Woburn's Magnificent Tax Base

As Woburn residents are abundantly aware, the City's highly-prized location is astride two major interstate highways. Zoning decisions by various City Councils over the years have caused vast tracts of local land along these highways, including Trade Center Park, to be zoned for business and commercial purposes. Additionally, Woburn's commercial property tax rate is two and one-half times greater ($21.50 per $1,000 in fiscal 06) than its residential property tax rate ($8.70 per $1,000 in fiscal 06). Accordingly, Woburn receives far more non-residential tax income, on a proportionate basis, than the vast majority of other communities.

Woburn's total tax revenue during Fiscal Year 2006 from all sources was $68 million, according to City publications. Commercial property owners collectively pay $33.6 million in property taxes or nearly 50 percent of the total property tax levy, even though their collective assessed value ($1.56 billion) is only about 28 percent of Woburn's total taxable base ($5.59 billion).

Breaking this down in the two major categories of real property shows the reason Woburn's residential taxes are so much lower than almost all of its greater Boston neighbors:

The various Cummings-managed business spare properties in Woburn as of June 30, 2006 paid real estate taxes last fiscal year alone totaling $3.4 million, or slightly more than 10 percent of all the City's total non-residential taxes. Cummings currently employs 288 regular full-time employees, including many from Woburn. More importantly, there are approximately 4,700 people employed in the many properties leased by the Company in Woburn.

When Trade Center Park is completed and fully leased as a first-class office building, the combined Court building and general office space will generate additional taxes to the City of at least $700,000 annually.

Those involved with financing arrangements for public schools estimate that the $700,000 anticipated annual tax revenue from this one new development alone may pay the entire debt service for two of Woburn's three proposed new elementary schools. Importantly, this additional revenue is entirely on top of the current tax revenue already generated by the existing Trade Center building, and will be counted as all new revenue and not limited by Proposition 2 ½ regulations.

Woburn should never re-zone property to accommodate new proposed developments without great study, no matter what the proposed tax benefits might appear to be. And unwise development simply to gain more taxes is never a good thing. At the same time, to ignore the pending tax revenue of a proposed "by right" project like Trade Center Park would be to ignore one of the best opportunities to finally correct the problems at this terrible intersection and greatly enhance its tax base at the same time.