I write to strongly encourage your support of the committee recommending favorably the Belmont home rule petition to bring the Belmont Country Club (BCC) out from the financial cocoon of 61B open space tax reductions. I’m writing to you as a residential home owner, business owner, and taxpayer, and co-chair of our town’s energy committee, and as one who pays property and income taxes here in my hometown of Belmont.
Belmont Country Club’s 134 acres are anything but a public good. No residents of Belmont or anywhere else who are not private dues-paying members of the club are allowed to walk or recreate on that land. They’d get removed by the police and fined for trespass.
On top of that is the inherent tax unfairness that BCC can skip paying its fair share of our town property taxes, while everyone else in town, from residents to commercial property owners, does. Call a spade a spade: The BCC is a private entity that delivers all sorts of gains for the private benefit of its couple of hundred members. We don’t begrudge them their right to operate so that is fine and legal. But they, as a private entity, have no right to a public-benefit tax reduction under Chapter 61B. Those old days of tax privilege should be over across the state, but in any event, definitely so here in Belmont.
We, the Belmont taxpayers, are at a disadvantage as we have a small town dominated by residences across its small geographic footprint. We taxpayers end up having to pay the bill when tax overrides are voted on to increase our taxes, as they were just last year. More taxes for us, and yet the BCC gets to skate off with a tax break. Not right. Our tax rates are essentially twice those of neighboring Cambridge. In short, the time has long since come for BCC to pay its fair share. And if, as a consequence of a favorable home rule petition, the BCC needs to raise the club membership dues to pay those taxes, then that would be the just result, namely, the cost of maintaining private golfing privilege.
Thank you for favorably recommending this home rule petition filed by Sen. William Brownsberger and Rep. Dave Rogers.
Brian Kopperl, Hurd Road