What is killing Mexico is having the highest property tax rate in the state for the past five years. That inhibits businesses from coming here, stagnates the real estate market (no one wants to buy and no one can sell) and creates a heavy financial burden on the elderly retirees.

Mexico has 2,600 people; 1,500 are property owners, of whom 600 are senior citizens. The town’s population has shrunk by half during the past two decades. All around us, businesses are consolidating; workers in the private sector have seen their wages stay the same or decrease, while having to contribute more to ever-higher health care premiums. Yet Mexico selectmen are impervious to all that and have increased property taxes for up to 50 percent during the past four years.

There is more than $300,000 in unpaid taxes. Will an increase in the tax burden solve that?

I shall vote no on the current proposed budget to keep the taxes the same as last year, and yes on the citizens’ ordinance to decrease the mill rate by 3 mills (10 percent decrease in town operating costs) for the following years.

Fiscal sanity must be restored and can be done without sacrificing essential services.

It is long overdue to look into sharing services with our neighbors.

Albert Aniel, Mexico