LEVERETT - Since the passage of Proposition 2½ in 1980, all Massachusetts cities and towns have been stuck with a fantasy-based formula for generating revenue, limiting the growth in local property tax revenue to 2.5 percent a year without regard for the actual costs of providing local services. On Tuesday, after several years of cost-cutting totaling $7 million, Amherst voters will decide the fate of a $1.68 million override question that, if passed, would still meet less than half of the projected budget shortfall for the coming fiscal year.

The State and Local Government Price Index tells us that the average increase in the costs of existing goods and services for cities and towns since 1980 has averaged 3.8 percent annually, outstripping the average annual inflation rate for consumers of 2.9 percent during that same period and faster than the 2.5 percent growth allowed under Proposition 2½.

After 30 years, without overrides or increases in other funding sources such as state aid, this growing divide between actual costs and available revenue translates into a whopping 40 percent deficit in Massachusetts' municipal budgets. That's a 40 percent deficit in the budget for every police, fire, and highway department; every library, school, and senior center.

No wonder towns cyclically turn to overrides to try to make up the difference.

In the past, catastrophe has been avoided because state aid has filled in some of the gaps due to the Proposition 2½ cap. But state aid has fallen off with the downturn in the economy, a startling $724 million reduction statewide last year alone, with another 4 percent, or $200 million, in cuts expected for this coming fiscal year.

Yet at the same time that municipalities have been struggling to preserve services, the total tax burden for the average household in Amherst has actually declined since 2000, as Bush-era tax cuts have taken effect. A household earning $70,000 living in an average-value Amherst home would have seen their state and federal income tax decrease by $1,819, even as their local property tax rose by $1,186 during that same period, for a net savings# of $633 annually.

To put it another way, tax-wise, the average Amherst homeowner is better off than he or she was 10 years ago.

Are there more efficiencies to be sought, more "belt-tightening" that should be done before Amherst voters part with their hard-earned cash? Already in the last two years, Amherst has cut 55 school staff, five police officers, and more than 10 other town positions. The library, without a threshold amount of specifically tax support is at risk of losing its certification. Senior-center staffing has been cut, a school and a pool closed. The town has gone beyond cutting fat to cutting the bone and muscle that are needed to provide services on which we all depend.

And what do I, a Leverett resident, care about the fate of a neighboring town? Aside from hating to see a good town go down, there is pure self-interest: my son will be attending our joint middle school in the near future, Amherst's fire department supplies our (fee-based) ambulance service and back-up fire coverage, and I frequently use the beautiful Jones Library. But seven years ago I made a conscious choice to buy a house in the Amherst regional school district, in a town that also has meaty property taxes, largely because of the reputation of the Amherst school system. And, in those seven years, at a time when other regions have seen falling home values and upside-down mortgages - shazam! the value of my home has appreciated 36 percent.

As a single mother, I work three jobs to make ends meet. I struggle regularly to meet my tax obligations, and, yes, if the Amherst override passes, likely Leverett will be next, as our financial commitment to the regional school budget will automatically increase.

Yet I believe the long-term state of my pocketbook is intimately tied to the state of my town, and the town of Amherst. If we continue to trash municipal and school budgets, property values in the Amherst-Pelham-Shutesbury-Leverett school district will most likely stagnate or fall, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

The override for the average Amherst taxpayer: 72 cents a day, $22 a month, $264 a year (less if you itemize) - way less than the cost of that new roof or paint job or other routine maintenance that any property-owner must do to preserve the value of their investment.

We would do well to view property taxes as a necessary, not optional, maintenance cost. If we avoid adequately funding our public-sector needs, we pay in the end, not only in a steady erosion in the quality of life in our four towns and in the reputation of what had once been our crown jewel - our strong and vibrant public-school system, but also whenever we might go to sell our houses that had once been such fine investments. Hard as it may seem in these financially challenging times, we owe it to our own pocketbooks to make peace with the "T" word.

Nancy Grossman is a Leverett resident.