Sharon Juve: Our community should never have to make these decisions

To The Daily Sun, 

We are being forced into choices our community should never have to make.

I’ve sat through Meredith’s school board and town budget meetings where neighbors are asked to weigh whether we can afford to support children with special education needs, maintain basic services, or keep people in their homes. These aren’t luxuries. They are the foundation of a functioning community.

Yet we are told this is simply “living within our means.” Our means keep shrinking because the largest beneficiaries of our economy are not paying into it.

Take Palantir Technologies. In 2025, its own filings show that 54% of its revenue came from government customers, most of it from the United States. Its software supports data-mining and surveillance systems used by immigration, law enforcement, and defense agencies, embedding a private corporation deep inside core government operations. Yet Palantir reported about $1.5 billion in U.S. income and paid zero federal income tax for 2025; at the standard 21% corporate rate, it would have owed roughly $330 million.

Small businesses here do not get that option. The local contractor, café, or day care pays through pass-through income, payroll taxes, and rising property costs. They do not shift profits offshore or erase their tax bill on seven-figure earnings. That is not a free market. It is a two-tier system.

Our problem is not one election cycle; it is a set of incentives that allow global corporations to profit from public contracts while the same underlying policy structure continues to permit it.

This is not just a budget problem. It is a structural one. If public dollars are funding private profit at this scale, then the rules need to be rebuilt so taxpayers in towns like ours are not left carrying the load while corporations take the gain.

Sharon Juve

Meredith