Moms for more taxes
Women lobby for overrides as Mass. towns struggle
NATICK - You could call them the Override Moms - politically powerful suburban women who lobby for property tax increases to pay for teachers, new schools, and better classroom gear for their school-aged children. Think soccer moms, with an activist bent.
In one community after another, these mothers have banded together in common cause. They are nimble and they are quick, often performing with the agility and strategy of an expert strike force.
With at least 40 Eastern Massachusetts cities and towns planning to ask voters for more than $50 million over the next few months, this is the make-or-break season for thousands of these young mothers dedicated to persuading neighbors to vote themselves a tax hike.
Within 48 hours after Natick selectmen voted last month to seek a $3.9 million override, the town's first such attempt in six years, the group Vote Yes! for Natick had a position statement e-mail waiting in thousands of inboxes around town.
"This matters so much to the community," said campaign cochairwoman Mari Barrera, while standing out in the freezing rain Tuesday evening with a Vote Yes! placard. She cited threatened teacher cuts, library hour reductions, and cutbacks in the Police Department, Department of Public Works, and the town-run organic farm, if the vote does not pass.
"Those are the things that get me out here," said Barrera, whose two elementary-school aged children dropped by for a quick hug on their way home for dinner and homework. "Who will plow the streets so my elderly neighbors can walk downtown?"
In Randolph, Kathy Haire is leading the town's fourth campaign for an override in as many years. Ballot questions in 2003, 2006, and 2007 all failed. The schools experienced $12 million in budget cuts, and are threatened with state receivership.
Haire hopes this year's question - a $5.5 million override - will be different. Her committee, Support a Future for Randolph, is coordinating informational mailings, meetings, and any other outreach she can think of to sway public opinion before the April 1 vote.
"Our kids deserve the best education we can give them," said Haire, the mother of a senior at Randolph High School. "I look around my neighborhood and see the smaller kids and say, 'If I'm able to do something to help, how can I turn my back?' "
The luxury of simply being a soccer mom went out with the flush 1990s.
In today's stalled-out economy - with municipal budget cuts and shrinking state aid - these mothers are leveraging their social connections, technical savvy, and professional skills to help bail out town budgets. They have protest placards mingling with sports gear in the back of their station wagons. Many work full-time jobs, then rush home to e-mail, organize, and raise money - sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars - in an effort to keep local schools ranked high on the MCAS.
Although anti-override activism has been around almost since the controversial 26-year-old Proposition 2 1/2 state law took effect in 1981, the override mom has now become a fixture in such communities as Wellesley, Newton, Lexington, Concord, and Scituate, which have passed repeated tax overrides.
Override advocates certainly include men as well as women without school-age children, but the fervor among 30- and 40-something mothers has grown noticeably over the years, along with cuts in local school systems.
Yet they have their detractors, none more notable than Barbara Anderson, executive director of Marblehead-based Citizens for Limited Taxation, which created Proposition 2 1/2, ½the state statute that prohibits towns from raising property taxes more than 2.5 percent per year without voter approval. Critics say it is starving municipalities of needed revenue.
"These are people who have the spare time to do this," said Anderson. "They are obsessed with what they want for their kids, which is a private school experience that they don't have to pay for themselves."
Anderson said override moms don't have enough empathy for "old people, sick people, and people who can't afford an override."
But the mothers insist they want all residents to benefit. "We're not 'Save Our Schools,' " said Lisa Valone, who cofounded the Proposition 2 1/2 advocacy in Wayland.
"We are 'Save Our Services,' and our mission is about preserving service for everyone in town and advocating for fiscal responsibility in the long term. We value our community on many levels, not just the schools."
Valone's largely women-led group mounted successful override campaigns in 2005 and 2006, votes that approved tax hikes totaling $4.4 million. They are girding for an April 8 ballot battle for another $1.9 million in proposed tax hikes, mostly to fund town operations.
Before their children reached school age, when they spent their time chasing after babies and toddlers, said Barrera of Natick, these mothers were too exhausted to do much more than "vote, read, and sign petitions."
But as her children reached school age, Barrera had the time and inclination to become more involved. She and Valone describe a typical weeknight as a rush home, a kiss for the children, and a jump onto the Web to plan meetings and fund-raisers, and do research, often until after midnight.
That fits a long-established pattern of political activism for women, said state Representative Ruth Balser, a Newton Democrat who described her first political role as a "stop-sign mom."
As a young Newton mother in the mid-1980s, Balser got involved with city politics to fix a dangerous intersection at Hartman and Brookline streets so her children could cross safely. She said her "stop-sign mom" mentality was not so different from today's override mom activity. "I was so passionate because I felt my kids were at risk," she said.
Some characterize their advocacy against Proposition 2 1/2 as a form of mothering - teaching civic engagement by example to their children.
"I do like modeling this for my children. They see their parent involved, and we talk about the issues together all the time," said Ann Rappaport of Wellesley, a mother of two middle-schoolers.
Determined Wellesley activists - many of them mothers - raised $380,000 in 2005 in an attempt to preserve a Spanish language program in the elementary schools. The town later rejected the private funding. The activists also spearheaded six successful override campaigns that, since 2000, have raised close to $10 million for the town.
Still, Anderson said she saw the constant push for overrides as a dangerous lesson for young people.
"It is teaching kids to be selfish and to live off other people," she said.
But mothers advocating the overrides say they are here to stay, until Proposition 2 1/2 is repealed or the state finds a better way to fund municipal budgets.
Each budget season brings a new fight - a campaign to win the hearts, minds, and dollars of neighbors.
"Every year it's like pushing a boulder up a hill," said Rappaport of Wellesley. "You win or you don't, but next year, you're back at the bottom."
Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com 