,730 students), the local tax payment per pupil was about $4,520.
Exactly what percentage of overall town expenditures go to kindergarten through high school education depends on what you include. According to one way of counting, public schools were 48.3% of the overall town budget excluding the enterprise funds (such as water, sewer, trash/recycling). Looked at another way, the elementary school costs were 39% of the general fund operating budget; and the regional schools were 20%.
Last year, thirty-three students who live in University housing went to elementary schools. At a $10,000 local cost per student, that's $330,000 worth of services. Twenty-three students attended the regional schools from University housing, for a total of $103,960.
I recognize that the cost of providing schools does not dip and rise exactly in sync with the number of students. These are, of course, just "back of the envelope" kinds of estimates, but to me they make the point that significant services, services paid for by local taxpayers, are being used by residents who are not contributing at all. I believe in supporting subsidized housing, but not by subterfuge and without any vote by Town Meeting. I don't see any reason why the people who live in University housing should receive a benefit from us, the local taxpayers, that is not available to others in similar financial straits who own their homes or who have not been able to get into a very limited supply of apartments that belong to the University (there may be other benefits, provided by the University itself, and that's fine with me).
If the University wants to keep the costs down to the tenants, and pay the equivalent of property taxes to the town itself, that would also be fine with me; but given the state and University's budget constraints, that's highly unlikely.
The University could work out a way to get the apartments assessed and then collect the appropriate amount to pass on to the Town. That's also unlikely, especially if there is no concerted effort to get it to do so. We should make that effort at the same time that we are making an effort to get the University to provide more housing for its students. Otherwise we're going to make this inequitable situation worse in the future, whether for Amherst or for some neighboring town where future apartments might be built.