Josh Billings was a good ole boy with a folksy way of talking. His creator, Henry Wheeler Shaw, had no such verbal eccentricity but learned early that giving advice goes down better if the language is not too highfalutin. I have some advice to give, so I will try to be folksy.

I never saw a better example of the importance of “roll-out” than the introduction of the Residential Tax Exemption (RTE). Those opposed grabbed the Mic and laid out one-liners, and now everything everyone is talking about is either irrelevant or erroneous.

Let’s agree no one likes taxes; some get angry when taxes go up. Let’s agree we all want stuff — sewer, deiced roads, and let’s agree we have to pay for what we want. Want to argue fairness? Should we shift the millions for sewer around the lake, dredging and harvesting to lake dwellers only cuz the folks downstreet don’t benefit? Talking about fairness is fatuous — what we need is a conversation about problem solving.

Let’s agree we are a community. Let’s agree the behaviors of folks living in the same community impact each other. Take taxes: folks downstreet, Oldtimers who owned their houses decades, who didn’t add on to or update see their taxes go up. How come? Cuz others who want to move to Stockbridge have bidding wars, tear down and build bigger and better. Pretty soon a high-priced house is not an anomaly in Stockbridge, it is commonplace. Therefore, all assessments go up on everyone — even the old-timer with the thirty-year-old kitchen. Soon there is no relationship between the assessment of a home and the income of the primary homeowner. Now if RTE lowers the primary householders’ assessment, it is plum silly to argue that’s unfair.

Stockbridge received $1.5 million less than Lee in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds because the Feds only count primary homeowners and Stockbridge is 60% second homeowners. Yet that same division in population can work for us with RTE. (Lee has almost the same population as Stockbridge’s summer population, but Lee is 92% primary homeowners.)

Wanna talk divisiveness? Every state in the Union imposes cost/benefits and grants the most benefits to the full-time residents and the most costs to part-timer residents. But, if you own more than one house, you can weigh the cost/benefits and pick your primary residence. No need to be yelling or name calling — it’s your choice.

We live together and if we are wise — here comes the advice — we will pull together and never be fooled by vapid sloganeering. How would Josh Billings say it? “Common sense is seeing things as they are and then doing what ought to be done.”