Home / VOL. VII NO. 17 10/01/2026 / Residential Tax Exemption

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Residential Tax Exemption

By John Hart


For the past eight years or so I have stepped back and just observed what has been going on with our select boards, our finance committee and our town administrator. What I have concluded is that they seem to have put the voters, full-time residence and taxpayers of Stockbridge as secondary in favor of second homeowners and growth of the town. The absurd increase in our property assessments caused real estate axes to skyrocket. This happened during COVID as a result of the “flight to safety” of urbanites with deep pockets. That increase in assessed values increased our property taxes to the point where some are unable to stay in their homes.

The Select Board is required to vote on RTE and other tax-related matters annually – generally in October.

They have some choices: residential, tax, commercial, tax, and whether to enact the residential tax exemption or RTE. I urge you to write letters to these officials, attend the Tax Classification Hearing and tell them to enact the RTE before the vote. Chat GPT can be extremely helpful to you in giving perspective. Ask it what are the pros and what are the cons of RTE. You might also want to ask it what the arguments the proponents of RTE used in towns in the eastern part of the Commonwealth that adopted RTE. You can ask about Truro, Nantucket, Martha’s Vinyard, Cambridge to name a few. Fellow residents, it’s time to act this time around. We are not sheep to be led to slaughter. John H. Hart

Editor’s note: John Hart is President and CE, Berkshire Brochure Display

Lionel Delevingne

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