okay Ray what do you think about taxes
okay
um
too high obviously
um-hum yeah i agree
but my
property taxes have been going up repeatedly
uh over the last uh
well this is going to be the seventh year in a row that they've increased
oh really
so
um and they're always saying if you know if they don't raise taxes then they're going to have to lay off on uh the teachers they're going to have to lay of uh firemen they're going to have to lay off the police officers
hum-um
but yet they don't talk anything about the administration about cutting back on that end of it
um-hum
they just they've they're in the middle of an expose now on
the state and the City of Providence
uh public works departments
uh-huh yeah
and they've had TV cameras going around uh they wait at
some of the yards
and they follow the trucks as they come out uh at random
yeah
just to see what they do during the course of the day
uh-huh
and there's not much that's going on i'll tell you i mean they're going to gin mills and and spending half a day in there drinking or they're going to other people's homes and doing work
oh so you've got you have you have a little graft and corruption huh
uh i think that's
in any
city or town i don't think there's any that are free from graft and corruption
yeah
uh if they could eliminate something like that
um
yeah you know the waste you know that's i think uh
yeah
i i think that's a big problem uh uh i don't do you think you get some good services for your taxes do you have a good school district do you have
um
i thought we always did i grew up in a town it was it's a small town
um-hum
yeah
it's in Rhode Island actually i live in Rhode Island i work in Massachusetts
um-hum
um
but
about uh six seven months ago they had a breakdown of all school systems and
how many children actually
once they once they get into the school system how many actually graduate
um-hum
and i was kind of shocked at the amount of dropout in our town
yeah around fifty percent
uh not quite
but
it was up there it was the forty percentile range
yeah
yeah that's that's pretty much i think nationwide it's
you know the average is about seventy five percent uh complete school you know twenty five percent dropout rate throughout the country
yeah that's
for school districts i'm not sure how they figure that out if they do per pupil or if they look at just averages per school district and things like that
but some schools i i don't know see i i live in a small community and um
we don't pay much in taxes i don't uh this sets
this is a farming community and the farmers control your property taxes basically and and in a sense you services
we have uh probably what's considered the third worst
maybe the fourth worst school district in uh
in the in the state
other than the city of Baltimore itself probably you know which is always i guess a low is a low streak so actually i think for the return on my taxes for my for my
my uh state taxes that go to my school district and my services or whatever i think i get a pretty good return
yeah
but my employment tax you know the federal i don't think i get a good federal
return at all i think locally i think property taxes on my house were twelve hundred dollars
and that was that included state and local taxes so that was school district and snow plowing which isn't probably anything like that you have and that included my water and sewer
um but i didn't think that was too bad
um-hum
yeah mine are right now they're two thousand dollars just a little over two thousand
uh-huh do you own a lot of property just a or a small lot
no uh a third of an acre
um-hum
and uh it's a colonial house that we have it's a saltbox it's uh twelve years old
yeah
um-hum
yeah
the uh
plus the plus the personal property tax we get taxed on our automobiles
oh do you
yeah
see we don't do that
and then the the town also has a fire tax
um-hum
so we get a fire tax added to
the uh everything on top of that
yep
and it's the bulk of it's going for the school system
yeah see i i
yeah
but we had uh
when i when i got out of school i i went up and i worked in a
in a missile plant up in uh Buffalo
um-hum
and up there
they had like all our fire departments were volunteers
right
yeah
they had uh the best of equipment and and the best of training a
and it didn't really
you mean you have a full-time fire department
no full-time
is that what you have now though in your town
yes yes we've got all full-time fire departments
oh
how many about how my goodness see that's see that's down here um being a member of we have we have a couple full-time firemen but basically
you know they well train the guys and they run the show and they live in the firehouse and you know and then most everybody else is volunteer
oh okay and then you have call
yeah
so there's like a core of like each station has like two or four full-time then everybody else is a volunteer
yeah we got volunteer i mean uh we used to have volunteer up here
yeah
and now they're all paid
um
which is you know i don't know we can
there's a lot of things that can be done because federal taxes are out of sight because of
yeah oh that just federal taxes just
more and more and more and less and less services you know
that's it they just keep
um-hum
they don't cut anything
right
and it just feeds on itself and i don't think there's anything that anyone ca n do anymore
um-hum
it's just grown to such proportions
yeah such it's just out of hand i agree you know the the whole idea like around here um
you know after Desert Storm or whatever we have a plant here that feeds one of the military contracts that should be cut you know that they advised on cutting
oh yeah
but because of Desert Storm now they said well we can't cut it so they put it back in action now granted everybody around here was happy because it keeps two or three hundred people employed
yeah
but you know if we don't cut some of these nationwide you know some of these expenses just have to be cut if we don't need such a large army and we don't need if the military comes out and says we don't need all these planes
then why does Congress say tough take them anyway
you know
well it's like the
the tanks now everyone's after the tanks they're the you know like the the Mach One is it the Mach One Abrams
yeah
um i don't know how much it costs let's let's round figure just say a million dollars
now for a million dollars
you can produce probably
a thousand handheld antitank weapons
right
rockets
um-hum
and you give them to a thousand peasants
you don't even have to train them
right
and out of one of those thousands one of them is going to hit now you take out a million dollar tank with a with a
you know
with a one thousand dollar antitank weapon
right but they're but they're still going with the with the mechanized it's like the it's like the old days when they had the cavalry they didn't want to give up their horses to go for Jeeps or whatever they were doing then
yeah
and you know a million dollars do you know how many people that would feed and clothe and get off the welfare rolls and get and keep in school and you know if we uh i just
right
yep
and
in some ways i just don't
you talk to them and you talk to like the big aircraft companies and all they say well if they didn't spend the money and they didn't then they're overruns and if didn't cost a hundred dollars for a hammer uh you would put a lot of people out of work
um-hum
but those people you put out of work you could you could
rechannel their energies into making a rapid transit system in this country
that's right oh i agree with you a hundred percent you know our direction has really
you know solar energy
uh you know there's been some recent great discoveries in solar energy surprisingly because there's there's no money invested in it
that's right
no um in fact in fact TI just announced some breakthroughs in solar energy
yeah a big thing
uh-huh
yeah
you know some flex
a flexible solar material that it can be woven over top of something it could be it could be put on the top of airplanes to help power the plane
yep
yep
yep
you know it uh it just it could be put on the top of automobiles to
it's being channeled into special action groups by special action groups and they just keep the taxes keep going
right
uh they just keep yeah it that just
just for those just for those groups and we've got like the the uh Groton Connecticut
um-hum
where they make the subs
yeah
and we've got a division in uh in uh Quansett
that does it that does the same thing
so when they announced the contract up here for that latest
hum-um
uh sub i guess uh Newport News
said they were going to sue the government because of you know blah blah this and blah blah that whatever it was but it's generating jobs up here for us but it's really it's really not if you look at the whole you know it's generating jobs for a few people
um-hum
if they channeled their energies if they go back to like when Roosevelt put put in the C C C camps and they built border ways for the reservoirs and you know highways and bridges and yeah um
right
and highways
see that's a big problem we have um i'm originally from Pennsylvania and the biggest problem we have in Pennsylvania is that almost every bridge
oh okay
that in Pennsylvania was built during the Eisenhower administration
uh within was in the City of Pittsburgh
is that right
and there are yeah because see they Eisenhower put through money for uh though it probably didn't affect Boston it went the uh a highway from New Jersey west
was it
was it funded by by special bonds or
i'm not sure what it was but it was uh Eisenhower i guess thought that you should be able to move tanks across the country
