We want what they’re getting

Here is a recap of what I outlined in previous posts:
- the basics and importance of Chapter 70
- the overall trend of Chapter 70 funding and the few towns that have gone backwards since fiscal year2000

In this post I want to look at a group of towns that received roughly the same level of dollars in 2000 and how that amount has changed by town since. 

I chose a group of towns around Amesbury’s fiscal year 2000 dollar range. I did not include regional or vocational schools in this comparison. All the data is directly from the state's spreadsheets on the department of revenue site.  There were 19 cities and towns that received between 7.3 million and 10.6 million in Chapter 70 funds in the year 2000 and of those 19 cities and towns only one, Amesbury, now receives less money.

The largest gainer in funds from this group over the last 13 years is Newton.

 

This disparity becomes more shocking when you look at the cumulative difference in millions of dollars that means to a city or town.

Newton which initially received a million dollars less than Amesbury in 2000, made gains over the subsequent 13 years collecting almost 45 million dollars more than Amesbury.






While Newton North built a 200 million dollar state-of-the-art high school
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/gallery/083110_newton_north_new_high_school/
Amesbury now has the highest property tax rate in Massachusetts.


I was able to locate some of the inputs from 2007 through 2013 that are used in the ‘ability to pay’ calculation.

While Newton’s EQV  is 10x that of Amesbury’s and its Income/Population is more than 2x that of Amesbury, it received an increase in Chapter 70 funds of 47% since 2007.   Amesbury now receives 1% less than it did in 2007.



The graph below shows the annual changes for Amesbury over this time period.  As you can see there is a huge dip between 2003 and 2004 that has never recovered.