{"id":3531,"date":"2011-01-11T07:34:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T12:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3531"},"modified":"2011-01-11T11:02:54","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T16:02:54","slug":"morning-read-second-home-owners-want-vote-in-westport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/01\/11\/morning-read-second-home-owners-want-vote-in-westport\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Read: Second home-owners want vote in Westport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/pressrepublican.com\/0100_news\/x1947784358\/Westport-property-owners-seek-out-of-district-vote\">Plattsburgh Press-Republican<\/a> is reporting this morning that five seasonal residents of Westport have petitioned for the right to vote on school budgets and in school elections.<\/p>\n<p>Reporter Alvin Reiner points out that this &#8220;might have far-ranging implications.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Citing &#8220;a denial of voting rights,&#8221; all submitted verified petitions to  the state on behalf of themselves and their belief that between 200 to  400 others are in similar situations within the district.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, they had requested absentee ballots to vote in Westport Central School elections but were denied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This speaks to an issue faced by a growing number of people in the North Country &#8212; snowbirds and others &#8212; who spend considerable time in our region, but maintain residency elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>In many cases, seasonals spend thousands of dollars a year in local property taxes, with no say over spending decisions or budget increases.<\/p>\n<p>So what do you think?\u00a0 Taxing second-homeowners has become something of a cottage industry in the North Country.\u00a0 Is it a fair way to make these folks contribute to their adopted communities?\u00a0 Or is it taxation without representation?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pressrepublican.com\/0100_news\/x1947784358\/Westport-property-owners-seek-out-of-district-vote\">Read the full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Plattsburgh Press-Republican is reporting this morning that five seasonal residents of Westport have petitioned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4839,4817,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3532,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531\/revisions\/3532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}