To the Editor:
Deception.
Why I’m voting against the High School funding ballot (and why you should too).
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about that word. It is the foundation of corruption, theft, crime, and de-community. It’s the premier tool of politicians, marketers, grifters, thieves, scammers, propagandists, the selfish, the self-interested. America, today, seems deception-saturated — in big and small ways.
Deception is intentional: like colored packaging concealing imperfect food; print too faint or small to see; omitted information; hidden defects; sealed liability settlements; nondisclosure clauses. I could go on. You understand. In your head, add as many instances as you want. It might approach infinity.
It’s on vivid display in Washington, where colossal egos and money jettison ethics, morality, and honesty to dupe the citizenry. Each day it fills a couple of sections in the national newspapers.
It’s the core amorality that rationalizes: “Sure, it’s wrong; but heck, it’s not illegal.” The eclipsed corrosion that exhausts citizens, impairs democracy, and coalesces in collapse, chaos, tyranny.
It’s relentless. But it is most depressing when it seeps down to the local level.
Thanks to our high school committee, it has arrived on each of our porches like a hand-delivered box of dung wrapped with a deceptively pretty ribbon. The new high school’s funding formula is the dung; the committee’s “we-are-one-school-district” Island-wide-ballot con is the pretty ribbon: the grift.
So where is the deception? First, we are not one school district (never have been). In the past, each town voted separately to approve capital projects, and all six towns needed to approve the project. That required capital projects to have broad support in all six towns, despite the unfair funding formula. But the high school committee is worried that the heavily overtaxed Tisbury residents (and/or Oak Buffs) might vote against the enormously unfair bill that the committee is sending them. Hence the committee’s Island-wide-ballot deception — heck, it’s not illegal — to electorally dilute one town’s power to resist a massively unfair confiscation.
If the high school committee wants us to be “one district,” then tax all property at the same rate. If they don’t have the courage to do that, then abide by the rules: six separate towns; six separate votes. I’m not falling for their deceit. The end does not justify the means. I’m voting against the new high school.
Here are the numbers: Total tax on a $1,000,000 property in Tisbury = $20,150, Oak Bluffs = $16,210, West Tisbury = $13,220, Aquinnah = $10,840, Edgartown = $8,690, and Chilmark = $6,010. Tisbury property is taxed 232 percent more than in Edgartown, and 335 percent more than in Chilmark. Do you really think that is fair?
Brian Hughes
Oak Bluffs