It was a close vote
Sun Journal | www.sunjournal.com 29 September 2012
I offer a different perspective on Angus King’s displeasure with an anti-King TV ad featuring Record Hill Wind in Roxbury.
Kathy Sutton, wife of John Sutton (chairman of the Board of Selectmen for Roxbury), says some of the people in the ad are not even from Roxbury and so, essentially, why should their opinion count?
But four of the five people live at Roxbury Pond full time or for half the year, and are part of the town who pay most of the taxes and who have a longtime history, some since childhood, of coming to a place which is now spoiled by the dominating views of industrialized structures.
The vote to allow King’s wind business was a very close one, with people most affected having no vote. There were no local jobs created with the exception of a single management position, and some electricity will be free as long as the project makes money.
The tax reduction, while making people feel like they won the lottery, is temporary, as explained by Mike Rogers from Maine Revenue Services in Augusta.
Furthermore, Sutton and the Board of Selectmen have chosen this time of economic stress for a revaluation of the properties in the town. So while the mill rate has decreased, it is hard to conceive of a property revaluation that does not increase the tax load for all property owners. Half the town did not want the landscape-dominating structures, but now the whole town is stuck with them.
Anne Morin, Rumford
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/09/30/it-was-a-close-vote/