Why Send Them to El Salvador?

Yesterday I received a notice about an ‘emergency’ town meeting that will be held to decide whether to increase local taxes to cover a looming deficit for what the town spends on its public schools.

My town and every town in New England cover almost the entire cost of public education through local property taxes, a practice that started when the colonies first were settled and continues up to the present day.

The town also gets a few bucks from state lottery revenues and the education money from the Feds is somewhere around 4% of the annual educational cost.

The mailer reminded me of what happened in the neighboring town of Leverett when a town meeting was held in 2013 or 2014 to figure out how to close a town budget gap without raising taxes, and it was decided to send a formal letter to the Obama Administration stating that the town was willing to keep Guantanamo inmates in local residences under house arrest, assuming the town would receive funding to cover the costs of keeping these terrorists in much more humane circumstances than what existed in Gitmo.

Think I’m kidding? I’m not. The resident of Leverett spent several hours making sure that their letter to Obama was styled just right and off it went.

To Obama’s credit, he didn’t reply.