The good news here was that our naivete freed our minds to percolate unbridled ideas. So starting with the usual election year top issue, we tackled the question of whether or not to raise taxes which on the local level meant raising not taxes per se but the tax rate. This distinction had over centuries given rise to a belief that a wise thing for cities and towns to do is to entice builders to come in and construct structures, i.e., property, since the result would be to increase tax revenues and thus decrease everyone's tax bills. Farmland, apple orchards, open fields relied less, or not at all, on taxable structures, making even the gobbling up of nature logical and fiscally sound. Issues of harm to the environment or aesthetics rarely entered the picture.
It soon became clear to us that the chief purpose of our campaign was less a matter of winning and more about educating our fellow citizens to alternative ways of thinking. We had to find a way to make them aware of why things worked the way they did and what, if anything, was wrong about that. Only this way would change occur for the better, with people making choices based on facts.
After much in-depth exploration, e.g., reading books and research papers, talking to tax experts and economists, and dialoguing at our meetings, we came up with a drastic position: abolish the property tax! Property taxation had made sense back when 90% of taxpayers owned a farm and attendant barns, chicken coops, storage sheds etc. Back then farming had produced personal income for virtually every taxpayer. Today however over 90% of taxpayers earned their income from a job.
My own uncle Alfred "Red" Lizotte, for example, operated a farm in Marlborough in 1971, making his living selling milk and eggs all over town, with additional income from his popular summer ice cream stand. But Uncle Red had by then become an anomaly as his seven siblings, my father included, worked all their lives instead in shoe factories, machine shops, medical offices, restaurants and retail stores. None of their incomes derived from owning or operating a farm, so by now shouldn't local taxation systems reflect that?
Thus we proposed replacing the property tax system with a city income tax, an idea so totally out-of-the-box that it blew the lid off the automatic perennial debate over whether the current property tax rate should be raised or lowered. My three opponents---two sitting city councilors-at-large and the incumbent mayor---were, as a result, dumbfounded. Get rid of the property tax? Huh, what, say again?
Extending such alternative thinking to the other issues, we next embraced a growing local demand for constructing a new high school due to increasing student enrollments. Voters who objected feared the 3-million-dollar price tag (estimated $126 million in today's dollars) would cost "way too much!" Others demanded that education be given a pass from worries over exorbitant costs because "education must come first." Could my gang of five also determine a workable, remarkable option to this age-old stalemate too?
Hitting the books, articles and other research again, we absorbed all we could about emerging school designs and building innovations. Aided as well by an unexpected but serendipitous chat in a Boston coffee shop with an astute, progressive architectural student, Ron and I learned of trends in the construction industry that allowed traditionally static concrete walls to be replaced by movable ones. Though quite common now, in 1971 few had heard of this development and its capacity to literally upsize or downsize a school or office building without adding new construction. Rooms could be expanded or contracted as student or employee populations rose or fell, eliminating the need to erect expensive new facilities every few decades. Best of it all the price tag for a new Marlborough High School constructed with this technology came in precisely halfway at $1.5 million (estimated $60 million in today's dollars), making its ultimate cost acceptable to all sides.
Thus by the time I announced my candidacy in June, our deliberations had applied this imagineering process to every possible issue: government accountability, urban renewal, protecting the grass on Marlborough Common and even doggie leash laws etc. Another thumbs up or thumbs down issue involved whether or not to issue city bonds to build a new trash incinerator, to which we rejoined: What about a recycling center instead? The reaction from our opponents, again, was blank stares.
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