Dear Editor:

Over 150 years ago, a relative of mine was arrested for voting in the 1872 presidential election. She argued that citizens who pay taxes should have the right to vote and refused to pay the $100 fine. Susan B. Anthony’s protest mirrored the “Boston Tea Party” almost 100 years earlier, whose motto was also “No taxation without representation!”

Why bring up these historical facts now? My wife and I purchased our cottage in Edgecomb in 2011. Since then, we have attended this town’s annual meetings and watched small town government in action ... from chairs for “Visitors” on one side of the meeting room. We sat there, seasonal taxpayers, not permitted to vote -- or to speak without permission -- next to a state representative and a newspaper journalist. But when the town’s property taxes jumped 32% last summer, our inability to vote on matters directly impacting our taxes became all the more offensive.

This dramatic tax increase spawned the formation of the Edgecomb Citizens’ Tax Group last fall, which welcomes input from all local taxpayers and is now working tirelessly to get a grip on the town’s unsustainable budgets. We still have no vote, but we now have a proxy voice. To be clear: we do not seek to vote in statewide or national elections. We support public education, though we have no children in Edgecomb’s school. We’re not “summer people” and we don’t rent out our property. We hire local, buy local, and volunteer locally: in a library and at Pemaquid lighthouse. We’re members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Lincoln Theater, River Arts, the Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust, two local historical societies, and a mid-coast boaters’ organization. We are not “Visitors.” We are engaged members of the broader mid-coast community. So let us vote in town elections.

Meanwhile, check out the Edgecomb Citizens’ Tax Group website (https://edgecomb.me) if you want to see grassroots democracy in action.

William Anthony

Edgecomb and Evanston, Illinois