Opinion/Letters: How you can help your neighbors
How you can help your neighbors
September has been designated Hunger Action Month by Feeding America, the largest charity working to end hunger in the United States. That makes it the perfect time to consider what you can do to help your friends and neighbors in the local community who are struggling to put food on the table for themselves and their families.
Your local food bank is an excellent place to start. Organizations like the St. John’s Lodge Food Bank in Portsmouth are working hard to expand their ability to provide nutritious food to the those in need. In fact, we recently launched the Fresh Food Initiative, a program designed to procure fresh meat and produce from local farmers and merchants to distribute to food-insecure members of our community.
To learn how you can help, please visit our website, stjohnslodgeno1.org/foodbank or the website of your food bank of choice. Your donation, no matter its size, will have an immediate and positive impact on our efforts. As we often remind our grateful patrons, we’re all in this together.
Mary Anne Crittenden, president St. John’s Lodge Food Bank, Portsmouth
Middletown needs to better manage finances
Middletown has gotten itself in poor financial condition, through the actions of the Town Council and town administration, by not enforcing their work order system, to monitor department productivity, especially Public Works. The incompetence of the School Department and School Committee to properly maintain the school buildings, and administer its finances: 1. Secretly, purchasing $1.1 Million in computers and not listing it in that year’s budget. 2. Constantly running a deficit and using reserve money to cover it, causing them to admit what started at some $383,000 deficit, but wound up being some $2.1, or so, million.
Then: the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on architects and advertising to regionalize with Newport Schools, after Council President Rodrigues, approached Newport School Superintendent Colleen Burns Jermain, to start talks again to regionalize. After that vote failed, thank you, the voters of Newport, Middletown set out to build a new high school and middle school, at the old drive-in theater site, where they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build two multi-use fields. Telling us, in January 2023, the two schools would cost $190,000,000. Now they’re talking about also refurbishing the high school, which they couldn’t do in the beginning, not enough life left to the buildings, not to mention the $4.3 million contract with HMFH Architects of Cambridge, Mass. Who hired a Boston Advertising company, to print up all the pretty propaganda, to convince you, as Councilor VonVillas has said, to vote yes on the bond?
Assessed value of Middletown properties on Dec. 31, 2016, was $2,971,149,803X3%cap, =89,134,494.09, Town Maximum depth. The $190 million bond, less a 55% reimbursement? From the State, (104,500,000), leaves a school bond of, ($85,500,000), = 3,634,494 below State cap, X bond interest rate of 3.3%, for 30 years, (360 payments) = $138,215,954.91, Total Interest = $52,715,954.91. Monthly Payments; $383,933.21
On a 25-year bond, it will cost you the taxpayers: ($85,500,000), X interest rate of 3.3%, for 25 years, (300 payments), Monthly Payment $428,033.15 per. Month = $128,409,945.77. Total Interest = $42,909,945.77
In July 2023, Middletown home prices were selling for a median price of $715K. On average, homes in Middletown sell after 41 days on the market compared to 37 days last year.
Present Property assessed at $450K presently pay $5,409.00. That’s $256.50 more. Now it’s, $450K Divided by 1,000 = 450 x $12.59 = $5,665.50. Add the school bond increases of approximately $1.62 + $12.59 = $14.21. $450K Div.1, 000 = 450x$14.21 = $6,394.50. Now it’s $985.50 more. + Revaluation in 2024. They say it’s only $2 per/day, x365days=$730.00. Should a $1,000,000 assessed property pay the same as a $450,000?
Antone Viveiros, Middletown
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Letters: How you can help your neighbors
