The Real Barrington Can’t Afford Exclusive Subsidized Tax Schemes

On June 3, 2013, the Town Council will again take up a request for an exclusive tax assessment scheme to abate taxes for an “affordable” rental development in Barrington – East Bay Community Development Corp’s Palmer Pointe. The first time the Council debated this issue was in November 2008 – for EBCDC’s Sweetbriar development.

If the town council abates taxes for one taxpayer (EBCDC), other town residents must shoulder their tax burden. Is this fair if the latter is in financially similar circumstances to the EBCDC beneficiary? Is it constitutional?

Questions remain as to the legality of providing an exclusive assessing method to one party, as was done for Sweetbriar.  Especially disturbing is that the Town Council voted “yes” to the Sweetbriar scheme without first testing the fairness of their vote on existing taxpayers, or whether the scheme was constitutional.

These questions could have been investigated in 2008 by the Town Council via the Barrington Planning Board process (Barrington Ordinance Section 37-7) but the subject of fairness to existing taxpayers didn’t come up during the Sweetbriar debate.

The real Barrington isn’t all that rich.  In 2008, there were 8,069 federal tax returns filed for zip code 02806, showing:

• 957 were for income levels between $10,000, and $25,000 and 1076 were for income levels between $25,000 and $50,000 –  similar to the income levels of those being subsidized in affordable rental housing.

• 51% of the returns accounted for only 17% of Barrington’s total Adjusted Gross Income.

• 17% of the returns accounted for 50% of Barrington’s total Adjusted Gross Income.

Current U.S. Census Bureau data confirms that 22% of Barrington households remain within the same income range as those who qualify for affordable rental housing, yet Barrington’s tax scheme forces even “affordable” homeowners at Walker Farm to subsidize the EBCDC rental abatements.

The average annual property tax bill for a Walker Farm home? More than $3,000. The annual tax bill for a modest Barrington home of equivalent size to a Sweetbriar home? About $5,000. The average Sweetbriar home’s annual property tax bill? Only about $745.

When compared to the rest of Rhode Island, Barrington’s per capita property tax burden is the highest in the state (excluding the summer communities of Jamestown and Block Island).

Barrington’s disparate, unfair tax assessment methods were litigated in the 2010 lawsuit,  Adams et al v. Barrington Tax Assessor. The town settled - but has not yet fulfilled the terms of the settlement agreement. In the 2010 lawsuit, the court quoted from another assessment case:

“Such disproportionate assessments based upon arbitrary and discriminatory  evaluations violate the fair-distribution clause of art. 1, sec. 2 of the Rhode Island Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Does the Town Council care that the real Barrington taxpayers can’t afford such a tax subsidy for Palmer Pointe?

We’ll see when, on June 3, the Barrington Town Council will again take up this question of selective “affordable” tax abatements.