Bend over and touch your toes in Barnstable because the price of regular gasoline prices on West Main Street was $.30 more than than it was almost everywhere else over the bridge….

We drove to Boston yesterday to attend my son’s college commencement ceremony, and then drove home last night after an afternoon party for him at my sister's house in Lexington, where the price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.55.

Regular gasoline at the Burger King/Mobile Station on Route 24 was selling for $3.62 gallon, a typical mark-up over non-highway gasoline stations.

Gasoline prices on highway gas stations are always higher than anywhere else because the state gets a cut on the profits.

When I got back the Cape gasoline prices on West Main Street, Hyannis were $3.81, which was a major shock because I filled up at 10:00 AM, before I left for Boston, and the price of regular was $3.73.

CLICK ON IMAGES OF REGULAR GASOLINE PRICES YESTERDAY TO ENLARGE...











It's inconceivable that gasoline prices in Hyannis can rise $.08 in a few hours, but we get the short end of the stick on everything in Barnstable, especially when you compare the extra property taxes/fees in Barnstable to those in Falmouth.

I know I wrote this story a couple of months ago, but it’s worth repeating until the silent majority awakens.

Barnstable’s residential tax rate is $6.58 or $.93 more than Falmouth’s tax rate of $5.65.

Inclusive in Falmouth’s tax rate are the costs of

• essential services (fire and ambulance) (A),
• street lights (B),
• weekly municipal curbside trash and recyclable collection (C),
• transfer station for those who want to schlep the stuff (D),
• school busing (E),
• school sports (F),
• school extra curricula activities (G),
• school music (H),
• and all-day kindergarten (I).

Let’s say you owned a $500,000 house in Barnstable Village;

Your town tax would be $2,672.

(A)    Your fire district tax would be $1,004.

(B)     You’d pay BFI or another garbage contractor for curbside trash collection service; $840.

(C)     If you wanted the same trash service as the town of Falmouth provides, your dump sticker would cost you $135.

(D)    If you had two kids in school your school bus fees will cost $350.

(E)    If one of your children was on the rowing team, or any other sport program, you’d pay $150.

(F)     If one of your children was enrolled in an extra-curricula activity, you’d pay $175.

(G)     If one of your students was in the middle school band, you’d pay $175.

(H)     If one of your children was enrolled in all-day kindergarten, you’d pay $2,750.

    $2,672
+  $1,004
+     $840
+     $135
+     $350
+     $150
+     $175
+     $175
+  $2,750

= $8,250

If you lived in Falmouth the same services would come out of your property tax ($500,000 home) of;

$2,825, or

$5,426 LESS than in Barnstable.

At $3.83 a gallon, you could by 1,417 gallons for $5,427.

If your weekly grocery bill averages $150 a week, you could by food and sundries at the supermarket from January 1, through the end of September for $5,427.

If you banked $5,427 the year your child was in kindergarten, and $3,000 each year after until he or she graduated, you’d have $50,000 in the bank for college.

If you don’t have any children in school, and lived in a $500,000 home in Barnstable Village and use BFI, or another rubbish contractor, you’ll spend $1,840 more than your counterpart in Falmouth.

If you don’t have children in school, and schlep your garbage and recyclables over to Marstons Mills, between the cost of gasoline and dump sticker, you’ll spend $1,300 more on town services than your counter part in Falmouth.

$1,300 will pay for 10,000 miles of driving at $3.83 a gallon if your car gets 25 miles to the gallon.

If you don’t have any kids in school, and spend $100 a week at Stop and Shop or Shaws, $1.300 will pay for three months of groceries.

The town of Falmouth only had $3 million left over after it paid for expenses in F/Y07.

Barnstable had $24 million left over after it paid the costs of local government in F/Y07.

It’s not hard to figure out that Barnstable's elected officials take $80 million in taxes from homeowners,

but only provide $54 million in services.

Barnstable homeowners pay their property taxes, and then have to come up with another $20 million out of their pockets, to pay for the same services Falmouth residents get in their property tax.

Town hall’s tax policy is analogous to giving a child $5 a day for lunch during the school year,

• but he/she only spent $1 a day,
• he or she would have $720 saved at the end of the school year.

If you’re happy taking money out of your bank account so the town can $24 million in its bank,

then you should be thrilled with the $5.00 a gallon price on regular gasoline and heating oil you’ll be paying this winter.

Don't believe me?

Click on the images to see regular gasoline prices six months ago, and compare them with today's $3.83 price for a gallon of regular gas.

 






WHAT'S IN YOUR WALLET?

Comments

[John Julius]

Good solid info Gary..... If I recall correctly, John Klimm's empire now consists of grand salaries of somewhere OVER $ 11 MILLION a year! How many times have I asked? The grand invention he calls "Growth Management Dep't is chock full of many of John Klimm's PALS..... it pays to be a PAL of John Klimm or a PAL of someone in the dep't. Heck, be friendly enough and one of the illustrious 'hard workers' in that dep't will get you in.

In the meantime, the last time I KNEW, that dep't has THREE FULL TIME nicely paid LAWYERS, who do NOTHING in the way of real law. So WHY be a lawyer and having gone to LAW SCHOOL for four expensive years and then work in "Growth Management" in Barnstable. Two reasons. One, it's likely that any hack in there could not make it in the REAL world of private practice. And two, hel, why not? You get a grand handsome salary from the taxpayers here, HEALTH INSURANCE, a WHOLE bunch of PAID SICK and VACATTION days OFF and you get to work in some department that has NO PURPOSE, other than just some invention from the Town Manager here who DOES know how to take care of his PALS! THAT is the ONLY reason why anyone would want to be a Lawyer and work in the town's "Growth Management", which rapes Barnstable TAXPAYERS of over ONE MILLION a year.

Get RID of that waste and there, presto, NOW you have a cool MILL to get RID of BUS FEES or some other real GOOD FOR the taxpayers, but NOT here in RIPOFFVILLE....

And let's take the Town Attorney's Office. There we have THREE MORE and count it FOUR if you toss in a FULL TIME LAWYER who works for the barnstable School Dep't. He got his job because, as John Klimm said, "we were old schoolyard pals" or something to that effect....

So take THAT major league waste and gee, there is likely another 3/4 of a MILLION MORE in gross waste, especially since the FOUR Lawyers there do pracitically NOTHING. In case some here don't know it, MOST of the litigation matters against this town are FARMED out to outside law firms, which I have been trying now since last JULY to get an answer as to HOW MUCH $$$$$$$ taxpayers here have been shelling out. And for anyone else who missed it, I was basically refused this information by the late Bob Smith, Mr. Manager himself John Klimm, Town Finance Director Mark Milne and finally now Mr. # TWO Bigman in charge of the 'legal dep't', David Houghton.

Well the good news is that I am now finished with the Lawyer from the Secretary of State's Office who is now helping me get this info......... We will let you know.

In the meantime, as Gary points out here, yes, it is a ripoff here in this town, mainly because we have a council that is plainly CLUELESS and we have a Town Manager who wastes money like a drunken sailor and there is not ONE councilor who even cares, let alone do anything to STOP or change it. If my numbers are right, the real total the town's affairs are run on is about 50 MIL, of which about one fifth or more goes to pay the bigtime salaries of a LOT OF PALS AND MORE PALS AROUND THIS TOWN.

Does anyone think John Klimm could ever run any other Cape town like this? Not even close. They would toss his ass out so fast his head would spin.

Gary, keep up the good work. ONE of these days people might wake up.

Good day.

Don't forget Pat Butler's brother, who's a lawyer for the School Committee, and makes $100K.

I'll bet Barnstable is the only school department in the state that has a lawyer on the payroll, and I'll bet the school's outside legal bills haven't changed that much compared to other years.

[Tasuvus.com]

Americans Using Less Gasoline

U.S. drivers are doing something they haven’t done for nearly two decades — consume less gasoline.

Gas consumption so far this year is down about 0.2 percent compared to last year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The federal agency is predicting that gasoline demand will be down 0.4 percent this summer and 0.3 percent for the year.

That may not sound like much, but it would be the first time since 1991 that there’s been a decline in annual gas consumption.

And it would be only the eighth year since 1951 in which demand for gasoline has declined.The federal agency noted that the decline was occurring in part because of a slowing economy. But it also said that higher gas prices were having an effect on demand.

“Sustained higher gasoline prices are beginning to show up in lower gasoline consumption,” said Tancred Lidderdale, an analyst for the Energy Information Administration.

Both gasoline and diesel prices are now at record levels.Here are two charts from This Week in Petroleum to show where retail prices are:Notice that instead of falling in the winter, both gas and diesel prices remained at high levels.

I think this is an important contributing factor to the slowdown that occurred in the fourth quarter.

Also consider the following graph of oil prices:Oil has been in a rally for almost a year and a half. Notice the market has continually advanced through previous resistance levels, consolidated gains and then moved higher.

However, we're moving into the summer driving season when demand typically increases:
Since last fall, the average U.S. retail price for regular gasoline has been close to or above $3 per gallon in large part due to high crude oil prices.

High crude oil prices are expected to remain an important reason why retail gasoline prices are projected to stay above $3 per gallon for some time to come.

As the chart below indicates, we are now in the “time of the season” when gasoline demand begins to increase.

As seasonal demand increases, prices tend to rise as well, all else equal. Even though U.S. gasoline demand has been lower than year-ago levels so far this year, EIA still expects that rising gasoline demand over the next few months will drive retail prices higher.

So, while gasoline prices have risen above $3 per gallon mostly due to high crude oil prices, increasing gasoline demand will likely take retail gasoline prices to $3.50 per gallon and above, even if year-over-year gasoline demand is negative.

The simple fact that more and more gasoline will be used over the next few months will probably be enough to cause retail gasoline prices to increase, even if crude oil prices begin declining, as EIA is currently projecting. Additionally, the cost of making “summer-grade” gasoline (“summer-grade” gasoline produces less smog) is significantly more than making “winter-grade” gasoline, helping to raise retail prices even further during the summer months, all else equal.

Finally, I have two words: India and China. Simply put, US demand is no longer the only driving force of the oil market.

There are now over 2 billion more people who've seen their standard of living increase.

To learn how you can cut down on the cost of your fuel consumption visit http://4ourfuture.com/Tasuvus

[John Julius]

We know all about Pat Butler's brother, whom I did mention, and yes, his PAL John Klimm conveniently created the job for him, again at MORE WASTE of taxpayer expense, and YES, I would bet my house on it that he does very LITTLE in the way of doing anything of substance to justify his HANDSOME salary.

And again, we have a council that sits there with ALL THIS WASTE like deer in the headlights, while the HOMEOWNER's taxes continue to spiral out of sight just like the gas prices. If this crap continues, people in Barnstable will waste HALF their incomes on GASOLINE and FOR THE DAMN PUTRID WASTE of JOHN KLIMM and 12 morons who call themselves our 'town council'.

Pat Butler's BROTHER being the FULL time lawyer FOR THE SCHOOL DEP'T IS A BIG JOKE. The same way John Klimm is a joke. And now we hear he might have hired some former news director to CREAT MORE GARBAGE PROPAGANDA on how great John Klimm is and how great the town is..........

Taxpayers here, WAKE UP. I hope one day soon someone will form a "Barnstable Taxpayer's Association". It would not be hard to do and all one wold have to do is have a small core group of four people or so........ they would charge a small
$ 10 fee for year membership. Get 400 or 500 town TAXPAYERS to be members and you have 4 or 5K in the till. A couple times a year you email out to all the members and have 150 or 200 ANGRY TAXPAYERS show up two or three times a year and DEMAND Klimm and the council idiots knock off this WASTE and crap and see how things would change.

Check it out. Look at how small Harwich is and yet they have a taxpayer Association and it does alright.

Is there anyone out there who is willing to do this? If so, NOW is a great time to start......... whiel everyone is struggling. And in the meantime, John Klimm CONTINUES to run his garbage empire with WASTE and more WASTE, and the stupid council sits there like a bunch of idiots who have no clue, because they do NOT!

Barnstable government is like driving a Hummer. 8 miles to the gallon.

8 miles to the gallon. that is way too generous. the hummer part is right on tho

[dissatified molested probationer]

If Roy makes you bend over he will be touching more than your toes, babe!

[Jojo]

No bending over needed. Go look at GasBankUSA located at http://www.gasbankusa.com