Taxes on Summer Camps

[CentreHarborEric]

This went from a good thread to a really good thread.
Living in MA full time and owning lakefront up in NH, I love the tax discussion (but hate the taxes!).
I want NH to stay the low-tax, low government place that I considered it while I was growing up. I know firsthand from paying attention to politics in MA that more $$ going into state coffers almost never translates 100% (it feels like MUCH less) into programs for the majority of people, or purchases of land for the true public interest, etc.
That $$ goes into hiring more government workers, funding their out-of-this-world pensions and rising healthcare costs. It goes into wasteful road/bridge/rail construction which benefits some but then becomes a disgraceful money pit of an ongoing maintenance project plus all the government employees required to staff it. It goes towards buying 6,000 licenses for computer software which no one can really justify buying at all (not even 100 copies) because someone from Cognos is friends with the speaker of the house (that's our latest $13 million almost-wasted, but believe me, there's probably 10+ times that wasted in a simliar way and never reported every year).
We're now being sold this BS about new taxes (a.k.a. gambling revenues) reducing our in-place taxes down here in MA, but we all know how that will go. The projections for tax collections are too rosy, we won't know until they're actually upon us, and our property/income/excise/cigarette/fuel taxes and road tolls won't go down, but we will have created some more government in the process, and the new spending level will be set even higher.
I worry about newcomers to NH wanting their local and state government to get involved to the level they may have been accustomed in NJ, MA, ME etc. The reference to wishing the state would buy Timber Island for a state park is a perfect example, but the community centers, overdone fire/police stations and public works projects I see popping up around the lake are good ones too-lots of $$ spent with ongoing maintenance and staffing costs that will never go away, and tax revenue lost too in some cases.
Leave the preservation/conservation projects to the good work of the LRCT and others.
So keep the spending in check and maintain NH's competitive advantage in attracting business, tourist and retirement spending by minimizing the tax burden!!!!! We need to save our money so we can support the monster federal healthcare reform anyway!