b"C H A P T E R SI XWhy was this event unusual? Because the speaker was not a high-priced consultant but a nonresident taxpayer who had put in close to ayear as a volunteer to assemble the research and write the report. Nor was the session sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, or the merchants, or Town Hall. Instead, it had the formal backing of the not-for-profit Friends of Chatham Waterways. Further, the presenter, Deborah Ecker, had credentials that any Cape town would prize in a resident. Maybe some listeners didnt agree with everything she said, but her background made this breakfast well worth eating.2Remember that before settling full-time in town, Mrs. Ecker had worked in various state-level posts dealing with revenue and taxationas analyst of the entire Massachusetts revenue system, as associate commissioner in the Commonwealths Tax Department, in the Federal Reserve Banks research department, and, among other posts, as head of a State Senate staff on tax policy, local aid, and revenue forecasting. After years of experience, she was scarcely timorous about raising her voice in meetings. In mid-90s Chatham, her face had become more and more familiar at public and Town Hall meetings. One occasion had arisen as far back as 1985. The issue was a new tax.A Tax That Bred ControversyAs the 1980s made their entrance, Boston faced a money crunch. Looking for cures, legislators narrowed their gaze to the room-occupancy tax fixed on hotels, motels and B&Bs. Out of the debate arose a provision to let cities and towns statewide put an added tax on top of the states existing one. But Chatham declined that option.3For its part, FCW was only a year old in 1984 when its board discussed with intensity how the town could raise money to buy land. At that meeting, Debby Ecker, sitting in as an observer, and others knew that purchasing land was the best way to protect it from development. But while adding a tax on hotels/ motelsmight have merit for that purpose, it nevertheless rubbed the respected ownership of Chatham Bars Inn (CBI) the wrong way, and residents voted it down at Town Meeting in 1986.Some months passed, and then, new CBI ownersoutsidersarrived on the scene; that cleared out some of the mines along the road toward a piggyback tax. Moving ahead, Mrs. Ecker wrote a Town Meeting article in favor of an added motel/hotel excise levy. As a new member of FCW, she would soon go on its board. But FCW directors shied away from endorsing her proposal. Says Mrs. Ecker, they had organized in '83 to be an educational organization, and thought they could not transgress on that.86"