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Longmeadow adopts restaurant meals tax at Special Town Meeting

Date: 10/29/2012

By Chris Maza

chrism@thereminder.com

LONGMEADOW — Longmeadow has become one of nearly half the towns in Massachusetts to adopt a meals tax.

At the Special Town Meeting on Oct. 23, residents passed by majority vote Article 10, which would allow the town to impose a 0.75 percent excise tax on the sale of food in restaurants in town.

Other local cities and towns that have adopted the meals tax include Springfield, Chicopee, South Hadley, West Springfield, Northampton, Amherst, Hadley, Belchertown, Palmer and Monson.

Select Board Vice Chair Mark Gold, who presented the article, stated that the Massachusetts Department of Revenue estimated that the town could receive more than $80,000 in revenue from the new tax.

"[Massachusetts] Department of Revenue has calculated that in fiscal year 2011, this article, if it had been in effect, could have resulted in an income to Longmeadow of $83,480," he said. "This added income calculation was done prior to the establishment of several new restaurants in Longmeadow."

Gold added that the institution of this tax would be in an effort to offer relief to the residential tax base.

"[The $83,480] is the same amount of money that is raised by nearly 5 cents on the property tax rate. Passage of this warrant article translates into savings of between $14 and $17.50 to the owner of the average $350,000 value home," he said. "Residents have long asked for residential tax relief and this is our opportunity to obtain such relief."

Finance Committee Chair Edward Steiger made a motion to amend the article so that all of the proceeds from the new tax would be used toward capital improvement projects, however, Town Counsel David Martel said that he would have to investigate further whether or not such action would be legal and the motion was defeated by a majority vote.

Resident Lawrence Starr voiced concerns with the article, stating that it was a ploy by the Select Board to circumvent Proposition 2 1/2. He also said that the article would have it's largest impact on people in town who choose to dine out.

"It's a way to get around [Proposition] 2 1/2. [Proposition] 2 1/2 has served us well as it has forced us to be prudent in our budgeting," he said. "Typically these taxes — the meals tax and the hotel tax — are of common use because it affects out-of-towners. It affects people who can't vote on it. In Longmeadow, it's us because the restaurant revenue in Longmeadow is produced by Longmeadow. We don't have a lot of people coming from Northampton to eat."

Gold called the tax a "voluntary" one as it is only imposed on those who choose to dine out and stated that the article was not an effort to raise revenues overall.

"I already hear skeptics murmuring that it's just more money to spend, but the fact is that Longmeadow's budgets are developed based on expenses, not on income," he said.

Residents also unanimously approved the raising and appropriation of $249,183 and the transfer of $653,000 from available funds in the town's treasury in order to continue to pay down the town's estimated $2.4 million in unreimbursed expenses from the Oct. 29, 2011 snowstorm.

With the payment, the town would owe approximately $710,000.

After a discussion that lasted nearly an hour, residents voted against a citizen petition to alter the zoning bylaws as they related to corner lots in order to clear up language in the bylaw relating to the definition of a rear yard and setbacks related thereto.

While several residents, most of who owned homes on corner lots, spoke in favor of the article, which required a two-thirds vote to pass, Planning Board Chair Walter Gunn, Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) Chair David Lavenburg and Martel all spoke against the motion.

Gunn stated that he realized the problem and people's frustrations, but that the article as it was written only made the issue "murkier." He added that a forum with the Planning Board, ZBA and residents was the proper way to discuss the bylaw change and that a Town Meeting was not the place to "tinker with zoning."