April 5 - Town of Falmouth

property tax rate that you can’t – there’s just not enough building going on
to grow the property taxes. Does that answer the question?
Tinkham Reporting
(508) 759-9162
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MR. LATIMER: Yes, but the follow-up question is then, when
we see that new development that adds a nominal amount to that growth
in the property tax base, that puts increased demands on services such as
police, fire, schools, other services like waste management and so forth,
and so we’re not keeping pace – that development isn’t keeping pace with
the – in terms of the property tax with that demand: so what are we doing
to find other ways to increase revenues? Because we can’t practically go
– because of 2 ½, just do like we used to do in this town, is raise the funds
to meet our demands on our services, so what other ways have you been
looking at to increase revenues in this town?
MR. WHRITENOUR: Well, that’s a very good question and
you know there are a series of recommendations that have been
presented, and as I have indicated, the Town’s independent auditors have
conducted a comprehensive analysis of the Town’s finances and they’ve
made a series of recommendations and those involve analyzing the
property tax rate, they’ve involved analyzing the user fee departments for
establishing fees that cover the services. So, it runs the gamut.
And also out there there are local option taxes that, you know,
we’ve decided, I guess previously, that the Town didn’t want, and I think
what it boils down to is not selecting just one item and say, “That’s what