Part-time residents have strongly opposed the Residential Tax Exemption (RTE) since it was initiated in FY18.  The most recent survey of part-timers placed opposition over 90%.

On September 13, the Truro Select Board will hold its annual  tax classification hearing at which they will decide the tax rate, including the rate of the RTE to be imposed on part-time resident taxpayers for FY23.  TPRTA has called for all subsidies, including the RTE, child care vouchers, affordable housing support and more to be put on an equivalent basis of direct taxation to be shared by all Truro taxpayers equally.  Read more here.

In part, the TPRTA Board letter to the Select Board states:

This year,  numerous expenditures representing financial subsidies to full-time residents and employees of Town-based businesses have been set in motion to be shared equally among all taxpayers,  including:

• • Day care vouchers for children up to age 4
  • New affordable housing investments

Further, these subsidized initiatives will soon be compounded with the anticipated major expenditures associated with a new DPW and potential need for our own ambulance squad.  The idea of shifting more tax burden to the part-time residents displays a distressing lack of respect for your constituents and abuses our goodwill, generosity, and civic engagement.

The Town should take an approach to exemptions and subsidies on the same basis – shared equally by all taxpayers.  This allows us to have a true single rate system, clearly transparent to all. 

On behalf of the more than 2, 000 +  properties owned by part-time resident taxpayers in Truro, we urge you to halt, and eventually rescind the RTE and to find a better way to give tax relief to those who need it based on a common and equal residential tax basis.