Last month, myself and Darryl, as ministers of the Shire Free Church, contributed a check in the amount of over $1,400 to the “City of Keene” for services we value, that are not coercive in nature, such as road maintenance. We specifically left out of the check the amount of money the city was demanding for the government school system.
Instead of sending money to a system based on coercion of our peaceful neighbors, we have chosen to send $1,000 instead to a peaceful school that does business by consent, the Monadnock Waldorf School. People have asked how schools can be funded without the state – it’s easy. One method is to pick the school(s) you like and send them the money the state system would have otherwise taken from you. Let the market decide how money should be distributed, not centralized bureaucracy that gets their funding by threat of stealing homes.
This is not a property tax revolt. Churches and their parsonages are not supposed to pay property tax, even under the state’s system. The city people sent a year-end property tax bill to the home I used to own that I donated this summer to the Shire Free Church, and we used the amount of money demanded on that bill as suggested amounts to calculate what we would actually give for the community services we value.
Whether the people calling themselves “the City of Keene” will recognize the Shire Free Church’s freedom of religion and cease sending property tax bills to the church’s parsonage remains to be seen. We delivered their exemption form (the BTLA-9) to the city assessor this week, as a courtesy, not because we feel the church is in any way obligated to the rules of their coercive system. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest.
