Every tax is a pay cut.  Every tax cut is a pay raise. Citizens for Limited Taxation

I have carefully documented the immense growth of the Town of Framingham's town government over the last seven years in relationship to its population growth.

Year	Population	General Fund Expenses	Town Employment	School Costs	Number of Students	SAT Scores
1996	66,141	$103 million	1,774	50.70 million	8,422	1071
2003	66,256	$160 million	2,273	79.35 million	9,228	1064

Between 1996 and 2003, we gained 1,369 residents and 806 new additional students. Given a school class size average of 20, we should have added about 40 teachers. Add in another 20 teachers for special education.  In 1996, we had one full/part time employee for every 37 residents. If we gained 1,369 residents, we should have added about 40 new town employees. Let us be generous and take some workload off our town employees and add in another 20 for a total of 60. In essense, we add 60 teachers and 60 new town employees so that we should have 1,894 employees in 2003. Instead, in 2003, we find ourselves with 2,274 full/part time employees. That's 380 more than our actual needs. How do you account for this oversight? Could it be that someone made mistakes in their hiring needs?  Or could it be that the Board of Selectman and the Town Manager deliberately bloated the staff using state aid because they strongly believe that big bloated government is good for us.  Take a quick look at how Cambridge, MA fared in the same time period. To add insult to injury, they voted to place an operational override on the ballot in the year when state aid reached at $27.6 million.  This override will cost us an average of $275 a year (for the rest of our lives). A tax and spend liberal is someone who purposely advocates big government and strongly believes that big government will cure us from whatever ails us.  Of course, they never do tell us what ails us.  Of course, I believe that government should serve the needs of the people but should not be an excessive burden to us.  When the elderly are forced to sell their houses to pay taxes, and more families become homeless, it's time to admit that the government is a burden to us. The town government is much bigger than it needs to be to serve our needs. We need to replace those individuals that have created this burden to us, and let them go their own way hopefully in some other community, far, far away, where they will not affect us with their liberal spending.

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