In my attempt at answering Frequently Asked Questions, I wanted to address the issue of mitigation payments or PILOT funds for hosting the Worcester House of Corrections; a very popular question in West Boylston.
Many years ago, the Town of West Boylston identified the fact that the Town provides many services to the Worcester Jail & House of Corrections currently located within the Town. These services include, but are not limited to, ambulance calls, fire calls, and police calls. Communities who host such former county facilities such as this do not receive PILOT monies (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) on a yearly basis to cover the community costs for providing such services as well as the loss of tax revenue. When you compare that with the fact that communities who host correctional facilities that are not former county facilities do receive host funding, it makes the plight of communities like ours even more unfair.
There are a dozen communities, including West Boylston, that are affected in this way. In 2006, the West Boylston Board of Selectmen outreached to these communities to let them know of our efforts to seek legislative change to permit PILOT funds to these communities and received some positive response for our efforts.
As you can probably imagine, the small Town of West Boylston has long struggled to provide basic services to our residents as well as to the Worcester County Jail. It is the Town's firm belief that mitigation funds are appropriate and fair considering the impact that this has on our community, especially considering that more than half of the Town of West Boylston is tax exempt due primarily to the large land holdings of the DCR in West Boylston for water protection of the Wachusett Reservoir.
The underlying land occupied by the Worcester County Jail is some of the most valuable property in the Town, very close to Route 12, I-190 and I-290 and adjacent to our industrial area of the Town. If this property had been developed for its highest and best use, it could yield hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Town in annual property tax revenues.
The Town of West Boylston believes the practice of not providing PILOT funds to communities who host former county correctional facilities is blatantly unfair and we have worked with our legislative delegation for several years in an attempt to correct this injustice. While we have yet to be successful, we continue to fight this fight for the property taxpayers of West Boylston. We thank Senator Chandler and Representative O'Day for their work in this effort and we hope that our efforts will bear fruits someday.
Leon A. Gaumond Jr.
Town Administrator
| 
