notes: i know you may have heard all this before. i am sending this letter to the 2 newspapers in my area. this is the unabridged version. this is my story. mary gerdt
Halls of Shame
c. 2010
by Mary Gerdt
“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly”
Abraham Lincoln
I have been reading the Plato articles by Professor Nuovo in the Addison Independent. These have had a funny influence on me. I remember my Mom’s bookshelf full of the classics. I felt detached from them. Now with Google and instant info, here is a long gone philosopher with insight into modern day struggles.
Have we really evolved?
I have wanted to lay out my common man’s argument against Vermont local town officials being able to sell your property for taxes owed to the town and State of VT and charging fees, advertising expense and the Town’s legal expense.
There is an elaborate manual about tax sales produced by the Secretary of State. Another on abatement of taxes. Laws, statutes, the foundation of Vermont civilized order.
My dream was Plato was reincarnated as me, a middle class female nurse with MS who has had a bumpy road fighting for property with my husband, comrades forever to keep what we have fought for our whole lives.
I work in a cave, a concrete bunker with fluorescent lights. When I come out it is dark, go in it is dark.
This is so I can earn living expenses which are soaring along with property taxes.
We missed the deadline to pay taxes and were assessed 8 percent by the town. Less than 9 months later the Town of Monkton was going to sell my property. My husband, trying to shelter me from this hateful act and likewise sensitive to being on the hall of shame of delinquent tax payers, did not tell me about this.
I really missed the whole event. A few weeks later I found out.
My property was one day away from being sold, which could have led to foreclosure. Someone or several someones knew and wanted it. My former lawyer was used against me and never bothered to try to reach me. No one in the town stopped and asked if I was OK. We have lived in this house nearly 20 years. My husband’s family has paid taxes here for a hundred years, even on property they did not own. Fred and I have always kept off the hall of shame. There were many whose property was not sold after only 9 months delinquency.
Have you ever been there?
The Town of Monkton has decided to sell whoever’s property they want to with their rough cut regulations.
I asked for more info on how they decided my property. A selectman answered the lawyer decided.
I wanted proof they tried to contact me. No proof.
I wanted abatement of taxes in light of our extraordinary circumstances and prior history of paying on time for many years.
They refused to respond to my requests.
This year we qualified for income sensitivity on taxes.
We also paid over $10,000 (almost 20 percent of our gross income) in taxes for our poor paint-less house and land. We paid $1000 to the town lawyer when he never talked to me, a woman landowner. We paid $500 to the tax collector who never talked to me nor tried to contact me in any way. We paid for the ad in the Addison Independent and I never have seen it.
I have suffered disillusionment in the cave called Monkton. The beautiful views blurred by an arrogant government which takes property in these hard times. I encourage all to question your town’s tax sale policies and the implications of the town taking a $300,000 property for $6,000 and humiliation on top.
I can now say I have been in the hall of shame and survived.
I pray others may survive and some may pursue legal fights in the cave of justice, the courthouse. I prefer the open fresh air of my backyard and typing in my friendly blog. Hoping I can influence the practice by towns of property land grabs. Hoping I can bring to light my main arguments against the new town hall in Monkton.
By the way, the town hall vote should not have been referred to as a postponement (by Addison Independent), but as a defeat for the folly of the Monkton officials.
Monkton needs to get its present house in order before building a new house. At the present town hall No one is falling over themselves, they are only open very part time. I prefer the smaller rooms so there are witnesses to conversations with some of the omniscient town officials. The blatant disregard for cost is evidenced by the lovely color design by the most expensive no-bid contractor. The lovely meeting rooms will not make the minutes get posted on the website so common folks like myself can read them. Nor will the price make the minutes understandable or specific (or I would have known my property was being sold).
The 1.5 million price tag is obscene when the town wants to rid itself of property owners, people like me who fall on hard financial times. I have anxiety about how long I will be able to work, who will want my property next. The town has ignored my pleas for abatement. The Secretary of State and Governor and Tax Commissioner are powerless to enforce all the statutes and rules. Only the local Town officials can correct the taking of land for small sums of money.
Or at least be accountable by working with a landowner prior to taking. Showing compassion in this difficult era of time.
If I took this to court, it would only shift the money to a lawyer. At $10,000, my reward would be eaten up and then some by most any lawyer. Ironically the town’s lawyer only wanted to sell high priced properties to make it worth his while. I am unable to affect any of these practices except by shining light on them to whoever will publish this. Also if I took the town to court, the town would use the same lawyer with the conflict to attack me and get paid to do it!
No, instead I will save the Townspeople’s money and I will publish on my blog as a completely unabridged version.
Fair warning to other women land owners. Your property could be sold by the town at their whim completely without your being informed. And no one will care. They will tell your husband or your Dad.
Have we come so far after all?
When I think of a modern utopia, My friend Herrad sums it up best,
“The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference.
He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.
If Plato had lived today, would he have gone to court?
Would the town have only told his wife and then put his family farm up for sale?
Would he have seen the folly in building a 1.5 million dollar building to process the foreclosure of the property of the weak, infirmed and those they want to eliminate from society?
Or would he have done, as I have and try to illuminate the issues in a public forum where all may read the sequel to the tax sale notice in the pay version of the newspaper I don’t read because I cannot afford it?
I like to think Plato would shutter to think of what is possible in “modern” society.
As a woman, I feel like we have not come far at all.
Anyone who cares to join me in protesting land grabs in these economic bad times, please write to anyone who will listen.
Please realize that when the town taxes you out of your home, it will be up to YOU to enforce the statutes, rules.
For the record, I wrote the Town of Monkton 3 times about tax abatement and they ignored, a posture that says, go ahead, take me to court.
I choose the path of light.
Do you see?
"Man, like a tree in the cleft of a rock, gradually shapes his roots to his surroundings, and when the roots have grown to a certain size, can't be displaced without cutting at his life." Oliver Wendell Holmes
