Monadnock School Taxpayers Association News

The Monadnock School Board members, Administrators, Teachers, now are hiding behind the accreditation myth to get more money from taxpayers, by using scare tactics like ‘your child won’t get into college if the school is not accredited by NEASC (New England Association of Schools & Colleges).

It’s just a flat out lie by the tax and spenders.

Last April I visited Bellows Falls Union High School during school vacation because I thought BFUHS was on probation from NEASC. What I found out was BFUHS got rid of NESAC in the early 90s, and has never looked back. The principal, Chris Hodgdon, and Assistant Principal, Ryan Parkman, indicated the NEASC cost was too high, and saw no value in continuing the relationship. I also spoke with Jon Ratti, who retired last June 30th as Director of Guidance, after 35 years in education. He said the school board was concerned that not making AYP and not being accredited would negatively impact students applying for college. Mr. Ratti spoke with admissions officers at Dartmouth College, Middlebury, St. Michaels and the University of Vermont. All schools assured Mr. Ratti that they were not aware of schools not making AYP and the same was true for accreditation.

Nowhere in the application process to these colleges do they ask if the applicant’s school is accredited. Schools could get 15,000 applications, bottom line; the college evaluates the applicant or student, not the high school. It’s interesting to note that the highest SAT score ever recorded in Vermont, was a BFUHS student with no school accreditation.

Accreditation is a big money maker for NEASC and for the price charged will give your school district a good or bad report to help get more money from taxpayers. Just pay the annual fee. You will get a report full of school talk no one really understands. Common sense must enter the accreditation myth, and the good folks at BFUHS asked me the questions;

Q. Does your district financially support the schools?
A. Of course: the local tax burden of 2007/08 was $14,000,000.

Q. Do you receive monies from the State of New Hampshire?
A. Of course: 43% of our expenditures.

Q. Do you receive Federal money?
A. Of course: for Fed Food Service, Special Education, and grants including $10 million MRPESOC grant that was mismanaged and wasted by both SAU 38, Antioch College, Keene State and other partners.

Q. Is your school district approved and accredited by your state department of education?
A. Of course. It is no easy task to become a co-operative school system in N.H.

Q. So why does your school district need NEASC???
A. It doesn’t.

When there were eight separate school districts, NEASC was important to the small districts to help guide them with their small student populations and limited resources. In 1912 Vermont had 1400 one room school houses and NEASC was 27 years old. (Started in 1885). Those schools needed guidance, but then came larger school districts. Because of this growth the SAU (School Administration Units) were born and NEASC’s real value diminished, as it should have, with very expensive SAU management teams taking over.

The NEASC report is full of half truths, misinformation, and gold tinted wish lists from the School Board, Administration, Teachers, and every kind of committee you can think of. You have Teachers suing the District, District suing the Teachers, with the report from NEASC becoming a big bitch session between the factions, with one thing in mind! Get what we want by scaring the hell out of the voters, especially those parents with young children and students nearing college age. The scare tactics include huge new facility expenditures, bloated Teacher contracts, and benefits including Pension Plans that voters can no longer afford in any school district. When is a benefit not a benefit to the district anymore?

If NEASC is dictating everything necessary to run our school district, why should the district pay the SAU 38 management team $1,259,861 for high level management in the proposed budget? Where is the logic? Common sense would dictate NEASC or the SAU management team has to go. Being hostage to a Bedford, Ma. Accreditation Company for the largest employer in the school district is ludicrous.

Make no mistake; the SAU management team, the School Board and other factors (No Child Left Behind) are all to blame for the NEASC probation. But, where was NEASC over the last ten years? They are just as much to blame for the Curt Cardine Administration’s lack of progress, and NEASC has to take a big share of the problems mentioned in these self-serving reports.

So what to do? Start by telling the voters the truth about NEASC, without the shameful scare tactics. It just erodes the voters trust for the School Board and Administration even further then it is. It is now time for common sense about the school district’s problems.

Richard E. Bauries, President MSTA
124 Sawyers Crossing Rd
Swanzey, NH 03446

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January 30, 2009
Letter to the Sentinel
by Richard Bauries, President MSTA

Dear Sentinel:

William Felton writes Jan.10 that he wants voters to spend millions for renovations at the high school in order to satisfy the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) and retain accreditation for Monadnock High School. At what cost in tax increases? He doesn’t say.

The economy is sinking fast; the recession is deepening. Some analysts are now speculating about depression. Unemployment is over 7% with some economists saying the actual number is closer to 14%. How many in our region will lose their job or business in the coming year? Mr. Felton and his cohorts on the school board and budget committee just handed Swanzey residents an almost $1,000 school tax increase; yet now he demands even more.

Felton terrorizes parents by indicating that without accreditation, the kids somehow won’t fare well educationally. Nonsense. Colleges are concerned with SAT scores, class rank and grades, not school accreditation. When Ms. Bennet from NEASC came to our high school last year, she was asked, out in the hallway, to name a college that required accreditation in order to gain entrance. She replied, “UCONN”, the University of Connecticut. The next day the Monadnock Schools Taxpayers Association spoke to the admissions people at UCONN who told us unequivocally that accreditation was not a factor in student acceptance, even in their medical or dental schools. When we mentioned home schooled students, the lady in admissions practically jumped through the phone with enthusiasm. It seems home schooled kids are highly sought after by UCONN. We also have a letter from the Bellows Falls school district in Vermont stating that colleges are not looking at accreditation for student admissions (see our web site at www.monadnocktaxpayers.org).

Felton is using accreditation as a club to beat parents into submission to his spending habits.

He wants “change and innovation in programs and a continuous upgrading and renewal of the physical facilities”. Only this, he claims, will give students a chance for a good education. What bull. Go to our webpage and read the news blog about Japanese public education where they have forty kids in a class and how some of the school buildings would be condemned by American standards. Yet, the Japanese students (and European, Chinese and Korean!) constantly outperform American students in academic subjects, particularly math and science.

Felton and NEASC are part of the educational-industrial complex, very similar to the military-industrial complex. Create a threat and warn that massive expenditures must be spent to save the imperiled entity – in this case public education at Monadnock.

There are eight people working on Ms. Bennet’s commission at NEASC. They service 655 schools at an average cost of $2,400 per school for each year of accreditation. That’s $1,572,000 a year and this is only the minimum. When they came to Monadnock, the cost was almost $15,000 with another $7,500 due if they were asked to review the final report. Minus some operating expenses, these eight people could be making a serious buck. Do you think for a moment this independent business, for that is exactly what NEASC is, will not tell the educrats in a district exactly what they want to hear in order to keep the money flowing?

This is not the time for new debt. Debt is what got us into this economic crisis. Let the School board trim the budget increase to offset the warrant article for facility upgrades. Taxpaying families are tired of always being the ones that must cut their budgets to stay afloat.

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January 26, 2009
USA Today

Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, whose government is in the middle of a crisis, says he has asked the country’s center-left Social Democratic Alliance Party to form a new government.

The announcement came one day after the island nation’sruling coalition broke apart, making it the first government to fall as a result of the world financial crisis. It may not be the last.

President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson says he approached Alliance party leader Ingibjorg Gisladottir to create a new coalition with the Left-Green movement.

Gisladottir has said she is likely to appoint Social Affairs Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir as the interim prime minister until new elections are held in May.

Iceland’s case is unique because the tiny country’s entire banking system collapsed in October, decimating the value of the life savings of most residents on the island. Still, other countries in Europe are experiencing political unrest because of the global economic downturn.

In Latvia last week, a riot ensued after 10,000 protesters marched on parliament. Demonstrations also turned violent in recent weeks in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Greece.

“I think we are still headed sharply downhill in the world economy and the U.S. economy, and I don’t pretend to know how far,” said Ralph Bryant, a former director of the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of International Finance and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Every country in Europe is troubled by these things.”

At a forum Monday in Washington, International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn complained that the world’s major economies aren’t moving fast enough to shore up their banks and otherwise address the crisis.

“Very little has been done,” he said. “I don’t say nothing has been done, but it’s moving very, very slowly.”

Frustration turns to violence

Iceland’s government fell after the U.S.-educated prime minister, Geir Haarde, couldn’t reach a deal on sharing power with another party in his coalition.

That came after Haarde last week called for elections in May, ahead of those scheduled for 2011, after weeks of protests by Icelanders upset about soaring unemployment and rising prices. Haarde announced Friday that he has cancer and would not seek another term.

Weekly rallies have been held in Iceland since the banks collapsed in October. The protests grew more frequent and were mostly peaceful until last week, when demonstrators threw paint at the parliament building and hurled eggs at the prime minister’s limousine. On Thursday, police used tear gas for the first time since 1949 to quell a disturbance.

Iceland, a country of 304,000 people — slightly less populous than Pittsburgh — saw its banking system grow in the last decade to nine times its economic output, fueled largely by deposits and investments from abroad in a major retooling of its economy.

In September, after bank lending dried up in the wake of the Lehman Bros. collapse, Iceland’s banks became insolvent and had to be nationalized.

The International Monetary Fund, which loaned the country $2.1 billion to help it recover, estimates Iceland’s economy will contract 9.6% this year.

“What is unique about Iceland — they’re incredibly tiny with a big financial sector,” said former Federal Reserve governor Frederic Mishkin, a Columbia Business School professor who has studied the country’s collapse. “One of the lessons here is that if you’re in a situation like this, you’re extremely vulnerable to an international financial crisis.”

The Belgian government also resigned in December after a top court found that it had improperly sought to influence a legal ruling on the bailout of a troubled bank, Fortis. But the issue there had more to do with whether the government violated separation of powers than popular unrest over the economy.

Signs of weakness elsewhere

Preston Keat, research director with Eurasia Group in New York, notes that other small Western European countries with large banking systems are at risk, including Ireland and Austria. Potentially shaky banking systems in former Soviet satellites, such as Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine are most vulnerable.

So far, governments in major European economies such as Britain, France and Germany have retained political support through the crisis, in part by responding with massive stimulus packages, said Harvard economist Philippe Aghion.

Western Europe also benefits from its welfare state, which provides for generous government spending that kicks in when workers lose their jobs, providing an automatic stimulus, said Iain Begg, a professor at the London School of Economics.

Still, in Britain, support for Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ruling Labor Party is slipping, a poll released Monday by ICM for The Guardian newspaper showed. The survey also found that less than a third of the country thinks Brown’s latest steps will improve the economy.

Frustration with leadership is even more acute in Eastern Europe, where countries that joined the European Union in recent years to improve their economies are now experiencing the downside, Begg said.

Workers who had found jobs in fast-growing EU economies such as Ireland are now unemployed, he said.

That’s bad news for the United States, he said, which has an interest in a stable, more integrated Europe.

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January 26, 2009
USA Today

Household names such as Caterpillar, (CAT) Home Depot (HD) and Sprint Nextel (S) said Monday that they are laying off a combined 35,000 workers in moves that stressed the severity of the worldwide recession and kicked off what is likely to be a week of gloomy earnings announcements, further job cuts and dismal data.

The layoffs continued Tuesday as Corning said it is cutting 3,500 jobs, or 13% of its payroll.

The news ratchets up the pressure on the Obama administration and Congress as lawmakers debate an $825 billion stimulus package intended to save or create millions of jobs. Far more job cuts are likely as consumer and business spending tumbles amid what many economists say is the worst recession the USA has seen since the Great Depression.

“Some of the worst job losses are ahead of us, not behind us,” says Wells Fargo senior economist Scott Anderson.

STATE UNEMPLOYMENT RATES: Indiana, S. Carolina see largest increases; see rates for all 50 states

He expects 3 million Americans to lose their jobs in 2009 — up from the 2.6 million who were cut last year, which was the most since 1945, the final year of World War II. The layoffs are happening in “all industries in all areas of the world,” Anderson says. “This will be one of the worst job markets in the postwar period.”

Chris McCabe, 48, of Mansfield, Mass., lost his job Jan. 4 as director of product quality at consumer electronics company Sonos. The father of two teenagers has seen a few job leads evaporate after prospective employers stopped hiring or his contacts at the companies were laid off. His daughter is hoping to go to nursing school after graduating from high school this year, but he isn’t sure he’ll be able to afford the tuition.

“I’ve reached out to friends … to see who they may know in Boston,” says McCabe, who says he has several friends who are out of work. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything in my life like this.”

The unemployment rate is forecast to peak at a 25-year high of 8.8% early next year, up from 7.2% in December, according to the median in a survey of 52 economists conducted by USA TODAY Jan. 15-22.

REBOUND? Majority of economists expect a slow recovery this year

The workweek began Monday morning with news of massive layoffs at several European companies, including electronics giant Philips (6,000 job cuts) and insurance and banking conglomerate ING, which announced it would drop 7,000 jobs.

Then came a wave of layoff announcements by U.S. companies. Among the largest:

•Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of large construction and farm equipment, said it would cut nearly 20,000 jobs and warned of a “dismal year for the world economy” as it reported its earnings.

The cuts, amounting to about 18% of Caterpillar’s workforce, reflected how the slide in construction and mining worldwide has hurt the Peoria, Ill.-based company.

•Drugmaker Pfizer (PFE) said 18,000 people will lose their jobs as part of the merger of Pfizer and Wyeth announced Monday.

•Sprint Nextel, the nation’s No. 3 mobile phone service provider behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, said it will cut 8,000 workers by the end of March as part of a plan to save $1.2 billion.

•Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, said it’s cutting 7,000 jobs. Most of the cuts will come from closing Home Depot’s 34 Expo stores, which sell high-end home decor items.

•General Motors said it is cutting production at assembly plants in Lansing, Mich., and Lordstown, Ohio, resulting in 2,000 job cuts.

Monday’s cuts follow a series of layoff announcements last week, including a plan by Microsoft (MSFT) to eliminate 5,000 jobs.

Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at economic consulting firm MFR, says layoffs at big-name firms tell only part of the story.

“A lot of these are grabbing headlines, but the small- and medium-size companies that are so dependent on bank credit are withering on the vine,” says Shapiro, who expects the unemployment rate to climb to double digits.

The widespread layoffs during the last several months have forced many ousted workers to lower their sights in seeking employment.

Over the weekend, Terry Ellis, 48, of Lewisville, Texas, turned in an application to work at the local Wal-Mart. (WMT)

The father of four lost his job with Verizon (VZ) last May after working for the company for 29 years, most recently as a purchasing manager. He hasn’t had luck finding work and is worried about relying on his wife’s salary as a pharmacy technician.

“Anything to pay the bills and put food on the table,” he says.

Employers that are hiring report being inundated with applications. During the last three weeks, about 63,000 people have applied for 12,000 openings at CityCenter, a development on the Las Vegas Strip scheduled to open late this year.

In its search for people to fill jobs in gaming, hotel operations, food and beverage service, finance, engineering, entertainment and other areas, CityCenter is getting applications from people whose qualifications far exceed the jobs they’re seeking, says Michael Peltyn, the company’s head of human resources.

“We’re not happy about the economy,” he says. “But it sure hasn’t hurt the applicant pool.”

‘It’s really bleak out there’

Friday, the government is expected to report the economy contracted in the last three months of 2008 at the fastest pace since 1982.

Job losses are leading consumers to rapidly pull back spending either because they are out of work or because they fear their jobs could be in jeopardy. That is leading businesses to try to cut costs any way they can, including by cutting jobs or forcing workers to take unpaid leave.

Revenue fell 10% during the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007, according to preliminary estimates from Standard & Poor’s.

The numbers that matter most to investors and companies — earnings — are getting worse. Much worse.

In October, Wall Street was expecting companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 to report 46% higher earnings for the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the same quarter in 2007, says Ashwani Kaul, director of research at Thomson Reuters.

But now that 18% of the companies have reported, earnings are down 31%.

“It’s bad,” Kaul says. “It’s really bleak out there.”

It’s not just financials, although losses by banks and brokerages are the biggest drags on earnings. Seven of the 10 sectors of the economy are expected to report lower fourth-quarter earnings for 2008.

So far, the future isn’t looking any more promising. Earnings are expected to be down 21% in the first quarter of 2009 and 19% in the second quarter, Kaul says.

Even companies that investors thought a year ago could hold up during a U.S. slowdown are feeling the pinch. Among them: Caterpillar.

The company’s struggles show the depth and complexity of the economy’s troubles. The sudden collapse in worldwide demand for industrial commodities, ranging from oil to copper, stopped the boom for exploration and production, says Alexander Blanton, analyst at Ingalls & Snyder.

That means previously booming nations such as China and Brazil are postponing orders for new machinery.

“Caterpillar is diversified, yes,” Blanton says. “But the problem is almost everything is going down.”

Empty spaces at malls

It’s not just industrial weakness, either. The failures of several large retailers have left malls with cavernous empty spaces.

As a result, mall operators aren’t willing to break ground on new malls when the ones they have aren’t full, Blanton says.

As the bad news accumulates, the International Monetary Fund is expected Wednesday to again lower its forecast of global growth for this year.

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are expected to pledge at the conclusion of their two-day meeting Wednesday to keep interest rates close to zero while pumping more money into the nation’s financial system to try to get credit flowing again.

The doom and gloom comes as President Obama presses Congress to quickly approve an economic stimulus plan that includes personal and business tax breaks, aid to states and local governments and public works spending.

The House will vote on its version of the bill Wednesday, and Senate committees begin pulling together a companion bill this week.

The stimulus plans also include more aid for laid-off workers.

The House version contains $27 billion to extend a federal program that provides an extra 33 weeks of unemployment benefits, on top of the 26 weeks of regular coverage provided in most states.

The bill also includes $9 billion to increase the average $300 weekly unemployment benefit by $25. Another provision includes $20 billion to boost food-stamp benefits and more for job training.

Obama touted the stimulus plan Monday in remarks at the White House.

“These are not just numbers on a page,” Obama said. “These are working men and women whose families have been disrupted and whose dreams have been put on hold. We owe it to each of them and to every single American to act with a sense of urgency and common purpose.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said the House will not adjourn for its Presidents Day recess, set for mid-February, until the stimulus legislation is passed.

Obama is scheduled to meet Tuesday with congressional Republicans to see whether he can drum up bipartisan support for the plan. So far, Republicans have been cool to the stimulus package, calling it too heavy on spending and too light on tax cuts.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., says the stimulus bill contains too much wasteful spending, should focus more on small-business tax relief and should not provide refund checks to people who don’t pay income taxes.

Cantor says that the billions of dollars of aid to states included in the bill is tantamount to rewarding legislatures that increased spending beyond their means.

“He (Obama) was elected based on the hope that people had that he could come to Washington and largely change the way things work,” Cantor says.

Republicans also say the bill’s public works spending won’t take effect quickly enough. Obama has said 75% of the public spending would occur during the plan’s first 18 months. But a Congressional Budget Office report released Monday night said only two-thirds of the plan’s impact would be felt over the first 18 months.

“There is more power than people think for the federal government to pump out funds soon,” says Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics, who has been working with lawmakers on the plan.

“Our recovery will be driven by the federal government. That’s different from almost all the recoveries we’ve seen in the past three decades.”

Stimulus plans alone won’t be enough.

Bernanke has suggested the government use part of the second half of a $700 billion financial rescue fund created by Congress last year to unlock lending through strategies such as setting up a “bad bank” that would buy troubled assets, taking them off the balance sheets of commercial lenders.

The White House has pledged to use $50 billion to $100 billion of the funding to prevent home foreclosures.

As part of the initial half of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, the government has pumped in $300 billion in cash to help provide ready capital to banks reeling from fast-declining assets, or help stronger banks such as PNC Financial buy weaker ones such as National City.

The hope was that the cash would help stem losses at banks and ease credit.

In recent weeks, it has become evident that the government’s actions failed to prop up the banks, restore much confidence in the financial markets or even inspire much lending. “We’re going from one banking crisis to another in a matter of weeks, and we don’t know if we’re done yet,” says Anil Kashyap, finance and economics professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Kashyap says the government needs to take decisive action to stabilize the banking system. “The economy cannot grow if the banking system is impaired.”

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January 23, 2009
by Richard Bauries

The Monadnock Region School Board, October 21st meeting was chastised by Anika Clark of the Sentinel and right on target; the School Board had it coming. The continuing back door and secret politics by certain board and Administration SAU 38 members will no longer be tolerated by the public or the Monadnock School’s Taxpayers Association (MSTA).

School Board member Karen Cota of Roxbury the Facilities Committee Chairperson for the past several years brought forth the motion both to establish and then fund a new school district position of Project Manager at a cost to the taxpayer of $76,300. which up to now has been a limited outside consulting position. This was done on a default budget that disallows any new financial contractual positions to the district. Ms. Cota created the new Project Manager position in light of her recommendation as Facilities Chairman with the co-operation of fellow committee member William Felton. She then put forth two multi-million dollar construction warrant articles, which will go to the voters in March, 2009. A $12 million warrant for renovations to the Middle/High School and a new $18 million Middle School. Ms. Cota was also not interested in having any public hearings on taxpayers funding the $30.6 million construction projects.

We now know that Karen Cota applied for the new Project Manager position herself, and did not resign her seat on the School Board until after it was brought forth publicly. Also to be noted, the School Board never made any announcement of this issue at its previous meeting even though several members were aware of the application of Ms. Cota. Nor did the Facilities Committee, which she chairs, mention it in the minutes of the meetings. More evidence that minutes are being sanitized by committee chairman and the administration, with the exception of the Finance Committee.

What is sad regarding the above factual information is that Ms. Cota secretly applied for the position herself, while a sitting board member, which is using her authority and position for personal financial gain. This abuse of public trust, known as “Ultra Vires”, (Latin for beyond powers) which would connect with “Pecuniary Benefit”, any advantage in the form of money or favors for economic gain.

Ms. Cota has mentioned publicly at different meetings, that she has no health care insurance, no retirement plan, and in fact could not pay her property taxes in full. However, abuse of her position on the School Board is not a justified manner to obtain compensation and benefits from the taxpayers of the district.

Ms. Cota resigned her position on the School Board only after it was brought forth publicly at the last School Board meeting (Oct. 21st) that she had applied for the Project Manager position. It was all hush-hush until then. The fact that Ms. Cota may be the least qualified for the position does not alter the fact that her credibility has been damaged, along with some members of the School Board and Administration.

Ms. Cota has had little respect or regard for RSA 91A, the Right to Know law and the Open Meeting Law during her tenure on the School Board and as Chairman of the Facilities Committee. In fact, during the October 16, 2008 Finance Committee meeting, she made comment that the public should not be allowed to ask so many questions. This is a very dangerous path for the School Board members to go down. If Ms. Cota is voted into the position in a default budget, with possible abuse of power for personal economic gain as a member of the Monadnock Regional School Board, it would be easy to assume the voters would look at this as a conflict of interest.

This is a most difficult situation for the MRSD, coming when many educators in the district feel that we have turned the corner with a positive attitude. The School Board decision on this matter will go a long way with their creditability among the voters.

Richard E. Bauries
President, MSTA
124 Sawyers Crossing Road
Swanzey, NH

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January 5, 2009
Wall Street Journal

Higher Assessed Values Push Up Bills, Sparking Outcry as Market Prices Drop

Support for property-tax rollbacks is building from Arizona to New York, fueled by angry homeowners in some locales who are seeing rising tax bills despite plunging home prices.

Protesters angered by rising property-tax assessments in Hampton, N.H., release tea into the wind in a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party.

Legislatures in New York, Georgia, Oklahoma and Wyoming are considering taking up proposals to curb property taxes in their 2009 sessions. In Indiana, a cap on property taxes enacted last year became effective Jan. 1, and lawmakers are planning to vote this year on whether to put before voters a constitutional amendment that would cap taxes permanently at 1% of a property’s value.

In recent months, citizen groups in Montana, Nevada and Arizona have organized to get property-tax-relief measures on state ballots. Florida voters last year amended the state’s constitution to increase a number of property-tax exemptions, lowering their assessments.

“We just can’t afford these increases in property taxes,” said Lynne Weaver, a 59-year-old retired swimsuit saleswoman in Phoenix, who said her investment nest egg “has pretty well been cut in half” by market declines. She is a leading volunteer for Prop. 13 Arizona, an organization collecting signatures seeking a 2010 ballot measure that would roll back home valuations to 2003, before the boom that preceded the bust in home prices, and which would also cap annual property-tax increases at 2% of home value.

New York City boosted property taxes by 7% effective Jan. 1, and other towns in the state are also sending out higher bills, even as Gov. David Paterson and some legislative leaders are supporting a recent report that recommended a 4% statewide cap in property-tax increases. A commission empaneled by Gov. Paterson’s predecessor called for the cap in response to concern that the state’s levies — among the highest in the nation on property — were curbing growth and encouraging migration.

Taxes can go up when prices decline because assessed values lag behind market realities. The values that cities and towns use to calculate tax bills are often based on house sales a year or more before the bills are issued. That means that many recent bills don’t take into account the meltdown of 2008, when house prices fell by an average of about 20% across the country.

In addition, cities and towns are facing a barrage of recession-related financial pressures, including cuts in state aid and investment losses. That is tempting many to look for added revenue from property taxes, one of the few revenue sources they control.

That has set the stage for more tension between taxpayers and municipal officials hard-pressed to pay bills.

“It’s pretty hard not to institute some increase in property taxes,” said Stephen Altieri, town administrator of Mamaroneck, N.Y., whose town board voted Dec. 17 to raise the town property-tax rate in a main part of the New York City suburb to $14.25 per $1,000 in assessed home value, from $10.20. Mr. Altieri said Mamaroneck is facing a “sort of a perfect storm” because of declining investments, and falling revenue from a 1.3% tax it receives on the value of new mortgages. Along with raising property taxes, the town is also trimming its own spending, he says.

In Evans, N.Y., outside Buffalo, October assessments reflected strong home prices through July 1, 2007, and residents were so irked that they picketed Town Hall, started a Web site, and presented the town clerk with a petition calling for the assessments to be thrown out. The town declined to do that, but it says it has been hearing individual appeals.

Parts of the country that felt the real-estate bust early have seen some reductions in property taxes, but some residents in communities that were hit by the downturn later are in shock.

“Disbelief” is how 55-year-old John Kane, a financial adviser, describes his reaction to the assessed value of his home in Hampton, N.H., which soared 55% to $850,200 recently, from $549,300 in 2007. His annual taxes jumped 30%, to nearly $14,000. “We see empty houses, for-sale signs,” Mr. Kane said. “And they value our houses like this?”

About 100 Hampton residents formed a group called the Coalition for a Fair Assessment, and staged a protest at Hampton Harbor, waving tea bags in a mini re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party. The group urged local homeowners to appeal their bills — which many are doing. They also got on the Town Council’s agenda on Monday to advocate a reassessment that reflects the real-estate slump.

In Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish, north of New Orleans, tax assessor Patricia Schwarz Core said 15,000 residents have requested a formal review of their 2008 revaluations, compared with 500 in a typical revaluation.

On his Web site, Louisiana state Rep. Kevin Pearson, a Republican, calls the 2008 revaluations in St. Tammany ridiculous and says some residents saw their assessed values jump 150% since the revaluation four years ago. In an interview, he said he is working with other legislators to craft an agenda for the next session that may include limits on increases in tax bills and more oversight of local taxing entities.

In Wyoming, rising property assessments have “stirred up some problems, especially for fixed-income people,” said state Rep. Rodney Anderson, a Republican who is chairman of the Wyoming House of Representatives’ revenue committee. Last month, Mr. Anderson was part of a joint committee of legislative leaders that endorsed a bill that would exempt part of a home’s value from property taxes.

“People are just astounded that this year, of all years,” the assessed value “of their property has increased,” said Georgia Rep. Larry O’Neal, a Republican and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the state’s House of Representatives. Mr. O’Neal said he supports a bill that would bar communities from raising taxes by increasing assessed values, eliminating what he calls “the back-door tax increase.” If it passes, entities would have to go through the public — and often difficult — process of raising rates to increase revenue. He expects the bill will be taken up by the legislature this year.

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