Scarborough residents: Pay attention


Editor:
     It's time for the residents of Scarborough to wake up and smell the horse manure. For the past few years, Scarborough Downs has been very busy spreading their money and influence around town with sponsorships, ads, civic organization memberships and charitable contributions. Did Scarborough Downs suddenly discover its social conscience? Or is Scarborough Downs thoroughly greasing the wheels in town with the hope of passing the racino/slots referendum when it comes up for a vote again?  Do we want slot machines (and Penn National) to change our landscape? We need to start giving this some serious thought.

Mark and Alberta Follansbee,
Scarborough

Active Aging Expo a success

      On May 23 I had the pleasure of spending a wonderful day at the Sports Dome on Warren  Avenue as part of the Active Aging Expo
put on by the Southern Maine Agency on Aging. I was there as part of a group of volunteers from Senior Series of Scarborough manning a table, which our board of directors voted to have at this event.
     Senior Series’ table was its first time at an EXPO but it was received with enthusiasm and many questions. The table presented a TV showing on a continuous loop a DVD of Senior Series activities to date, hand outs of telephone pads with proper logos, many informative publications, door prizes and free water and candy made possible by the many donations of many generous merchants in Scarborough and our ever present “SENIOR SERIES” banner and flowers.
     This table could not have been such a huge success if it had not been for the many weeks of planning and preparations done by our volunteers and our board of directors. There were signs to be made, donations to solicit, schedules to meet and the load in and out.
     The load in was all made a lot easier by our willing volunteer’s, two older grandchildren and the great staff of the Southern Maine Agency on Aging they could not have been more accommodating. The table and the day were only successful through the efforts of our volunteers and those generous merchants and as president of Senior Series I would like to thank you all, Job well done.
     Volunteers:  Nancy Libby, Carole Wakem, Linda Bidler and Alex and Jacob Wakem and two of our senior ladies who came to wait for the return bus but got pressed into service Marion McMillan and Rita Ballou thanks gals! And Cecelia Duchano senior coordinator for community services. She also had some bus driving duties.
     The very generous merchants are:  Brown Fox Printing Scarborough, Clam Bake Pine Point, and 8 Corners Market, Scarborough Shaw’s of Scarborough, Hannaford’s Scarborough, Freaky Benn Coffee Company Scarborough, Sudzie car wash Scarborough and Chicago Dogs Scarborough and Oak Hill Mobil. Al’s Verity Scarborough. The danger of naming names is forgetting some one if I have forgive me,
A big THANK YOU TO ALL

Bill Billings 
Scarborough  

   Let’s make vehicle excise tax a fair deal

 Editor:
     If there is one tax that the people of Maine absolutely despise, it is the “car tax.” You pay it each year to town hall when it’s time to register your vehicle. What makes this tax especially hated is that the motorist has to stand at the clerk’s counter and write out an actual check.
     Tax that is withheld from your paycheck, for federal and state taxes, is painful, but the sting is less severe because you never had the money in your bank account to begin with. The same holds true with your property tax, which is usually buried in your mortgage payment.
     But when you have to fork over real cash to the clerk – be it $100 or $1,000 – you inevitably think about what you could have done with that money. You might have been able to buy a new easy chair to watch Red Sox games or put some money towards a college fund for your kids. Instead, that money just disappears. And what do you get in return? A thank you – if you’re lucky.
     Only 16 states apply an excise tax to motor vehicles, and Maine – wouldn’t you know it – has the highest rate in the nation. It starts at $24 for every $1,000 in value. Let’s say you buy a new car for $30,000. First, you have to pay the state sales tax of 5 percent; there goes $1,500. Then you make the trip to town hall for registration, and you are relieved of another $720 for the car tax. No wonder we see a lot of older cars on the highways and byways of Maine, and not many of the high-priced vehicles so common in other states.
     The kicker, however, is that you must pay excise tax on a new car based not on what you paid for the vehicle, but on the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, the MSRP. (Used car taxes are based on the Blue Book value.) Everyone knows that the MSRP is a fantasy figure that no dealer expects to receive.  It is the starting point for the time-honored tradition of “haggling.” If the MSRP is $30,000, you do your level best to bargain it down to maybe $28,000.
     You think you got a deal until you show up at town hall. They don’t want to see the sales slip from your transaction. They demand the sticker off the window. That will establish the basis for your car tax for as long as you register that vehicle. If you put 70,000 miles on that car during the first year, its value has depreciated from $30,000 to perhaps $20,000. But to the town clerk, you’re still tooling around in a $30,000 machine.
     The excise tax rate drops from $24 in the first year to $17.50 in the second year and $13.50 in the third. It falls progressively until it hits $4 in the sixth year, where it stays for as long as the vehicle is registered. Of course, by year six your $30,000 car is worth $10,000 or less, depending on mileage and condition.
     It galls Maine motorists that they have to pay a hefty amount of money every year on something they bought just once. It is equally galling that you continue to be taxed on the original sticker price, even when the car achieves junker status. But Maine’s municipalities love this system. They bring in about $200 million a year from the car tax, virtually all of which they get to keep.
     To make this unfair tax at least a bit more reasonable, I have introduced legislation to change the method of calculating the excise tax. My bill, LD 1905, is entitled An Act to Compute the Automobile Excise Tax Based on the Actual Purchase Price. If you bought that $30,000 car for $28,000, for example, that becomes your valuation basis. Verification of the purchase prices would be determined by furnishing the town clerk with the initial bill of sale or the state sales tax document provided at the point of purchase.
     Given the level of outrage over this tax, several other bills have surfaced in the 123rd Legislature. One would exempt new cars from the tax for a year. Another one would reduce the sticker price by $3,000. Yet another bill would reduce the top tax rate to $18 per $1,000, as was recommended by an excise tax “task force” years ago.
Ideally, we should eliminate this tax completely. The trouble is that even tinkering with the system to make it less onerous, as my bill would do, would cost the cities and towns of Maine a lot of money. They would retaliate by raising property taxes, another sore point in our state. Based on ability to pay, our property taxes are the nation’s highest.
     There may be no easy solution to this mess. But I, for one, am getting tired of Maine being the highest in the nation in virtually every category of taxation.

John McDonough
State Representative
District 127, Scarborough