I’ve repeatedly heard two arguments for the Palesky tax cap. The first is that the town managers’ post-cap predictions are merely scare tactics. I don’t understand that. If you perturb a system already under stress, the system will react. If this system is a town, and the perturbation is to remove most of its incoming revenue, doesn’t it follow that town services are proportionally reduced? Even if this reasoning is incorrect, why label these predictions as “scare tactics,” as though town managers are our enemies? Aren’t they, in fact, town finance experts, and therefore in the best position to predict the effects of the tax cap?

The second argument is that we need to “send a message to Augusta.” I’m a public school teacher, and as I look around at our faculty meetings and see excellent teachers who will be fired if the tax cap passes, I cannot understand why anyone believes the target of this message is Augusta.

Has it really come to this – that our hatred of taxes is so great that we willingly hurt not only school teachers, but, by extension, our own children in the hopes that the government will see that now we really mean it?

I understand that our tax burden weighs on many and that it needs to be reduced, but to do it in this way violates both common sense and conscience.

Come Nov. 2, I will be voting no on Question 1.

Michael Hayashida, Auburn