You may have heard an opponent of a Stoneham override say something like: "Just let the town go bankrupt! We'd be better off going into receivership." Let me tell you, friends, if you don't like the idea of an override, you're going to hate receivership.

What receivership doesn't look like: the state comes in to gently correct our wayward town, puts professionals in charge for a while, on their dime, pours resources into the town, and gets everything spic and span again, before sending us back on our merry way to self-governance.

What receivership does look like: the state puts out the financial fire in our town by any means necessary. Just like firemen don't worry about water damage to your sofa, the state doesn't worry about long-term impacts to Stoneham and its way of life--they want to make us solvent yesterday. Town jobs are cut immediately. Town properties are sold off--the library, the senior center, parks and other gems of our town. They all go on the chopping block in the name of immediate solvency, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Oh, and the first thing the state will do to get our finances in order? Raise local taxes.

By the time the state leaves, Stoneham is barely recognizable: permanently diminished, with reduced property values, a depressed local economy, and a long, long path back to becoming the town we once were. Remember what happened in Lawrence? Springfield? Chelsea? That's not what we want for Stoneham.

"Okay," says our override opponent, "then let's just merge with a neighboring town."

Let's pretend for a moment that's possible--that we find a neighboring town that's willing to take us on, which is far from a given. The neighboring towns all have higher tax rates than Stoneham, and, the minute we're part of that town, we'll start to pay those higher rates, too. Getting taken over by another town is just an override with extra steps, and a bunch of lost autonomy.

The bottom line: we're better off in Stoneham governing ourselves. This is our town, and we're responsible for it. We're going to pay higher taxes through an override, receivership, or being taken over by a bigger town. Wouldn't you rather keep our say about where those taxes go? Wouldn't you rather keep Stoneham, Stoneham?