Dear Editor:

Property taxes are on everyone’s minds as the yearly bills are sent out.

As a member of Alna’s select board, one major concern I know that I share with many of Alna’s taxpayers is the extraordinary degree to which municipal services in Maine are funded through property taxes. Many families in our rural community, including those with roots going back many generations, find themselves “land poor.” For these families, the number of acres they own (and therefore the property tax they are assessed) doesn’t necessarily match their household income or their ability to pay.

Maine has important mechanisms in place to help ensure that those with the highest incomes contribute in proportion to their ability to pay. These mechanisms come in the form of the 55% share of education expenses that the state is supposed to return to municipalities, and the 5% of state revenues that is supposed to be returned to municipal governments each year to help fund other services.

The LePage administration systematically underfunded educational payments to and revenue sharing with towns, thereby shifting responsibility for funding municipal services away from both state taxes indexed to income and sales taxes (paid in proportion to spending by residents and visitors alike), back to the shoulders of local property taxpayers, regardless of their income or spending ability.

I’ve been tremendously grateful to our current governor for fully funding the state’s share of local educational expenses and revenue sharing with local communities, much to the relief of property taxpayers throughout our community. For this and so many other reasons, Janet Mills will have my vote for governor again in November.

Ed Pentaleri

Alna