I have just read the Wednesday, January 16^th article written by Charles M. Arlinghaus ‘How to prepare for the budget crisis that is about to hit’ and I encourage everyone to read this article. It talks about the difficulties facing New Hampshire in the upcoming future and identifies the problems created by the legislature when they overstated the revenues available during this biennium budget. The New Hampshire House Ways and Means Chairwoman, Susan Almy is defending the estimates used while reducing revenue estimates by $50 Million.

It appears that there are some in Concord that want to use this short-fall of revenue as an excuse to impose a broad-based tax (income and/or sales taxes) on us. The rhetoric in favor of this new taxation is that it will decrease our overall tax burden by lowering our property taxes. The majority of our property taxes are used to fund Laconia’s School District and City budgets, with a portion going to Belknap County. We already know that this next city budget will be difficult to achieve because of the expenses for the Nursing Home that have been passed onto Belknap County.

You can argue that we pay a State Property Tax for education but we all know that is a small percentage of the overall tax rate. Does anyone really believe that a broad-based tax collected at the state level in Concord will filter down to Laconia’s budgets? I tend to believe that our representatives at the State House will keep the lion’s share of this new revenue and we will not only be paying high property taxes but will be taxed in everything we purchase and on all of the money we work so hard to earn at our jobs.