I go into a lot of homes in this town. That is all I am going to say about that.
A few weeks ago I heard part of a phone call that was not meant for me. I did not understand all of it. But I heard enough to understand that someone I care about is scared. Not scared like worried. Scared like the kind of scared you get when you finally understand what the numbers actually mean.
I went home and I looked some things up. I am not someone who usually does this. But I could not stop thinking about what I heard and I needed to understand it.
Here is what I found.
I did not know that libraries affect home values. I am embarrassed to say that. But it is true and it is documented. There is real research on this. A summary published by library researchers found consistent evidence that functioning public libraries contribute to property values in their communities. Homes in towns with strong library systems sell for more than comparable homes in towns where libraries have been reduced or closed.
I do not know exactly how much. Nobody does, exactly. But the direction is clear. A library that is open and accredited and connected to regional resources is worth something to the houses around it. A library that is not is worth less. And in a town where the median home is over a million dollars, less is a very large number.
I also did not know that libraries get certified by the state. Massachusetts certifies 347 out of 350 of its municipalities. Marblehead currently holds that certification. Under the cuts that are being proposed, it would lose it.
What that means practically: no more borrowing books from other libraries. No shared databases. Cut off from the regional system that most people in this town probably use without thinking about it much. The library does not just get smaller. It gets disconnected.
There is a kind of home loan that some older homeowners use when they own their house but do not have much monthly income. The bank gives them money against the value of the home. No payments while they are living there. It sounds like a good deal.
What I did not understand is that the amount owed grows every month, quietly, while nothing seems to be happening. The safety in that situation is the value of the house. If the house goes down in value, the safety gets smaller. If it gets small enough there is nothing left. The family gets a problem instead of an inheritance.
I am not going to say more than that. But I will say that when I understood this I thought about what I had heard on that phone call and I felt sick.
A property tax increase of a few hundred dollars a year is not nothing. I know that. But a five percent drop on a million dollar home is fifty thousand dollars. Those two numbers are not in the same conversation.
I am not from Marblehead. I did not grow up here. I do not own anything here. This town has not always made me feel like I belong in it.
But there are people here who have been kind to me. And some of them are about to make a decision that I do not think they fully understand. And I cannot make them understand it. I can only put what I found in one place and hope that somebody reads it who needed to read it.
I am not telling anyone what to decide. I genuinely am not. I just think people should do the math before they decide. The real math. Not just the tax line on the bill but the whole picture.